The Chill Out Tent newsletter: friends and family edition

No apologies for shamelessly celebrating our talented friends and others creating great art

Welcome to The Chill Out Tent newsletter, a monthly transmission that will bring a carefully curated selection of music and other nice things into your life. 

This is the family and friends edition of The Chill Out Tent newsletter (Ed: Isn’t every edition a family friends edition?!), as the extended TCOT family have been busy releasing new music.

Album of the month: At the tender age of 69, David Cane-Hardy’s time might have come. His album of ambient-ish folky guitar feels almost in vogue. Guitarists such as Johnny Nash, Daniel Bachman, Michael Scott Dawson, and Steve Gunn take inspiration from ‘70s stylists such as Bert Jansch, John Fahey, and particularly in Cane-Hardy’s case, John Martyn.

Retired music teacher Cane-Hardy picked up the guitar after Martyn’s death in 2011, bought himself an echoplex and various other effects pedals, and just over a decade later has released his debut album ‘New Beginnings’ on our Chris’s DSPPR label.

Recommended by Chill Out Tent Co-Founder Matt Nearest Faraway, who worked with the guitarist in their shared hometown of Eastbourne, David and Chris recorded the album in just one day. The result is a beautiful collection of backyard vignettes that will instantly transport you to the sunny Sussex countryside on a blissful afternoon. Let your mind wander as the gentle chords and pulses echo around and around and around…

Also on the TCOT turntable: East Coast Love Affair team up with Ibiza resident and Chill Out Tent fave For Mankind for a celebration of ‘Musica Para Todos’. Deep dub almost-techno mixes with Balearic chuginess, as Russ sing-chants and fellow Scot Philomenah sings sweetly. A dreamy delight.

And you can hear For Mankind’s Chill Out Tent set at this summer’s We Are Love festival by clicking the photo below.

Friends releasing albums part 3: Phil Mison has released his fifth album as Cantoma — the wonderful ‘See in the Sun’. For the uninitiated it sounds something like Saint Etienne transplanted from South London to South Ibiza. For the initiated, you’re in for the usual goodies. Phil has refined his sound into something approaching Balearic perfection. 

Phil was also in The Chill Out Tent playing some sunset grooves just before For Mankind, this summer. Funny coincidence that Russ and Phil should go on to release albums almost simultaneously, just two months later.

Also in the mix: Wildblood & Queenie ruled this summer. They followed their triumphant Saturday night We Are Love set in The Chill Out Tent, with a lap of honour around most of the stages at Pride in Brighton the following weekend. Click the pic to hear those Saturday night disco grooves once more. Perfect for that pre-going out warm-up, or the staying-in Saturday night substitute.

In reading corner: In celebration of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ feted new album ‘Wild God’, here’s something a little different. Bad Seeds multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis wrote the beautiful book ‘Nina Simone’s Gum’ a couple of years ago. Ellis’s charming tale follows the moment he hopped from crowd to stage to grab a memento in the shape of Ms Simone’s discarded chewing gum, which she had stuffed in the corner of her piano after a triumphant set at Cave’s Meltdown festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London. ‘Nina Simone’s gum’ is a quirky portrait of art and obsession – it’s funny and totally loveable.

Ed’s note: We can’t claim Cave or Ellis as COT friends or family…. yet. But this is so good we had to share - friends and family or not.

Ritual: Whatever your daily practice – yoga/tai chi/dance/bike/meditation – let us recommend a musical accompaniment in the shape of Jon Hopkins’ new album ‘Ritual’. His last excellent record was called ‘Music for Psychedelic Therapy’ – you’re sensing a theme here, right? Anyone who has ever had an interest in the transcendental properties of music should tune in. Hopkins is in the process of mastering his art.

On location: For Mankind and our very own Chris Coco will be among the talented selectors playing at the Beat Hotel’s end of summer party. Join them and the likes of Heidi Lawden, Rob Da Bank and more at Las Mimosas in Ibiza from September 26-29th.

One more tune: OK, I know….more friends releasing records… But bare with us ‘cos Steve and Glenn’s Andres y Xavi have hit gold with the enchanting Lagos on the Balearic Ultras’ Higher Love Recordings. Take a loping beat, some slightly off-key chords and a lovely (presumably Nigerian) vocal loop and you have an enchanting late-summer/early-autumn earworm.

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