Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Step into the cold, February 4, 2002
Here's the deal: you have every CD released in the last couple of years in your possession. You have a CD burner too and you want to create mix CDs packed full of the cream of your collection to circulate among your friends. You do the mix CDs in sets of two built around current popular themes in electronica: chill-out and downtempo (Winter Chill, Serve Chilled), disco house/garage (Disco Kandi), nu-soul (Nu Cool), and classic club pop (Back to Love).
What you came up with probably wouldn't be too different from Hed Kandi.
Winter Chill 3 is the first Hed Kandi release I've gotten, and I think from now on my CD budget will be aimed strictly here for some time to come. Chill-out isn't my favorite type of music, and the stuff I do like falls within pretty exacting standards. But I am deeply, deeply impressed with this. This isn't music to listen to on the dance floor or the elliptical runner; this is what you put on for late nights, hot baths, good books, and, as the cover art implies, a glass of something warming with that special someone. The vocals are intimate, soulful, and aching, the instrumentals are loaded with strings and jazzy percussion, the bass is deep, and the pacing is slow, at times almost inebriated. And the level of quality stays so stratospheric that trying to pick out just a few favorites is an exercise in impossibility.
Faithless, who to my knowledge hasn't done anything really interesting since "Insomnia" (you know you feel me there), starts the collection off right with a cool, breezy remix of "Evergreen." Then things get truly haunting with Goldfrapp's "Lovely Head," which starts out with icy strings and a nostalgic whistle, and then just gets more sublime from there; the electric guitar that cuts in after the first minute could be jarring but just adds to the wonder. "Sparks," "Come a Day," "Letter to a Sister Friend" ... it's incredible that, from track to track, the tender, solemn beauty simply refuses to let up. And then you're amazed all over again by Jaffa's "Sneakin'," in which Billie Holiday's coy, engaging voice runs like a golden ribbon through a funky trip-hop beat. Si*Se's drum-heavy cover of "The Rain" sounds surprisingly bitter and overwrought compared to the original, until you consider the actual lyrics. Good call guys. De Phazz's "Online" has bongos and a distinct Sneaker Pimps influence. Urban Dwellers' "Trust Me" is especially intense, which in this company is really saying something. Yonderboi's "Fairy of the Lake," filled with vibes and record-scratching, is not only great, it has no words, a welcome change. PC Energy's "Drift" is an instrumental too but is one of the few genuinely weak tracks.
Depeche Mode's offering, "When the Body Speaks," is pretty good for a band that seemed to have burned itself out ten years ago; this track is mainly notable for its neat shivering bassline. Lamb's "Gabriel" is another of the few weak tracks--the only other song I've heard from them is the awesome "Cotton Wool," and "Gabriel" has barely a shred of that song's brilliance. Chris Coco's "Only Love" is also merely OK (not to mention a bad pastiche of Slacker's "Scared"); I'll listen to anything with tubular bells in it (next to the carillon, surely the ultimate winter instrument), but it doesn't have much else to offer. The second CD doesn't really find itself until Fac 15's sad, poignant cover of "Rainy Days and Mondays," nicely paired with Amar's "Sometimes It Snows in April," surely the most aggressively despairing song I've ever heard (it makes "Blowing Kisses in the Wind" sound about as depressing as "Rock and Roll Part 2"). Then comes another great, shuffling instrumental, M. Dupont's "The Dining Rooms." Night Traffic's "Empty Beaches"--another empty instrumental. Afterlife's "Deeper" is okay, but badly outclassed here. "Deeper--Into Places" is better, then comes another strong stretch with the final six tracks. Kelli Ali (the soft yet cynically knowing voice behind "Spin Spin Sugar" and "6 Underground") comes off like the uber-Britney in "Sunlight in the Rain." Emiliana Torrini, who was apparently engineered in some clandestine government research lab using genetic material taken from you-know-who, does a catchy little ballad that wouldn't sound out of place on Debut. Kosheen's "Gone" is a great anthem, and the set closes on a bar-rock note with Mr. Hermano's appropriately-named "Leave Me on a High."
So there you have it--five tracks that are weak-to-middlin, and twenty-five ranging from good to great. That's less than a dollar per good track. Works for me.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A "Hed" Above the Rest., December 15, 2002
Having already bought a few of the dance compilations of the Hed Kandi label, I decided to give their chillout CDs a try, and I'm glad I did. "Winter Chill" is packaged as 2 discs of downtempo grooves for the winter months, but it's also good enough to be played during any season. While other chillout collections sometimes lack imagination and feature the same artists (Theivery Corporation, Coldplay, Zero 7, Moby, Groove Armada, etc), Hed Kandi digs deeper and avoids the obvious. I was pleasantly surprised to have found Depeche Mode's slow burning "When the Body Speaks" on this CD. It's easily one of the best album cuts off the group's "Exciter" album, and it blends perfectly with the rest of the songs. Other notables include a cafe lounge reinterpretation of the 1980s novelty hit "The Rain" by Si Se, and Amar does a mellowed out version of Prince's "Sometimes it Snows in April." Not that the best tracks are covers of other people's songs. Scandinavian electro gurus Royksopp provide their own wintery landscapes in the frosty "Sparks," while Goldfrapp shine in the engaging "Lovely Head." The rest of the tracks are similar in vein, offering ambient touches, electronica, and pure pop. On these two CDs, "Winter Chill" provides the perfect solution to the winter blues on a Sunday afternoon. Grab that hot cocoa, crank up the stereo, and let the grooves of Hed Kandi take you into another world.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A worthy addition to the winter chill canon., November 12, 2001
Of the plethora of chillout compilations available today, Hed Kandi's Winter Chill collection stands out. Characterized by chillingly fantastic grooves, powerful beats and sultry female vocals, Winter Chill 3 is at least as good as its predecessors. Sets a great mood for hanging out at home, driving, coming down for a long night of partying, or the bedroom. Standouts on this collection are the phenomenal "Evergreen" from Faithless, Lamb's beautiful "Gabriel", and Natural Calamity's silky-smooth "And That's Saying A Lot". What I like best about these collections is the fact that the CD's offer a wide array of music that you normally won't find anywhere else. Most of these artists you've probably never heard before, and that's unbelieveable considering the quality of the tracks. Highly recommended, especially for those that are fans of the Cafe Del Mar series.
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