The Big Chill

Summertime, and the living is easy.

A lyric and a mood that will forever be summer and summer music. But the very mention of summer in the lyric or title is too much of a giveaway. Summer music. It is more mood than overt statement of fact. The holiday plays all sorts of summer music; neither mood nor lyric. Can a karaoke "we will rock you" being belted out by a tenth-rate cabaret Freddie Mercury from a hotel stage be described as summer music? It is not summer; it is barely music. All that tribute and all that entertainment, and none of it is summer except in a temporal way - because it happens to be summer.

Mood, atmosphere, evocativeness. Suggestions of beach, sun and the idyllic sensations caused by the association of summer through music. Some twenty years or more ago I was in Zante, at a time before it had been invaded by the lager and pills battalions. At the end of Laganas beach was a bar. It was run by a couple of American-accented Demis Roussos lookalikes. It played music most of the day - out onto the beach from a couple of speakers by the entrance. The music was never anything other than laidback, cool if you like; chilled to use a more up-to-date word. Summer music. Mood and atmosphere. If only they'd known. Perhaps a whole genre might have grown from a beach-side bar in Greece rather than one in the Balearics.

Mallorca does not really have a summer music tradition, but the Balearics do, Ibiza most obviously. And it is the Ibiza tradition that can be found in Mallorca; chilled is the word, or chill-out. Summer music. The influence of Ibiza's Café del Mar runs deeper than just the pirated copies of the compilations to be found in the rucksacks and carrier bags of the lucky-lucky men. It can be heard all over; some clubs became Café del Mar shrines of impersonation. The old Mambo Playa in Playa de Muro was one; it even sub-titled itself the Sunset Bar, despite the sun setting in the opposite direction from over the sea - it was in fact Sunrise Bar but had often closed by the time of the first flickers of the new dawn. The sunset, and the music which accompanied it, was what inspired Café del Mar and especially Jose Padilla. On a recent BBC radio documentary he spoke of how he would coincide the last emotion of a track as the final flash of the sun dropped into the sea.

Chill-out, though a pejorative when it encroaches into the easy listening, largely defines the music of Café del Mar, or perhaps it's the other way round - Café del Mar has defined chill-out. That same documentary sought to create a history of chill-out that, rather tenuously, found an origination in the work of Erik Satie. It was on firmer territory with more contemporary artists such as Brian Eno and The Orb. But Café del Mar stands apart from the experimentation of "Music for Films" or the electro-influenced psychedelia of "Little Fluffy Clouds"; it took the ambient of Eno and integrated it with Latin rhythm and flamenco that typifies the style of much of the Ibiza output - one of mood, atmosphere and of the sun and beach. House and Balearic beat yes, but the trance and chill of Café del Mar is the motif of Ibiza and Balearic music - summer music. From the pioneers such as Padilla have come others - Fundación Eivissa are one of the finest. I've looked for their "Doñana", but can't find it. It is a track of breathtaking drama and emotion; it deserves to be heard widely. In its absence I have selected some others. These are summer music. Ibiza perhaps, but Mallorca as well.

Jose Padilla, "El Sueño de Ibiza" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WV6SovEu_Q

Fundación Eivissa, "Es Vedra" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9OxgQtVSo

Chambao, "Verde Mar" (Fundación Eivissa) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMoW8D3_0M



QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Small Faces. And when I saw this, having not seen the Small Faces for donkey's years, I thought blimey, Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher (Marriott and Laine) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=446xNbvs0a8. Today's title - film; who starred? (There are a few to choose from.) The title, by the way, lent itself to a chill festival which has been running this weekend.

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