various artists / albums

London Lounge is split into two discs: London By Day 12:00 P.M. and London By Night 12:00 A.M. The "day" disc is designed for relaxation and mellow moods. Unfortunately, it starts off on a bad foot with the Herbaliser track "Something Wicked This Way Comes." The music is fine, lush, and cinematic hip-hop, but the vocals by the almost perfectly named Seaming To are annoyingly operatic and quite uncalled for. The rest of the disc follows the musical lead of Herbaliser, lush and mellow downtempo tracks full of sweeping synth strings and featuring female vocals (with the odd exception like Nathan Haines' smooth crooning on "Impossible Beauty"). Luckily, none of the singers displays the same mood-killing quality that Seaming To does. The highlights of the disc are Smith & Mighty's quite lovely "Same," the Cinematic Orchestra's inspired pairing with the still soulful Fontella Bass, Aim's lazy and hazy "From a Seaside Town," and the Indian-flavored hip-hop of Badmarsh's "Easin' In." Once Herbaliser is out of the way, the disc does what it sets out do and creates a feeling that hovers right around blissed-out. The night disc is more uptempo, and seemingly made to be played in the car while going from club to club. It contains tracks drawn from a larger pool of techno and dance styles than the "day" disc. There is the pounding trip-hop of Moloko, whose "Fun for Me" is pretty weak, the light-stepping jungle of "Parallel Universe" by 4 Hero, the sparkling tech-house of "Peace, No. 1" by Native Soul, the cheesy retro disco of "Shrimp" by Mr. Scruff, and the progressive house sound of "Giving My Love to You" by Subway. The lack of a unifying vision or sound makes this disc more of a scattershot affair, and the inclusion of quite a few generic and uninteresting tracks makes this disc much less successful than its companion. Too bad you can't buy them separately. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide