VA - Essential Lounge - Bombay [2CD Set] (2006)

This CD features 24 songs on 2 CDs of comtemporary sounds from producers and artists retooling older East Asian ryhthms with modern genres like dub, lounge, house and drum and bass to create modern aural landscape suitable to the pleasure of any casual listener or hard to please music aficionado.

Another in the Passport Series put out by UBL Music, Essential Lounge: Bombay compiles 24 songs on two discs that use more traditional Indian and Asian musical elements mixed with Western electronica. Not a unique concept -- many of the artists included on the album, like Thievery Corporation, Jah Wobble, and Natacha Atlas, have been doing this kind of thing for years -- but when it's done right, it can be quite stunning. The selections on Essential Lounge: Bombay are well-chosen, though the distinction of "Bombay" seems rather broad (perhaps pan-Asian would be more accurate). Still, there are good, downtempo grooves and haunting synthesizers (though the sitar-funk cover of James Brown's "Same Beat" by Bill "Ravi" Harris & the Prophets moves away a bit from that, and despite its quality, doesn't quite fit with the rest of the album, sounding rather out of place) that create a nice, nocturnal atmosphere, and while perhaps the songs are not exactly or completely indicative of Bombay, they'll at least stimulate the mind into thinking about Indian- and Asian-inspired musics, which might just be the point of the record, after all.