The Best Albums To Chill Out With

The Best Albums To Chill Out With

An interesting encounter with a stranger led to me thinking about my favorite albums I use as retreat and escape.

By JT Lucas

Being me, I tend to have a lot of unwelcome conversations with crazy people. I’m not sure if there is an aura that I put out that causes them to sniff me out and cage me in with awkward, sometimes extremely inappropriate conversation, or if there’s just something wrong with my face, but it happens a lot. I recently had an elderly lady — a complete stranger — ask me for my birthday. I gave it to her, and she then proceeded to tell me, completely off the top of her head, what she felt my specific horoscope was. It was long. My neck was getting sore from all of my polite nodding. A few minutes into this unsolicited reading, the wise old crone said, “We all omit vibrations, and those vibrations can change, uplift, and influence others as long as they are left intact. Never feel guilty about retreating and taking time to yourself to keep those vibrations healthy.”

For me, retreat involves a heavy-duty pair of studio headphones, complete solitude, a lit tobacco-scented candle to remind me how cool I used to be when I smoked cigarettes, and darkness. I have relaxation playlists, but I prefer an album because I feel that a well-crafted album can transport you to another place, far away from the stresses and harsh stimuli that can sometimes build up in the current world you live in. My five favorite chill-out/escape albums aren’t the least bit current, but they work for me:

Boards of Canada — Music Has the Right to Children

The best word to describe this Scottish duo’s 1998 masterpiece is “nostalgic.” The literal influence of this album is “memory” and how it can fade in and out in clarity. You can feel this concept in the album through its layered soundscapes and ghostly voices strewn throughout. Even the cover of this album is a somewhat retro ghostly family with blurred faces seeming to be on vacation somewhere. The memories are positive, though, invoking the best feelings of childhood, family and nature. Immersion in this album feels like a family car trip through the countryside with the windows down during the nicest of summer weather.

Grimes — Visions

When she’s not ushering the downfall of Elon Musk, Claire Boucher records music as the one-woman/robot act known best as Grimes. To understand Grimes, it’s important to understand that she is not a singer. Her voice is generally distorted, then looped and layered into her compositions, creating a very digital feel. Her 2012 work, Visions, feels like a marriage of the corporeal and the mechanical, which makes perfect sense being that she seems somewhat obsessed with the idea of “post-humanism.” Yet, through the computerized textures, there’s an idyllic bliss that seems out of place juxtaposed with the dark synths. This is Claire’s version of happiness. Visions feels like the A.I. took over and humanity is over, but we’re somehow not sad about it.

Dntel — Life Is Full of Possibilities

“You can turn the city upside down like an umbrella, but it won’t keep you dry.” My personal favorite chill-out album is understandably a hard sell. Jimmy Tamborello’s trademark alias, Dntel, specializes primarily in glitch electronica, adding in a wide range of unusual instruments, including a pump organ at times, to make a very unique sound. Still, through the computerized bloops and blips, the overarching theme of this album is “melancholy.” It is important to note that this album involved a collaboration with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan,” my personal favorite song of all time, was the launching pad for The Postal Service. Immersion in this album feels indescribable.

Massive Attack — Mezzanine

Robert del Naja (probably Banksy) and friends were looking for an escape from the traditional trip-hop movement they were known for helping create. Cue Mezzanine, a dark, relatively atmospheric masterpiece that was rumored to almost tear the band apart. Despite the strife behind the album, it’s actually fairly romantic, with darker atmospheric tones mixed in with a clear trip-hop influence. A recurring theme seems to be a striving for solitude with the one you love. Fun fact: they reissued this album for the 20th anniversary as a spray paint can, in which they encoded the album in approximately 920,000 strands of DNA. I imagine the DNA-encoded music player is sold separately. This album feels like finally getting home after a long day of excessive socializing to be alone and content with the person, animal or pizza that you love.

Kaskade — Strobelite Seduction

Probably the most dance-and-singable one on my list, Strobelite Seduction is like one long night out at the clubs. While Kaskade, Ryan Raddon’s moniker and also legendarily straight-edge Mormon, would not appreciate the drinking or possible drug use that can sometimes be associated with club life, he can certainly speak to the seduction of the music and lights and movement in the club scene. A notable thing on this album, as well as many of Kaskade’s older albums, is how he blends his deep house roots with trance influences, then adds in some of the most ethereal female vocalists you’ll ever hear anywhere. Strobelite Seduction feels like how a night on the club should feel, propelled by dancing and beautiful strobes and truly transcendent music.

JT Lucas is a Columbus-based music enthusiast, frequent concert-goer and a Carly Rae Jepsen superfan.