Various Artists: Moods: You, the Night, and the Music

It’s a late night at a swanky upscale club. Your heels are holding up fine, the commercial you saw earlier in the day is still telling to order a “Soco & Lime”, but you’re not one to give in to corporate temptations. An employee at said club got in a huge argument earlier about how they’ve been playing that damn Zero 7 CD all month, and most of the regulars are tired of hearing the Bargrooves series ad nauseum. So what’s going to be the soundtrack for you night of downtown flirting? In all likelihood, it’s going to be Moods: You, the Night, and the Music.

The problem that faces cityscape compilations like this is simply the context in which they are often heard in: most people, slightly drunk and very flirty, will invariably gloss over these songs and never think twice about them. At times, this is an appropriate reaction. Other times, it’s a missed opportunity. Moods is styled much like other discs of this nature: up-tempo jazz numbers given a few splashes of synths and occasionally mixed dry with some lite trip-hop beats. Though it’s doubtful you’ll ever want to hear Osunlade’s “The Day We Met for Coffee” over and over again (the repeated title gets old really fast), tracks like the Ananda Project’s “Let Love Fly” (where a simple piano melody is given just the right mid-tempo gloss) and Nils Krogh’s “Things We Do” (about as classicist as you’ll get for a compilation of this nature) remain deliciously guilty pleasures. Top it off with the downright funky “Latin Blues Part 1” by K-Scope, and you’re in for one sexy, fantastic evening.