INTRO: My friends, welcome to the Season 1 finale of Stay Tuned. Today’s blog is very special. Mostly, I bring you along on stories of discovery: silly moments, grounding ones, ethereal experiences. Today, I’m hoping to help you discover something new — something you’ll look back on and hopefully think, “I remember when Berly showed me that; I read it in her blog!”
Maybe it takes a little conceit to believe you have such great music taste that you dedicate an entire blog post to it. My only objective is to show you something you may never have heard before. And while this share is just one CD, it’s deeply special because it opens a portal to 14 new artists at once.
I’ve been working on this summer season finale for about 6 weeks, which has essentially turned into the only autumn blog I will share. I’m elated for those who find this post to read about a piece of my life so dear to me. Today, we’re diving into mixed CDs and the power of world music — effortless transitions with no breaks, songs from all over the world, 16th-century melodies made modern. THIS is the essence of music discovery.
And yes, I do have fantastic music taste.
Here’s how this is gonna go: compiliation actually has two CDs. Today, I’m only diving into the first one. The second will have to wait for another time. I’ll be chatting with you about the individual artists and their featured tracks, and some stories behind Buddha Bar and beyond.
To kick things off, here’s the track list where each name below is a link to Youtube. Click the name, and the video/song will pop up in a new window. Alternatively, you can always right click and choose "open link in new tab." If you're using a phone, I will link a master playlist so you don't have to click back and forth. Everything else, you're on your own. I'm already the producer, the writer, the editor and the publisher of this circus — get your own tech support!
CD 1 "Chill" (CD 2 is "Burn" by the way)
0. SONG TITLE (ARTIST)
Firstly, a little background before we dive in. I absolutely love this record. I’ve played it hundreds of
Funny enough, as a child, I was often… afraid of certain parts of it. Picture a seven or eight year old, playing with the other kids while the grown-ups drank wine and played cards, my ears glued to this record spinning in the background. I didn’t understand it then — the languages, the seemingly haunted chanting voices — I felt it all too deeply. It transported me to a space of unfamiliarity, of a kind of pain I’d never known... At least until the songs changed, and the beat picked up.
Now, as an adult, I love every second of it. The parts I couldn’t understand are exactly the parts that captured me forever. The album became exactly what it was: Buddha Bar, Chill Out in Paris. It wasn’t until my teens that I realized this wasn’t all the work of David Visan — nearly every song had its own life outside the album. I just happened to fall in love with them all in one place.
We’re going to take a deeper look into the album — and disturb the slumber of anyone who’s been patiently waiting for a discovery this incredible. But beware my friends, look not into the eyes of the album. That would be dangerous...very dangerous (props if you know the reference, nerd).
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Buddha Bar: Picture Paris in the mid-1990s: velvet walls, maybe a swirl of incense, golden Buddhas towering above candlelit tables. This was Buddha Bar, the vision of Raymond Visan, a Romanian-born nightlife impresario who built his empire on atmosphere as much as cocktails. He wanted dining to be more than food: he wanted ritual, spectacle, and a sense of stepping into another world. The restaurant’s signature became not only its ornate decor, but its soundscape: music that drifted between continents, eras, and emotions.
That’s where his son, David Visan, enters the story. As resident DJ and curator, David stitched together these otherworldly sets, blending ancient chants with modern beats, sitars with synthesizers, soul with silence. His mixes weren’t just background music; they became portals, albums in their own right that carried the Buddha Bar experience far beyond Paris. Chill Out in Paris, the album we’re diving into today, is one of those rare compilations that doesn’t just play; it transports. And in that transport, you begin to understand why Buddha Bar became legend.
The transitions on this CD are seamless. One track blends into the next like a quilt of sound waves, stitched together so naturally you can hardly tell where one ends and another begins. If you can get your hands on a physical copy, do it. Hear it spin the way it was made to. There are plenty of Buddha Bar compilations out there, each with its own character — so go dig. Tell me what you find.
