After several years in the salt mines of fashion, chill-out music is suddenly hip again. Television-advertised down-tempo compilations are even outselling the annual bangin’ Ibiza collections.
If one band has a claim to kickstarting the chill-out revival, it’s Groove Armada. Producers and multi-instrumentalists Tom Findlay and Andy Cato’s 1999 album Vertigo matched dance-floor suss to wispy ambience with character and charm. Hit single At the River built its pastoral atmospherics on the most unlikely sources: a mournful trombone solo and a sample of winsome Fifties singer Patti Page.
Sadly, character is exactly what’s missing from its follow-up. Instead, Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) (Zomba) falls back on chill-out clichés — acoustic guitars and twinkling Kraftwerk electronics on Lazy Moon, anodyne soul vocals on My Friend. Only Edge Hill’s startling concoction of dub reggae and sumptuous orchestration truly stands out. Given the current vogue for horizontal listening, Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) is bound to find an audience, but only among those too relaxed to realise they’ve been sold a dud.