Easy listening is the enemy. It has become the painfully hip, aren’t-we-ironic domain of socially challenged ex-public school students. Because they’re all such, like, kerrazy guys. Know this much and you will approach this album safely.
The faces behind [a]Thievery Corporation[/a] are Washington’s Eric Hilton and Rob Garza, who run a club and label in their home town and are responsible for remixing bands like GusGus. Luckily, this serious-minded approach to their music means they have naturally avoided the self-conscious humour often associated with easy listening (that which turns the easy into cheesy). This is basically a compilation of various jazz-bossa nova-piano tracks mixed by [a]Thievery Corporation[/a] as the latest contributors to the DJ-Kicks series, and it’s as straight-faced and serious as these things can be.
So it’s not [I]quite [/I]as bad as you’d expect. The remixes of Fun^Da^Mental and DJ Cam included here are stripped down and seedy, leaving the lounge lizard atmosphere behind for a harder, rockier approach. For these, at least, you don’t feel you should be listening in a smoking jacket.
Though this is an admirable effort to make easy listening credible again, really that’s something that’s never going to happen.