Various Artists Hotel Tara

If Hotel Tara were a soft drink container, it would be the new Coca Cola “smooth serve.” God, did I just write that?

Hotel Tara, The Intimate Side of Buddha Lounge, is a collection of some of Sequoia Records’ Groove sub-label’s artists and their top shelf tracks. Intended for a relaxing evening at home after a hellish day at work, for zoning out or even for a little snogging, the fourteen songs are a cool blend of spacey New Age, tribal, dance and a healthy dose of East meets West.

The disc kicks off with Artemisia’s (which is really keyboardist Steve Gordon and vocalist Jaya Lakshmi under a pseudonym) “The Green Hour”, a laid-back stream of consciousness track laced with tribal drums, Eastern inspired instrumentations and Lakshmi’s dream-like croons.

Brother David Gordon’s “Floating” kind of reminds me of a track from, of all things, Sonic 3-D Blast for the Sega Saturn. Don’t get me wrong – that’s a compliment. Since the Saturn was a CD based game system, a lot of the music on it was really good. Sonic 3-D Blast, for example, had a lot of really good trip hop stuff. So good, in fact, I’d burned tracks 7 and 8 from for future mix CDs I’d listen to for years to come.

Ginkgo Garden’s “Woodland Ride” maintains this sprightly, upbeat vibe while later on, Hands Upon Black Earth present the “Tara Mix” of “Vinsandaan”, another excellent trip hop groove fest, making full use of samples, mellow keyboards and an otherworldly vibe that is probably my favorite of all the tracks. Zingaia is later represented in “Nomad’s Land” from last year’s Soles on Earth. To be honest, I didn’t like that album very much, but I recall this being one of the better songs on there. Here lies one of the benefits of a compilation.

Opera-to-Relax, probably one of the lamest names for a band, rounds out the mix with the oddball “Radio Shamanistan”, a very jazzy kind of lounge tune that takes a little getting used to but is still a pretty interesting listen and a cool way to end the album.

Sequoia Records loves their compilations. This year, they have not released a single album of new material. While I find that a little annoying, and perhaps a bit of a cash grab, they are still a relatively obscure label with a relatively small audience. Comps such as Hotel Tara can serve as a good way to introduce new listeners to some pretty cool, chilled out artists. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still waiting for an new release, Sequoia.