The Chill Out Room

              
Please click on the album covers above to listen/buy from iTunes

The Chill Out Room was born out of necessity.
Back in the heady days of rave and acid house amid the explosion of new clubs and warehouses catering to the emerging counter-culture’s need to party hard, the Chill Out Room was born. It was as simple as it sounds. Ravers were partying so hard that their lives began to literally depend on the ability to shut the door on banging techno, Ebenezer Goode™ and the like for a few minutes. To be able to switch the noise off and ‘come down’ gently, to recharge those psychedelic batteries. They needed an oasis of calm from which to re-emerge after perhaps some peppermint tea on a comfy sofa surrounded by scented candles and having immersed themselves in what we now call chilled-out grooves. That was the Chill Out Room. Pretty soon it became an essential component of every serious club in the world.

Back then these so called chilled-out grooves were simply pleasingly soft acoustic songs with gradually more and more electronic vibes which eventually gave way to a whole new sub-culture encompassing ambient, downbeat, chill-out, downtempo, lounge, electronica. Pretty soon there was a proliferation of French-sounding DJs and Cafés with pretty sunsets which in turn gave way to a TV-advertised compilation sub-sector which flew against  the economic grain by dedicating themselves successfully to this new and increasingly popular collective genre. It is without peer the most popular compilation concept of the last ten years and still is.
The genre began by borrowing songs from all kinds of music but Chill-Out now has its own artists. Artists that were born into it. Who exist precisely because of it.

The Chill Out Room recognises all this and features music that would have sat just as comfortably in that very first chill out room as it does today. The repertoire is of the 21st Century and the album also serves as a timely sampler from the first ten years of Dharma Records. It features the familiar and the not so familiar. There is acoustic ‘bliss’™ and soft electronic beats. There’s even a gently beautiful operatic vocal in there somewhere. Led by a giant of the genre, I Monster’s Daydream In Blue will introduce you to further delights by themselves and others. You may be surprised at just how wonderfully listenable this stuff is, and at the rather special price of £5.99 for each 16-track album it is well worth discovering!

Welcome back to The Chill Out Room.