Don’t be fooled by the word chill. I jam to this record. To me, t’s not background music — it’s rich with human history, carrying the echoes of centuries inside its grooves. That’s the pull of music discovery for me: uncovering the beauty and mystery of our existence through its most coveted form of expression. Buckle up, it's gonna be a long, but fun one.
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1) Miserere (Paul Schwartz & The Joyful Company Of Singers)
Miserere. Mercy. This track is a masterclass in reframing classical. There are so many reasons why it stands as a stunning piece of art. The music itself carries an interesting past. Please note: I am not a religious person whatsoever, and the following information is for historical reference only. I’m also a firm believer that history always has many versions of the same story. This is the general synopsis:
In the 17th century, Allegri composed this piece as a musical interpretation of Psalm 51 (← this is a link to the passage). Long story short, the music was withheld as a secret by "the church", meaning, no one was allowed a written copy, only the church. That was until a young Mozart himself heard it at the Vatican, went home and transcribed it entirely from memory. At the time, circa 1770, such an act was punishable by excommunication, but instead, the Pope praised him for his brilliance. Insane.
Fast forward to 1988. Mozart is dead, but now we have floppy disks. The Joyful Company of Singers, formed in 1988, were founded in the UK, and they are no strangers to this kind of vocal storytelling. Their longstanding choral pedigree gives Miserere a grounded gravitas even through Schwartz's layers of ambient textures and drama. Together, they lift the piece out of reverent whispers and into a soundscape you can feel in your bones.
Now while explicit origin stories on how this collaboration between Swartz and Visan came to be are scarce, what's clear is that the track was recorded and produced under George V Records for the Chill Out in Paris compilation, released in 2001. That label and the Buddha Bar series have often been a home for cinematic cross-pollinations such as this one: contemporary weaving it's mark into the centuries-old.
The mix in this production is fantastic. The entire song, I feel, is a masterpiece. It's what I would call a song that feel like a moment in time. But, it’s the timbre of the singers’ voices that really undoes me. I wish I could’ve been in the room for the recording; it must have been powerful on so many levels. I even wonder if Paul Schwartz discussed with them how to shape their vowels, because the timbre is so intense, dark, and warm, all at the same time — swelling with impossible magic.
Before I go on a full-length rant about the rest of the track, I’ll begrudgingly limit myself to this: all around, this is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. Use a speaker, headphones, whatever— lay with your eyes closed, or lie outside in the grass under a tree and watch the branches sway. Let yourself congeal into the present moment. Breathe in the beauty of this earth and everything it has to offer. Exist alongside it, instead of just passing through, and you’ll feel just how rapturous this piece of human beauty is.
2) Vision of Mahakala (Sina Vodjani)
If Miserere felt like looking up into the heavens, Vision of Mahakala turns inward, grounding us in something ancient and elemental. I love that this is the next track. The title invokes Mahakala, a fierce Buddhist deity, seen to the right and also seen as both protector and destroyer of obstacles on the path to enlightenment. In Tibetan practice, his visage startles the ego into dissolving; a reminder that time and life itself are fleeting. This is a god who appears terrifying, yet whose true purpose is compassion and protection: a paradox at its best.
Sina Vodjani — an Iranian-born, Paris-based composer whose work drifts between East and West. His music blends sacred chants, meditative drones, and electronic textures, and here he channels Mahakala’s duality into sound. The track unfurls slowly like a ritual: voices rise and fall, instruments shimmer like prayer bells, and the whole thing feels less like a song, and more like a meditation you step into.
The instruments are gorgeous. It opens with a hypnotic low-end melody — bass, guitar, something in between, while a faint synth flutters like starlight on still water. The voices are layered, each seemingly speaking a different prayer simultaneously. Percussion enters just lightly, a heartbeat carrying it forward: the kick steady, the other elements mixed so far back you feel them more than hear them.
It’s beautiful. A meditation disguised as a track and a reminder that sometimes the beauty lies not in clarity, but in mystery.
