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The success of the global downtempo or ‘chill-out’ genre has spawned many new interpretations of what has become the modern day ‘classical’ music; it features beautiful, crystal clear production, sounds that are soft on the years and are just plain pleasant to listen to. And every now and then, one stands out from the crowd.
In the past decade one of the masters of the genre has been Steve Miller under the alias of Afterlife. He broke onto the scene by delivering an unexpected chillout set at the Glastonbury Festival in 2000. This led to him playing gigs at Kumhara, Pacha Playa and Cafe Del Mar’s 20th anniversary all in the same year. Since then he has had his music published on Café Del Mar’s, chill out CDs and worked with artists including Jose Padilla and Chris Coco amongst others. The latest Afterlife album is called Speck of Gold and it is definitive chill out, lofi and just fantastic to listen to. It fills the space beautifully in the background, and would be a worthy companion on a country drive or pulsing out at top volume through a state-of-the-art stereo system.
The CD opens with the title track Speck of Gold, featuring the crooning but sad vocals of Cathy Battistessa. The production is clean, crisp and laidback. Like Prana is another great track with a stronger groove and more depth to its structure. Still features lyrics from Melanie Willams; the lyrics are sung in French and are not the most prominent layer in the song, as he works the vocals in as another silky instrument. It works beautifully as the voice is high-class, well produced and modulated, whispering unintelligible sweet nothings to my English speaking ears.
Dannii Minogue ‘features’ on Take Me Inside and on hearing her voice and knowing who it was, it made me realise how often she’s contributed to big tracks. And I say ‘features’ as opposed to ‘singing’ as it’s pretty obvious the vocal track has been heavily modulated to tune in with the rest of the track. But it’s a cool number all the same. The modulation however explains why we don’t hear her singing live like so many other dance music divas.
As a bonus, the beautifully produced disc package comes with a second CD, with four remixes and three new tracks including Sunrise by Roger Sanchez. It’s a great choice for a remix as Miracle and Sunrise are the two best songs from album. And overall, this latest offering from Afterlife is very hard to fault. The production, track selection, mixing and delivery will ensure we’ll be hearing these tracks and their remixes in clubs for years to come, possibly played at times of the morning when you really should have be home already; which really, is the perfect time and place for a good chillout CD.
