Hotel Costes - 6

If you're into chill-out/Ibiza music, this will be up your street. All I now have to do is go out and obtain the other five in the series. :-)


Classic Costes action - but where's the mixing?   October 20, 2003
 30 out of 31 found this review helpful

I now own all of the Costes albums, and while I don't necessarily find every track appealing (though there are many I think are excellent) I'm a big fan of the idea of a compilation which does not stick to one genre, but instead takes the listener on a journey through a variety of styles of music. This is something that Stephane Pompougnac does particularly well, and the unifying factor behind his choice of tunes is that (nearly) all of them are the sort of thing you'd want to be hearing in a sophisticated Parisian hotel. I have the Costes series to thank for introducing me to artists and styles I'd never come across before, and one always gets the impression that the compiler has his hand in a lot of diverse and interesting musical pies. Derivative is one thing that these albums are not, and on the strength of this fact I'd encourage anyone to give at least one of them a try.

Costes 6 is not the best in the series. OK, the choice of music is one of the most compelling, and this alone earns it a 4-star rating in my opinion; but it's a real shame that hardly any of it is mixed, especially since some of the tracks are eminently mixable, and since a series of prolonged and imaginative mixes is what gives Costes 4 the edge over the other five. Perhaps Stephane has decided to cut his losses following the cracking mis-match at the start of Costes 3, or the oh-so-subtle pitch bends in Costes 5 - which again come between the first and second tracks, the point in the album when he needs to impress the listener the most. What else... well, we have the hilarious, self-indulgent arty posters thrown in to complement the slightly less gratuitous arty cover, and the obligatory (but pretty good) Pompougnac-penned track. Watch out for his forthcoming album (presumably ironically) titled Living On The Edge...