3) To nie ptak (Not a Bird) – Kayah & Bregović
“To nie ptak” aka “That’s not a bird” — unfurls as a metaphor for identity, freedom, and the weight of expectations. Released on the duo’s 1999 album Kayah & Bregović, the track pairs Kayah’s lyrics of longing and critique with Goran Bregović’s Balkan folk-pop wizardry. The song spins a tale of a woman in a colorful dress with whispers of wings beneath her skirt. Her lover obsesses over those wings, building a cage around her. It’s a slow, heavy, and haunting unraveling of control. I love this metaphor: the woman as a beautiful bird her lover must have, so he locks her away in a cage — simple, devastating, and a complete BOP.
To nie ptak takes something deeply local and wraps it in a pop/folk framework that makes it travel across borders: Polish language, Balkan funeral brass, and Roma-inflected melody. The pain and resistance in the lyrics get tucked inside a package that sounds danceable and exotic to ears outside of Poland or the Balkans. It hides its sharp edges in beauty. To nie ptak slides into the Buddha-Bar compilation without anyone blinking. All that said — this track is a total banger that me the homies show up acting peculiar and whimsical to.
The delightfully charming instrumentation starts immediately. Just enough beat to still make you sway even when you're sitting. The main riff played after each line of the verse lovingly plunks around like pebbles. The lead singer has the tone and delivery of an old cello in a cobblestone alley. When the chorus arrives, you're greeted by a symphony of droning bass voices that fill the ears like an invitation that's both unsettling and irresistible. And then there's that accordion that just won't quit. The track is a train ride to another world.
Get ready… we’re transporting to another universe. A deep-space dive across dimensions uncharted. When the opening strings and swirling vocal melody drop out and the bass kicks in, it’s all over for you. The groove seduces you — an equal state of presence and escape. When your bass player tells you he never gets to play notes this low, that’s how you know you’ve picked a great groove. This is Lodi Garden.
Who is Thierry David? Paris-born, classically trained, he has explored a wide range of global sounds: jazz, classical, and music from India, Peru, and the Middle East. His work blends Eastern and Western traditions into immersive, colorful soundscapes. Lodi Garden is like a blanket of sound threaded together with hypnotic grooves, subtle percussion, and layered synths, creating a trance-like atmosphere. A cinematic meditation, this track exemplifies David’s skill at crafting emotionally resonant music.
Honestly, hearing this track, much like the others, is far better than reading any description. It’s challenging to put into words what it evokes. That said, if I had to choose one word for this grippingly beautiful piece of art, it’s balance.
As you listen deeply, you begin to receive little sonic gifts — butterflies kissing your ears and sunbeams on your forehead. One moment you’re in deep hypnosis from the earthy bass; the next, you’re swaying to the magic of the strings. The more present and intent you become, the more layers reveal themselves: percussion artistry, synth pads, bells, crickets, frogs… all mixed so incredibly well, you may miss some parts if you’re not fully tuned in. Which is totally okay. I love skimming at music’s surface, soaking in the warm, general idea. Other times, I let all my air out, dive deep, and feel my body float in the ambient, wet nature of the art. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m poetic or full of it, but either way — I’m sincere. I wish I could experience hearing this for the first time again with you.
It wasn’t until I gave myself the challenge of writing this blog that I learned “Dil Cheez” was originally from a Bollywood film called Umrao Jaan — a ghazal sung by Asha Bhosle, composed by Khayyam, with lyrics by Shahryar. Naturally, I thought Bally Sagoo’s version would share at least some resemblance to the original. But when I looked it up on YouTube, there was Rekha in her role as Umrao Jaan, stunning in her courtesan finery, singing and dancing — and it sounded nothing like the track I’ve always known. For a minute I thought I’d clicked on the wrong thing.
Turns out I hadn’t. The comment section confirmed it, and also, revealed a full-on debate about which version reigns supreme. Some swore by Bally Sagoo’s 90s remix they’d first seen on MTV. Others were firm that the original, with its classical ghazal elegance, should never be touched.
