Revive The Soul (a division of UBL) is releasing a series of themed compilations over the next few years (based on the success of this first disc, I am sure). The theme is "CITY meets ARTISTS" and the first city we travel to with Destination Lounge is foggy San Francisco. The package is beautiful, features 2 CDs, and a great booklet with some brilliant photography and writing. Inside the booklet, we find a variety of bios on Lounges throughout the Bay Area (drinks, food, stats, sound system, etc.), and also the Bay artists featured on the compilations.
CD 1 - Relax: Downtempo and Lounge from San Francisco based artists
The album kicks off with Julius Papp's Lazy Daze single called "Arabian Eyes" and is followed up with Karsh Kale's BRILLIANT epic tabla anthem "Milan." Both tracks are extremely well produced Arabic- and South Asian-styled electro, and an excellent opening for the compilation. The track selection begins to waver from the typical world styles you might expect, but instead of being a negative trait, it actually adds flavor to the foggy San Fran soup. Two of the hottest tracks on the album are from Greyboy and DZihan & Kamien. Greyboy's "Genevieve" is a sharply written nu-school R&B crossover track with a bit of serious funk thrown in for good measure. DZihan & Kamien's "Dundadeova" delivers a downtempo groove with such accuracy and force, the beat and melody will be bouncing through your head for weeks. Karmacoda, Joonbug, Mystery School Ensemble, and many more are featured throughout.
CD 2 - Revive: San Francisco styled Breaks and House music from Bay Area artistshttp://erclk.about.com/?zi=1/ZB%5bphttp://erclk.about.com/?zi=1/ZB%5d The album starts out mixing from the green light, the only problem is that the first two tracks aren't really that strong - at all. Miguel Migs and DJ F take the first two slots with DJ F's track "Listen to the Fog" pretty much taking up both slots. The vocals make an excellent attempt at being catchy, but the overall production of the song is amateur at best. ALTHOUGH, the album really starts to fly when Soulstace's smash hit "Fall Into You" drops in from above, only to be followed up by another excellent jazz 4/4 track from The Counselor called "Palmetto." Continuing the momentum and swing of the sexy San Fran house music sound you would expect from a San Fran compilation disc comes Jay-J, Soulplanet Jazz Ensemble, Julius Papp, and many more. The tracks are wonderful, the vocals are superb, the saxophones are hot, and the groove is undeniable.
