Time has been kind and this remains a classic of the chill-out genre.
Prince may have neglected to mention it, but 1999 actually belonged to Groove Armada’s Vertigo and Moby’s Play. Along with Air’s Moon Safari, released a year earlier, they were standard-issue discs in even the most causal of music collections at the end of the 90s. These records marked the moment that dance music came good at album length, and although not every track of Vertigo was licensed to advertising (unlike Play, of course) it felt like it. Adverts have thankfully moved on, allowing Vertigo space to breath.
Groove Armada, formed of jazz musician Andy Cato and Tom Findlay, had been floating around the dance scene as DJs, pressing white label 12"s, for some time before this album – which was not, as many believed, their first. That was 1998’s Northern Star (on indie label Tommy Touch), a collection of rougher jazz/house sketches that showed unlikely promise. Until last year’s assured Black Light album, subsequent Groove Armada albums were similarly patchy, but the fully formed Vertigo went gold, and remains its makers’ calling card.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music