In my humble opinion, they’re too different to compare. The lyrics are structured differently, the original leans into warm tradition, while Sagoo’s cut feels like it’s begging for a hip hop verse to drop in — even though one never does.
Here’s the original version if you want to weigh in yourself: LISTEN HERE
I think we can agree that Sagoo’s take is cinematic in its own right: he strips away the grand filmi orchestration of Bollywood and rebuilds it with atmospheric beats, echoes, and a hip hop backbone, while still keep the in traditional Indian instrumentation. It’s a bridge between classical roots and global electronica.
I like to imagine David Visan hearing this track and knowing instantly it belonged in the mix. The track has so many interesting layers: there’s this textured distortion that sounds like a ravens screech; it drops in on the second beat every other measure. It’s unmistakably part of the track’s character, adding grit and personality. Her voice floats above the rest of the instruments like a firefly in the night.
Though this version is nothing like the original, it’s fantastic in its own right and deserves its own flowers. Now I’ve got to go watch Umrao Jaan and see Rekha bring it to life.
6) Summertime (Angélique Kidjo)
I’ve already gone deep on this tune in a past blog, so I’ll point you there if you want the full ride. The short version? "Summer time, and the living is easy..." unlike how you've ever heard or will hear. This song is a core memory for me. I first heard it as a kid on this very Chill Out in Paris compilation, and her voice stopped me in my tracks. Kidjo doesn’t just cover Gershwin — she reclaims it. Singing in Fon, building the piece with layered percussion and space, she transforms Summertime into something trance-like, ancestral, and alive. Her version isn’t a lullaby. It’s a recollection.
If you want the full story, click this link: Angelique Kidjo: Summertime
Onward!
7) Bine El Barah Ouel Liom (Qaballah Steppers Remix) – Enrico Experience
I love this track. My friends and I would describe this beat as FAT. It's the perfect down tempo that feels up tempo. It’s a dialogue between centuries — the gorgeous Arabic vocal pulling one way, the thick electronic rhythm tugging the other. They don’t cancel each other; they braid themselves together. I live for these moments in music where the song doesn’t just play in the room, it rearranges the air around you.
This track has a hypnotic opening with a resting heart rate kind of tempo. Gorgeous instrumentation by whatever wind instrument that is. You get a small vocal hook, and then, the dirtiest, fattest groove comes in and smacks you with the force of a thousand suns. It's crunchy, it's angular, it's the kind of herb that burns long and slow and leaves the whole room hazy.
The groove prowls. It’s bass-heavy but precise, never muddy. The percussion hits, the sampled textures, the aching voice, all stacked into a trance. This is where the Buddha Bar magic really happens: you’re caught between the ancestral pull of tradition and the magnetic tug of the modern beat, suspended in the space between. That? THAT is why I live for this — two worlds — colliding in beautiful, delicious, anti-disaster.
The remix by Qaballah Steppers gives that song its second skin. Qaballah Steppers is a group known for weaving together traditional Middle Eastern and jazz influences with electronic, dub, and ambient textures. Their remix doesn’t erase the song’s roots (the longing, the vocal lines, the emotional weight) but reframes it.
It's obvious that a track like this ends up on the Buddha Bar-like compilations: it already lives in that zone between worlds — nostalgic and new, intimate and expansive. It’s the kind of song that, remixed, feels like you’re hearing someone else’s memory of a memory, and that’s exactly where Buddha Bar likes to dwell.
8) Live from Heart (Sa Trincha)
This is a humble, simple arrangement, but with quiet power. This moment in the album is quintessential. It’s not just the midpoint; it’s the hinge, the exhale, the transition between the beginning half and the later half. On a record with no breaks, especially a mixed CD, dynamics are everything. They give the ears a breather — a chance to catch their breath, a change of pace. The album is, essentially, taking a lunch break. You know what I mean. It steps outside into the sun, stretches its limbs high toward the light, takes a deep, slow breath in and out with its eyes shut... and as the breeze starts to pick up, it feels that gentle sense of rejuvenation. Get me?
