Review: Home Listening Acid and House – VA

Compilations are very hit and miss – they can either be careful creations of beauty that complement each other beautifully, regardless of genre, or they feel like a mixtape you recorded off the radio in 90s where none of it makes sense and sends you on an emotional rollercoaster that you can never comfortably settle into.

Home Listening Acid and House deserves the first accolade. It’s an experience above all else, and a blissful one at that.

The thing about lovers of electronic music, or those that want something with some kind of electronic component, is that the ‘home listening’ element is often overlooked (though chillhop’s rise to fame via lo-fi girl suggests that there’s a definite desire for something with a bit more rhythm). The beautiful thing about those slammers on the dancefloor is the rhythm, the way that things are blended together across the evening hours, into a ceaseless, hypnotic absorption that grabs on tight and never lets go.

But most of the time, that’s not quite the vibe for an after-party chill-down hangout, an understated Friday night in, or an early drive to work. So whenever anything that associates itself with home listening comes out, I definitely get excited.

Chicago Bee Records rarely disappoints – and with Home Listening Acid and House, they have, in my opinion, perfected it. Each track glows with an ethereal magic, conjures up images of orbiting stars and the embers of a sunrise, and simply radiates.

Derek Carr, Fear-E, Monofonix and Type 303 are some of the 10 artists who contributed to the vision of “soulful emotion and melody”. Despite their distinctions, the tracks seamlessly blend into each other in a way that you barely notice you’ve listened to it all the way through – and can’t resist the temptation to loop them all over again.