Hotel d'Amour (CD) by Various Artists

0030206301328. New condition. CD. Another bargain-bin chillout compilation that will ultimately fade into the background from whence it came, Hotel d'Amour offers up two new tracks from trackmeister Håkan Lidbo, but there isn't much else here worth your hard-earned dollars that you haven't heard before. Excessive percussion, jazzy chords courtesy of a Fender Rhodes or comparable keyboard, and slow grooves via sampled drum breaks that invite you to enjoy martinis on the patio -- that's the formula du jour here. And it while it works OK for the first third of the record, when it comes time for Roy Ayers to wheel his vibraphone out onto the imaginary patio, the record begins to lose any sort of momentum or quality it had gained, drifting off into the mists of chillout nowhere for the remainder. Not the best of the oversaturation of chillout records, but not the worst, either. ~ Rob Theakston, Rovi