Live from Heart by Sa Trincha drifts in exactly when the album needs to exhale. The name itself comes from an Ibiza beach bar; a hidden cove where DJs spin barefoot, salt in the air, no one’s in a hurry to be anywhere. The track was born from that same spirit: less composed than captured, like sunlight caught on tape. She’s steady as the tide. I love listening to this kind of track on repeat for a half hour or so. I know that sounds crazy. It’s crazier that I’ve listened to over sixteen thousand minutes of music in the last four months. Not that crazy though… right?
Anyway, I’ll let it loop and drift off into nothing. Grounded in the present moment — feeling here, there, and everywhere all at once.
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As we make our way into the second half of this album, you'll notice an energy shift.
If you get a chance to listen to the actual album, you’ll hear how beautifully these songs transition into one another. The move from Live from Heart into Crystal Heart is especially seamless—like one deep breath flowing into the next.
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9) Crystal Heart (David Visan & Carlos Campos)
You might notice a familiar name among the artists: David Visan, the curator behind the Chill Out in Paris experience. Crystal Heart is one of the few tracks arranged specifically for this mix.
The track was composed by Carlos Campos, an artist celebrated for blending electronic, jazz, and world music into lush, intuitive soundscapes. For this Buddha Bar mix, Campos collaborated with Visan to craft a piece that isn’t just a standalone track but a carefully shaped moment within the album’s flow. Campos’ method of improvisation within structure gives the music a living, responsive quality, where every shimmer of chimes, percussive patter, and heartbeat pulse feels both deliberate and spontaneous. Visan’s curatorial hand is evident in the transition from Live from Heart, guiding the listener with texture, rhythm, and space into a new emotional terrain.
The opening low “Ah” and the sudden call of a lone voice, “Hey!,” signal the start of a journey, setting the tone for an expansive, immersive soundscape. Crystal Heart is a pivot, a lift of the curtain, inviting the listener to inhabit the spaces between sound—a collaboration that merges Campos’ melodic intuition with Visan’s narrative flow.
This is one of those tracks where I don’t even know where to begin with the instrumentation—it feels like every layer was placed with effortlessly natural intention. The bass line is funky, warm, and steady. The melody floats above it all, immediately accessible and intriguing. The moments where the drums and bass drop out are magic—they give the track space to breathe, letting the listener sink into the textures, and then hit again with the beat that’s hypnotic. The track is holding its own heartbeat, guiding you through a journey that’s playful and profound. It’s the kind of layering that rewards repeated listens, revealing new details every time you return. By the end, you’re not just hearing the instruments—you’re inhabiting them.
This is it, you guys — every pulse, shimmer, and drop carries us westward, the album shifting direction with sails full and steady. As we head into the first song in English, you can feel the turn as much as you can hear it: a subtle pivot, like a 10 foot stone door slowly opening.
They didn’t waste any time jumping into this one, starting strong with a voice through a telephone: “This Voiceless Cry…of Mercy.” Harri Lake sets the tone immediately, her vocals raw and ethereal, threading through the track like a signal in the fog. What exactly is a voiceless cry of mercy?
I couldn't find any specific information about the meaning of Harri Lake's track, however, the title itself evokes a profound sense of silent suffering or an unspoken plea. In the context of the track, Harri Lake's vocals and the atmospheric instrumentation suggest themes of pain or longing that cannot be vocalized, perhaps due to fear, oppression, or the inability to find the right words. Mercy could imply a deep yearning for compassion or relief, themes of isolation, vulnerability, or simply the complexities of the human condition. Too real.
This tune is just too cool. To me, it feels like a precursor to the Lofi-HipHop genre we know today. The snare is soft but crisp, the guitar — wet with layers of delay and astonishingly clean. Background vocals drift like little spirits, happily haunting, weaving in and out of ears. What an incredible way to launch the second half of the mix. The progression carries an unexpected sense of hope and acceptance, which feels almost miraculous given the title.
