DJ Sam Popat
Little Buddha Café
George V
For years now, New Age artists have been pillaging, pilfering, and field-recording Asian sounds. So much so, that Buddhist monks now want the Chinese Army and New Age artists out of Tibet. I guess attracted to the purported tranquillity, serenity, and unique profundity that the East provides (I guess no one’s ever heard of Pol Pot), these Westerners have ridden the Eastern sound into a dreadfully nauseating samsara loop.
Unfortunately, DJ Sam Popat and Little Buddha Café are nowhere close to nirvana, forever crystallized in that New Age sound. Bill Laswell’s dub riddim in “Life Space Death” sticks out like a sore thumb on this compilation. Mr. Untel’s “The Day the Sun Exploded,” Electromana’s “Deia,” and Richard Les Crees’ “Bahia” are good enough dance tunes that don’t quite emerge from the aforementioned genre’s shadow, while Govinda’s “Quintessence Of Dust” starts off with a nice enough breakbeat until all is lost as soon as the flamenco guitar makes its intro. But the rest of the songs on the disc don’t even try to offer us anything new and refreshing. In short, Little Buddha Café is about 20 degrees of separation from Six Degrees’ Asian Travels (which I’m sure is what they were trying to emulate here).
George V Records: http://www.george-v-records.fr
