Various

Fahrenheit Project 5

Ultimae (France)

The kings of fluid, seamless chillout are back and on the strength of this it looks like they’re setting up 2005 to be another great year for the Ultimae stable. Jaia’s Along opens more with feelings and movements than with sounds, with plenty going on in the sub region. Beats drop at about five minutes in, and sound wonderful before it all fades away into Water Silence from the perma-loveable Solar Fields. Deep escalation here folks, winding its way unhurriedly up into one of the most sublime peaks of chilled dance music I have ever heard. Layer upon layer comes in and whisks you upwards, and carefully sets you down again. Aural Planet’s Sunfruits Avenue is blissful, the energy here moves and soothes like nothing else, and does so with an expert air about it like a master healer or something. Very good chillout, anyway. AES Dana take a step into 4-4 with the 110bpm Purple which disconcerts you nicely before HUVA Network step up with Processing Lights: a dreamy, semi-junglist brokenbeat soother of a tune, yup we like. Cell’s Blue Embers is a 90bpm’s of tasty mctasty chillage that flirts with incredibly deep bass, Great Leap Forward pull a blinder with In The Name OF The Super Natural. Carbon Based Lifeforms opt for a fairly brooding, atmospheric tune with T-Rex Echoes, which builds into a wickedly acidic bit of hip-hop trance. Hol Baumann’s Final has a gorgeous guitar at the centre of fatclatter beats and rising synths, and the beatless bliss of Sync24’s nocturnal lullaby Wake brings things to a floaty close. Being Ultimae, you really can’t go wrong, and this sounds just as good as the best of their stuff for when you need a crystalline, mood-shifting chill pill.

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