I’m genuinely shocked if no one’s sampled this yet—this CD is a goldmine of little sonic treasures perfect for remixes, samples, hip hop or beyond. This is the kinda track you romanticize your life to: walking down the streets of the suburbs, stepping to the beat, getting lost in the present.
You may hear it differently, and I’m curious—what do you think? This mix CD has been emotional from the first track, but in the second half, it shifts into something mystical, theatrical even. Let me know in the comments; I’d love to hear your thoughts.
11) Diva Mea (Alessandro Safina)
This track will haunt me for the rest of my days. I was initially quite unsuccessful at finding anything to do with the lyrics. What I heard in the beginning and also repeated is something along the lines of, "Only you can heal my soul" or "*hear* my soul". But again, I didn't really know for sure, and they have very different meanings poetically. There are no verified sources for these lyrics, but I did eventually come across this link: HERE Confirmed (at least here) that only you can *HEAR* my soul.
As far as the rest of the words go, take a listen if you feel like it. The song is mostly instrumental, so when an army of choral singers crashes in about three-quarters of the way through, it’s like a sudden storm over still water — shocking, and stupidly beautiful. A perfect vacation from the rest of the track.
They almost cancel each other out, those layers — like a gorgeous sunset behind telephone poles. The voices are piercing; you feel them in your spine. It’s such an odd and fascinating mix: early-2000s chill-trance bones, Paul Schwartz–style classical drama, and a nameless pop vocal looping the same half-heard phrase. “Only you can hear my soul.” It gets under your skin.
Here’s the strange part: this track kept coming up as “Luna” by Alessandro Safina in my research, and only sometimes as “Diva Mea.” The crazy part is, “Luna” has a whole vocal melody I’d never heard — giving the song an entirely different feel. And I mean entirely. So it seems David Visan stripped out Safina’s lead vocals for the Buddha Bar version. The deeper I went, the weirder it got.
Looking at both versions, the track doesn’t just sit at a crossroads — it is an intersection. Opera collides with chill, and Safina was built for that collision. Not your ordinary meet-cute. Trained in the grand tradition of Italian opera, he wanted to pull the velvet curtain back and let modern listeners feel the drama without showing up in its dress code. Grandeur meets groove. I must say, I am usually a fan of whatever version I heard first. This is not one of those times. For me, the crown goes to the original, and you're going to want to hear it. Here's the link: Alessandro Safina - Luna
I would listen to this link, and read the lyric translation I linked above at the same time. He nearly bellows with gusto, power and passion, as he sings to the moon, that only the moon can hear his soul. Gorgeous. I wonder why David Visan took his Safinas voice of the track. Any thoughts?
12) Journey to a Star (Lemongrass)
I need to get the non-musical notes out of the way and just nerd out for a moment here: I am obsessed with this album cover — the title, the color scheme, the overall vibe. Since Buddha Bar, I’ve become a fan of Lemongrass, and so have a lot of people around the world.
Roland and his brother Daniel cofounded the record label LemonGrassMusic in 2005, which publishes Lemongrass work as well as other projects and artists. Roland started making music under the name Lemongrass in 1996, back when lounge and chillout as genres were still considered niche. He has numerous projects, but under Lemongrass he’s released many albums, and the project has become internationally respected.
Roland’s music lives in a corner of the internet that’s very special to my heart. It’s a word and place I famously coined — The Undernet. Yes, like the internet, but UNDER. Think of it as under-the-radar: a world that exists outside algorithms, beyond virality, and far from the loud machinery of mainstream attention.
It’s where artists like Voss thrive quietly, almost invisibly, while millions of people listen. You’d never guess from his Instagram profile that he’s a world-famous producer with a global audience. He has 926 followers on Instagram. For someone who pulled 16.4 million streams in 2024, that number makes no sense — unless you understand the Undernet.
That’s the point: the metrics don’t match the impact. These artists aren’t pushing themselves into the spotlight. They’re not optimizing, hustling, or feeding the content gods. They’re just making good music and releasing it into the digital ocean, trusting the right people will find it. There are layers to this, and I’ll get into them in a future blog. The Undernet is a whole ecosystem, and Lemongrass is one of its founding species.
