We did an interview with the Nearest Faraway Place blog about the Chill Out Tent, our inspiration and some plans for the future. Worth a look if you’d like to know where we’re coming from and where we’re going…
This radio interview that Chris did with Dave Howell on Music for Beaches is another chance to hear the Chill Out Tent story...
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Here’s our list of tracks that we loved this year, (in no particular order) all sorts: ambient, Balearic, house, disco. You know the drill; buy the tracks, support the artists and labels who create all this beautiful music. This is just a sample of our year of listening, a couple of mixes and a Spotify playlist to follow…
We’re just back from an amazing weekend at the ‘Where Love Lives’ festival in Sussex where we hosted the Chill Out Tent stage with a full three day schedule of music, dancing, yoga and sunbathing. Huge thanks to our friends at 1BTN Radio for inviting us back for the second year. It’s a great event at a beautiful site with the friendliest crowd we’ve ever met, let’s do it again next year!
Here it is, our debut album! ‘The Chill Out Tent Volume 1‘ – 12 new tracks or versions of some our favourite tunes of the moment, curated lovingly by The Chill Out Tent crew.
The Chill Out Tent is our festival sanctuary, our country retreat, our dream of a better way to live with more sunshine, more sheep, more music, more love. It’s acid house hippy, it’s a blade of grass in your mouth, it’s getting stoned beautifully, it’s all our friends at once, it’s our new secret, favourite place. It’s that fleeting, unforgettable moment, it’s here, it’s now, it’s forever.
What’s the story of this beautiful collection, where did it come from? The compilation album peak happened around the turn of the century with the rise of the curator DJ and the peak of CD sales led to a boom in collections of music, mixed and unmixed. Of course, back then music was still hard to find and an album compiler could share gems from the past that would be really hard to find any other way.
Now, in the streaming age, a compilation of already released tracks, however obscure is effectively the same as a playlist because most music is available digitally somewhere or the other, and most of it on the popular streaming services.
So when we decided to make a Chill Out Tent compilation we had to re-engineer the idea of the compilation. We decided the only way to make it work was for all the tracks to be exclusive and previously unreleased. But because we wanted to share some of our favourite tunes for playing out in fields and listening bars we had to make new versions of some of them. That led to a lot of work for our in-tent producer Chris Coco and some exciting innovations and surprises from some of our current favourite producers who re-imagined their own tracks.
So here it is, our first collection of tunes that aims to reflect the sound of The Chill Out Tent, somewhere to relax, for sure, but also the perfect place for a party that probably starts some time in the afternoon and keeps on building.
‘The Chill Out Tent Volume 1‘ – Track by Track…
1 Calm – Long Summer Dream (Dub Mix) Our friend in Tokyo, and one of the first contributors to the Chill Out Tent online events, comes through with a lovely, building sunset moment.
2 Turbotito – To Feel In Love (Projections x Turbotito Version) With a cheeky reference to a top ranking reggae classic, this new version of Turbotito’s cover of the mighty Lucio Battisti’s classic is a real party starter.
3 SONLIFE – The First (Chris Coco Version) Here’s Chris Coco’s dance version of what has become a surprise Balearic classic from South London’s finest band, SONLIFE.
4 Blair French – Honey Rooftops (Chris Coco Version – Part 1) A favourite from last year gets reworked for the dance floor, or at least a grassy field. One of those tunes that always gets a – what’s this! from someone in the crowd when we play it out.
5 Sauco – Sun Goddess (Chris Coco Sunset Mix) Another firm favourite with The Chill Out Tent crew turned into a sunset classic with an extended guitar part from Nick & Samantha’s Nick Cornu.
6 Hear & Now x Chris Coco – For You (The Chill Out Tent Edit) A collaboration between the Italian duo Hear & Now and Chris Coco, leaning in a slightly more disco direction from their usual grooves
7 Reggae Disco Rockers – The Whistle Song (Quiet Storm Version) A reggae cover of Frankie Knuckles’ classic tune, here in a new extended version.
8 Quinn Lamont Luke – Don’t Run Away (Chris Coco Version) A great song from Cantoma collaborator Quinn, given a Mr Fingers type deep house twist.
9 Projections – Original Cell (Chris Coco Version) This one’s another Balearic beauty, this time via California, given a lift for an early or late play on one of THOSE nights.
10 Dexter Scott – Break Noise Some experimental psychedelic breaks and freak beats straight from the south coast of Merrie England from upcoming artist Dexter.
11 Coyote – Home Grown Everybody’s favourite Is It Balearic? duo with a dubby, bass heavy chug of a groove.
12 Joan Bibiloni – Castanyetes Eivissa / Mar Blava One of our musical heroes from Mallorca, Joan, puts a real Balearic twist on this atmospheric track for another magic sunset moment to close the album.
