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"Chill Out Music is fashionable?"

Listening to Radio 1 on the way home from band tonight, and a feature about something called "Chill Out Music".
Apparently the marketing people have got their fashionable little pony-tail heads together and decided that this is the latest trend to assimilate, repackage and sell back to you at a 15% comission for them.

Really? Apparently, Chill Out equates with Ambient Dance.
But surely that's a subjective thing?
What's chill out for me is not for you, and vice versa.

Example:
On my "relax cd" mix that I play to relax, I have the following:

Otis Redding "Sittin' on the dock of the bay"
Sam Cooke "What a wonderful world"
Portishead "Sour Times"
John Hiatte "Have a little faith"
Tom Waits "Lowside of the road"
Radiohead "everything in it's right place"
The Doors "Cars hiss by my window"
Dr John "Walk on guilded splinters"
The Meters "Chicken Strut"
Pink Floyd "Shine on" and "Wish you where here"

No ambient dance in there folks, what about you?
I find it amusing that yet another form of music has been sold back to you by ad-men.
It's now "cool" to relax and enjoy, instead of wearing a vest, dancing with glo-sticks and blowing a whistle.

Marketing in music does not belong, in my opinion.
Music is an expression of the soul, of feeling and emotion.
Not something to be marketed, researched and sold back with a nice easily fileable tagline.

Apparently Virgin and HMV are having "Chill Out" sections in their megastores.

I can hear Lennon turning in his grave from here

I understand you can buy the Sky Digital menu background music on a chilled album.

Of course I'm joking. Or am I?

See my 'Ibizargh' post for a dig at Marketing departments. Patronising, lazy, funwits.

Chilled is just deemed "relaxing". So a chillout album has slower dance stuff on. Most times they hardly have any bassline, it's mainly lyrics and synth with a quite drum beat in.

I've heard some of them and some are rubbish and some are good.

It's like any compilation album (which is essentially what they are), some you like, some you don't.

I for wouldn't like a Country compilation album, for example.

They were saying that Ministry of Sound "Chill Out" albums sold by the bucket.

I don't know, I would have thought it was a personal thing, not some marketing tool for "buy this and feel calm" like Meka says.

I feel calm and relaxed when I play Pink Floyd, Portishead etc, but others may hate that.

A purely subjective form of music, yet those little ad-men are trying to sell me their version of "chilled"

But to sell it as 'Chill Out' music?

That is odd.

Surely there's no such thing?

Isn't it personal opinion?

Mind you, do you remember Robert Miles?

Apparently he wrote his music, hoping it would be amongst the last songs played of an evening, to calm everybody down befor ethey went home....

But chilling out is something you do with your own personal favourite tunes, not some chosen by someone else, deemed to be ChillOut music?

Sound like the kind of trash my Mother In Law would buy into, believing that buying a certain album will 'chill her out'.

Damn freak.

Unless you mean all of those "Chill-out" albums you can buy, like Chilled Ibiza etc.

I've got Chilled Ibiza, my brother had it and I copied it from him. It's actually pretty good, but I can understand if it's not everyones cup of tea.

I have an Ambient album from about 7 years ago, and it's nothing like dance music. Ambient doesn't seem to be about any more.

I'm into dance and trance and I have absolutely no idea what "Ambient Dance" is.

The I look at it is if you like a particular track or sort of music, listen to it. Ignore what everyone else has to say about it.

It's a welcome change from the house music boom that lasted altogether far too long for my liking....

Just sounds like a modem dying to me, but each to their own.

I've listened to "chill out" for years, I call it music, I just find it funny that it's now fashionable to relax and calm down.

But yeah - ambient dance music (i.e. normal speed house crap slowed down a bit) is utter crap.

To be fair, there's nothing better than coming home at 4 in the morning from a hectic night out, and relaxing in the lounge with your mates with a bit of chilled music. I'd recommend the new Zero7 album - it ain't bad at all....