CD, стоящие на полке рядом : Classics Vocal (Woman Vocal)      

Cafe Del Mar is one of the most prominent fixtures in Ibiza culture. Over several slow-beat compilations, it has gained an overall reputation for the slower things in the club experience. However, there is this oddity. Aria is not a mix album containing the likes of Kid Loco or Talvin Singh, this time around it's seemingly a single performer constructing what can only be described as...opera chill-out. This is not a lie. With so much genre hybridization going on over the years, it only makes sense that somebody cottoned on to the idea of mixing the laid-back tones of comedown albums with the mourning vocals of operas. Does it work? Put it this way: at its best, the album conjures images of sipping a cold drink on a hot,sun-drenched beach with an overweight diva trying to sing straight in your face while she gets thrashed by the crashing waves. At its worst, it sounds like third-rate, over-produced, self-important Enigma. A song half-way into the entire album - "Dido" - seems to represent the former. Starting with a simple beat and almost acid-house keyboards rising in the background, it carries along the operatic vocals to a substantially interesting degree. For a moment, one can sense what the release tried to accomplish with such a bizarre mesh of genres. Different. Good. Unfortunately, this feeling doesn't last long. "Un Bel Di," "Pamina Blue," and almost all of their other brethren either fall flat in their pedestrian mixing or their simply over-wrought premise. "Haberna" (yes, from Carmen) is probably the largest offense. It has such an air of beat-laced refinement and forced "beauty," that it only comes across like embarrassing nonsense. Which probably outlines what is mostly wrong with this release: the intentions are admirable, yet the execution is painful. Maybe sometime, somewhere else, a bizarre genius will take the ideals of Aria and take it to breath-taking levels. Until then, this release only works for those interested in the strictly peculiar.