Lemongrass has a way of creating worlds with beats. He paints with the kinds of colors that transport you to equally unfamiliar and nostalgic places. A Journey To A Star is audio deja vu, and a fever dream. Suspended in space, synths and swells, the kind of flavor that future generations can taste without being born yet. Lemongrass is timeless electronic music.
13) Dove Vai (Medea)
This did not start out as a favorite track of mine. I know — it’s not like me to say something negative about a piece of music, but hear me out. I’d rather be honest about how this grew on me than pretend I fell in love at first listen. No, I don’t believe in love at first sight. Maybe I used to. Maybe I’ve grown a little cynical. Wait — did I mean love at first listen? Well, don’t judge an album by its cover. Let me start over.
Dove Vai translates to “where are you going?” That is all I know about the lyrics of this song. I don’t speak Italian, so I can’t transcribe it myself, and the words are nowhere to be found. Anyone parli italiano?
This track lives on an album called Buddha Bar Presents: Living Theatre Trilogy, which I stumbled upon thanks to Musixmatch. They had lyrics for most of the album — except this one. Then I discovered Medea is an opera and thought for sure it would show up on a cast recording. Nope. Okay, I’ll drop it. You get it. I’m a sore loser. I don’t like giving up, but maybe one day something will surface.
The tune opens with an explosion of samples: bird chirps, waves crashing, chimes, miscellaneous percussives, and a few dramatic bass-drum thumps before the strings swell and the beat drops. I used to find it jarring, and I don’t know why — but over time it grew on me. The harpsichord went from startling me to celebrating itself through me.
The same goes for our vocalist. At first, I didn’t appreciate the depth in her vowels. They landed in my ears as swallowed rather than free. But after a while, they stopped feeling constricted and arrived instead as power. And yes, I now think this is an incredible piece of music. However, because of these elements — paired with what this mix is designed to represent — I still did not believe it belonged on CD 1, which I will remind you is Chill. CD 2 is Burn, and I still felt that’s where this track belonged.
When I looked deeper, I reminded myself that we’re at track 13 of 14 on Chill, nearing the transition point. When paired with what’s coming next, it actually does become the perfect bridge into Burn.
So here’s what I hope you take from this: sometimes music is worth a second, third, or even tenth listen. You won’t love everything, and you don’t have to. But if you give it room, real listening room, most music has something to offer. Keyword: most.
Utterly fascinating, enchanting, enthralling: this is our epic send-off into Burn, and the final track of our Chill portion of Buddha Bar: Chill Out in Paris. David Visan ended this CD with another Paul Schwartz number, and understandably so. Miserere and Ave Maria are like two beautiful bookends for this phenomenal collection of music.
Shaker, drums, and then BOOM, you're blasted with the trills and fanfares of violins and cellos, only for them to decrescendo quickly and quietly, so our lovely singer can guide us into a new dimension. The song’s dynamics sway back and forth; they crash wildly and free, like waves in a storm.
I can imagine that this version of Ave Maria is what going to church on Mars in the year 2101 will feel like, yet somehow it sounds familiar; as old as song itself. That’s the thing about Paul Schwartz: he has this astounding way of bridging the past and the present together. He merges contemporary production with spiritual melodies like they’re a match made in heaven, and they are.
I recently discovered that not only are these tunes arranged by Paul Schwartz, but he also does his own mixing. I have always felt that pieces like Miserere, Ave Maria, and tracks not featured on Buddha Bar, like Dido (my absolute favorite, click that link), are perfectly mixed. Every little bit is in its perfect, ethereal place. A performance of modern whimsy; a masterclass in reframing classical.
As I've said before, you're writing brings the music to life, and spot lighting the music you love is amazing. This album was a game changer for me in my musical journey called life... I'll now have to give props to the guy that introduced it to us originally. Can't wait for the blogs in the coming year..
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