From the CES Swag Pile: LG's Lounge Grooves, Volume 1

Among the clutter of highly unusable, more-often-than-not wasteful swag available in abundance at last week’s Consumer Electronics Showcase were a few cubic zirconium in the rough. Among these 512MB thumb drives, pens, pencils, bottle cap openers, floating keychain attachments and flimsy visors was something I would never have expected nor wanted to find: a musically-unrelated consumer electronics manufacturer-produced mixtape.


LG, understanding the CES pilgrim’s need to temper the in-your-face excesses of flashing electronics and the equally excessive enthusiasm of early-adopters and, worse, bloggers (guilty as charged), included a compilation of 5 songs that promises to soothe your stress with the smoothest sounds this side of the average Pro Tools producer of electronic adult contemporary.

The compilation also settles a longstanding question: what does LG stand for? Apparently, the answer is “Lounge Grooves,” and boy does LG live up to its heretofore unknown namesake. Well, sort of, anyway, if you replace “lounge” with “upscale-yet-uncool restaurant bathroom” and “grooves” with “sounds to roll your eyes to.”

Chambre 13 starts the mix off with “Tahiti Plage” (which in pidgin French roughly translates to “Tahiti beach”), which proves that only Brian Eno can make music so boring it’s actually quite good/interesting; though even authentic Eno is poor defense against the blustering gaudiness of Las Vegas and has even been losing a lot of its interesting luster in recent years (could Chambre 13 be a moniker for the once-giant among men?). But hey, lots of mixtapes and compilations stumble with the first track only to recover on the second. Unfortunately, Lounge Grooves is not one of them.

The second track, Amour Fou’s “Smile on Your Face,” should probably have changed its name to “acerbic smirk,” which, sadly, is as close to a genuine smile I can get these days without pulling a muscle in my cheek (Juliette from Lost also shares this condition).

The third track middles into the same territory as the previous two tracks, but manages to do so by incorporating sounds, instruments and styles even the most “subversive” difficult-to-endure “noise artist” would have trouble conscionably combining. Needless to say, the sound of water dropping was prominent and would not, despite seething rage, stop.

The fourth (“Traeumst Du Schon” by Binary Advertise) and fifth track (“Where Do We Go” by Angel Sisters) almost tip the bearability scale into the gray “eh, almost” category, but quickly lose any and all mixtape-salvaging progress in a wash of conga drum loops, blurry EQ effects, distorted vocals and sitar samples.

While Lounge Grooves was probably never intended to be considered at all, ever, and will most likely end up as an ersatz gift by a parent/friend/spouse/lover returning from Vegas, I should mention that this is just the first Volume (as indicated by the conspicuous “Volume 1” text on the sleeve) and that those returning for CES next year can look forward to the "exciting," unwanted series continuation this side of Now (That’s What I Call Music): 28.

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