Various – The Very Best Euphoric Chillout Mixes Breakdown

Wow the title is a mouthful.
Mixed by Jay Burnett, this album features a ton of tracks from its sister series Euphoria (Chilled and Deep and Chilled in this case). As I was listening I was thinking to myself how similar in vibe this is to Chilled Euphoria, I think it was the amount of tracks that are off there, anyway - I was thinking this was too much of a coincidence - I mean Jay mixed CDs for HOOJ - Hooj owned by Red Jerry...Red Jerry hasn't mixed much other stuff...so I hop into the credits of Chilled Euphoria and there it is 'compiled by Red Jerry'...and 'Thanks to Jay for his amazing engineering skills'. Indeed!
Anyway, what we have here as a whole bunch of the best tracks off the Chilled Euphorias presented in shorter form rather than their fuller versions as is the case in Chilled and Deep and Chilled Euphoria. In a way it makes it a little more fast paced as it moves from track to track, but it's fortunately dropped some of the more obscure ambient tracks off. CD1 is basically pure ambience, with a little 'mellow' trance thrown in briefly. The transition between Jillanity and Singing For The Future sounds SO good, though when it's done it seems to violently skip to a different part of the track..part of keeping those track lengths down, which is a bit disappointing, but still nice to listen to.

CD2 is much the same and I'd argue has a better journey..at least for the first half. Suddenly out of nowhere drops into a house track Sister Bliss - Deliver Me - it's not a bad track but it's pretty out of the blue - then swings back into the bliss that is Sasha - Baja...Teardrop, a classic into a rather noisy Prodigy track a few more chilled tracks then dropping back into breaks again for the remainder until bringing back the creepy baby track. Noooo.
Personally I find the second half of the CD pretty messy and not ideal for chilling out to.

So it appears to be an attempt to battle the other chillout albums at the time which were offering more tracks (Chilled Ibiza etc) but at the same time try to keep things ambient (and use the tracks they can easily licence again). Interestingly just over 50% of the tracks are off the other Euphoria albums and the remaining 48% look like they were all inspired by other downtempo/triphop chillout albums. The journey suffers because of it, and when it comes to chillout mixes I'd argue the overall journey is even more important than usual. CD1 is stronger in tracks and that 'journey' but it still doesn't live up to it's sister series Euphoria.
I first listening to these in the early 2000s and being annoyed there was too much upbeat stuff; I think that was a bit of an unfair opinion as there isn't too much on here but I can see where I was coming from as the upbeat stuff is what's ruining the vibe.

It's a pity really because when I was looking at the tracklist before re-listening to it (for the first time in almost two decades) I kind of had my hopes that this would turn out to be a bit of a gem that takes the best of the Chilled Euphoria albums whilst throwing away the stuff I didn't like. I don't think it really fulfilled those desires.

It's still a good album though and worth of 3 stars - despite the amount of tracks and shortness of them it still doesn't seem rushed, its just the styles that were picked that makes the journey a bit wonky.
339/500