Imagine this. It’s Sunday morning and you’ve got that vacant look on your face, a sore jaw and barley enough muscle power to lift up a half full kettle. Every little noise floating in from outside is causing you to wince, but silence is only making you aware of the deafening tinnitus in your ears from dancing right next to the speakers last night. You fumble with your CD collection and muster enough concentration to pick out something chilled. Onelove, known for their noisy backroom compilations, have decided to add a CD to your collection called UnClubbed.

It boasts on its cover the opportunity to discover “The Songs Behind The Music” from artists like Moloko and Armand Van Helden ‘Unplugged & Chilled Out’. Sounds perfect, right? Well go on, put it in then. Remember those classic/cheesy club anthems you were dancing to last night with your crew – how about hearing them being sung by semi-competent female vocalists against uninspired acoustic instruments? Reminding you a bit of Australian Idol: The Ibiza Special? Feel the bile coming up? The bathroom is thata way, pal.

Stick to the Chillout Sessions releases for your comedown soundtrack people, as Onelove have entered the market with an extremely mediocre release. The problem with a cover album is that it needs to bring with it something new and exciting that will make you want to chuck it on when you have friends round, so that you can smile smugly as that confused look of recognition crosses their face. For instance, Easy Star All-Stars did a great job of adapting two classic albums to reggae dub with their releases Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band and Dub Side of the Moon. It doesn’t have to be fantastic music, it just needs to be able to put a smile on your face. Same applies to mashups. Nobody claims Girl Talk is a musical genius, but his last two releases are so popular because its fun to see something in popular culture reinvented. This album hasn’t reinvented anything; it’s just made people waste money on a commissioned karaoke album that’s going to make them crave the original tracks more than anything.