I got a mail the other day decrying my musical stance. Nothing I don’t get day in day out, but this person – as well as casting a degree of disbelief that I could truly hate his wonderous music told me to Chill Out. Chill Out? What has happened to people that they can no longer relax in silence. For to chill-out one surely needs that most despicable invention of the millenium: the Chill Out Album. Or to give it its proper title: The Ultimate, Locked-On Solid, Classical, Bland-As-Shite, 1am Honest, Waves Lapping, Yes That Is Air, Shh – We’re Trying To Chill Here Chill.
The problem with the ubiquity of the chill out album is now any old Telstar, EMI or Disky can flop out a collection for people to not listen to properly at their pleasure. As long as you have an old Massive Attack track knocking about, a Moby one used on a car commercial and twenty other completely anonymous ambient tracks. I’m all for not listening to music properly, but merely because I am all for not listening to music AT ALL.
Albums from the genre is so indistinguishable now that twists have been invented. The Ultimate Classical Chill Album I suppose logically makes sense. Even to some extent the existance of a Country & Western Chill-Out album is not completely beyond the bounds of belief (though I don’t think there is anything relaxing about finding out your dog has run off with your wife and the lottery ticket you stuck up your arse for safe keeping). But seen in the HMV Sale window yesterday, The Ultmate Metal Chill-Out Experience? Extreme Noise Terror have never sounded this reasonable.
In the end Chill Out albums are usually picked up in IKEA, to help solve the terrible problem of buying a CD rack and not having any CD’s. And it is possibly good music to put together flat pack furniture to. After all chill-out records are supposed to be aural wallpaper, which is odd because my idea of aural wallpaper is woodchip covering half your head – preferably muffling all sound.