Launch Parties for our Debut Album this Weekend – In Real Life at Spiritland and in the Metaverse!
The Chill Out Tent was born online in the earliest days of lockdown, our collaborators and community are a wonderful collection of like-minded folks from around the world. Since then we’ve brought The Chill Out Tent into the real world with festivals, residencies, and now our first musical offering –‘The Chill Out Tent Vol. 1’ a compilation album of beautiful exclusive tracks from the global downtempo music community.
As our first gathering was online; a live-stream from London, Oslo and Ibiza, featuring the inaugural Sheepwatch mix (and now classic video). In keeping with our lo-fi / high-tech approach our listening parties for TCOT Vol 1 will be taking place IRL at Spiritland and online at our new lakeside hangout in the metaverse – Lake Mañana. Let’s hear more about this from our Chill Out Tent creative technology guru Steve Machin.
The Metaverse you say? Yup, we’ve made our first foray into virtual reality and you are all invited to come, listen to the album, explore the lake, and hang out. All you need is an internet connection, a browser (chrome works best – desktop or mobile) and a sense of adventure.
It might take a moment to get used to moving around – the lakeside hangout behaves much like a video game – except with added sheep, amazing music, and all our friends from The Chill Out Tent chat room.
Take a moment to get used to the controls, set up your audio / microphone and you avatar / webcam and remember this is very new technology so occasionally hitting the refresh button if you get stuck is usually the best way to resolve any issues.
1 – There will be 12 unique sheep (from 16:00 BST) on Sunday, each one plays a different track from the album when you stand near them.
2 – You can walk on the water.
3 – You can upload a photo, or you can use your webcam as a video avatar.
4 – You can explore anywhere you want, and you can’t break anything (although sometimes you might end up inside a mountain)
5 – Like a real place, the sounds are spatial and you can talk to people that are near you.
6 – There will be a free collectible sheep NFT for folks that come along on Sunday.
So, what are you waiting for? There are 3 TCOT Vol. 1 preview tracks waiting for you now so why not head over to https://spaces.vatom.com/@lakemanana and check out our new lakeside hangout. See you by the campfire tomorrow...
PS For those in London, we will be IRL atSpiritland from 1pm this Sunday (3rd July), and from 4pm we will be playing back the full album on that gorgeous sound system. Stop by, listen to the album and collect one of the limited edition golden sheep NFTs that we are making available this Sunday. There will be some augmented reality surprises dropping with the album from 4pm too.
Three of the four tracks on this E.P. are lush, highly percussive, latin house – sophisticated, futuristic fusion-esque sambas – but it was the mellow, marimba`d, Mallorca, that caught my attention. A daydream-like drift, a feather-light float of gentle hand drums and warm synth swells, surrounding carefully placed piano notes. Subtle, but haunting, with melodic patterns recalling John’s classic album, Ten Days Of Blue, the tune occupies a sonic space somewhere between Steve Cobby`s The Departure Lounge Awaitsand Art Of Noise`sMoments In Love and, to my ears, it coulda been a Cafe del Mar contender.
THE SUNRISE SESSIONS is an audio-visual experience with DJ mixes set to sunrise videos captured from various locations around the globe. The series is streamed bi-monthly on Mixcloud Live in partnership with The Chillout Tent (chillouttent.com). DJs and selectors who have provided mixes for the series so far: Andy Pye (Balearic Social radio show), Phil Mison (Cantoma/Café Del Mar), Helene Rickhard (HMD/Drum Island), Coyote (Is It Balearic) and Plastic Fantastic. Forthcoming guests include: Faint Waves, Studebaker Hawk (Peace & Rhythm), Mike Salta (Music For Dreams) and Paul Hillery (BBE/Folk Funk). The overall theme/vibe of the music is mellow with styles ranging from ambient, world music, downbeat, soul, funk, jazz, soft rock/AOR, dub, reggae, disco/edits and house. We provide an eclectic soundtrack that has an overall laidback ‘sunrise’ feel, and a strong emphasis on quality of content.
DJ Rocca is a master DJ and producer. Here he delves into his extensive vinyl archive to create an exclusive mix of some of his favourite old school Italo Disco moments. See you on the dance floor.
The prolific German musician, who has died aged 74, released an astonishing range of music, spanning techno, prog rock, ambient and more. A lovely primer on his enormous musical output from Alex Petrides here, we’ll say farewell with this epic piece under his Richard Wahnfried alias – ‘Druck’. x
Phil Mison reunites with long-standing firm friend, and collaborator, Quinn Lamont Luke, and…
The Chill Out Tent 