“There are curators, and then there's Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy.” - Resident Advisor
The sun has finally come out. It’s the first time something like this has happened for months and months; the first glow of an approaching summer, whatever date the calendar is currently saying it is. The whole thing acts as a curative meditation, miraculously wiping away all the greyness of the past few months. Right now, optimism abounds, outlooks change and your daily soundtrack has shifted from spiky and uptight into a kind of cosmic space where songs ebb and flow and drift on like rivers run on forever towards the glimmering sea.
If you’re reading this, it’s assumed that you already know all about Heavenly Recordings’ series of untouchable, utterly essential ‘Balearic Breakfast’ compilations, each one lovingly compiled by visionary DJ, producer and broadcaster Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, the genius club legend whose radio show of the same name (broadcast 10AM to high noon every Tuesday via Mixcloud) began as an escape route from the Pandemic before rapidly building a global community of dedicated Balearican listeners.
Each ‘Balearic Breakfast’ album has provided a spiritual getaway from the greyness of the everyday through a handpicked selection of glorious, psychedelically coloured, expansive music. It doesn’t matter where on the planet the music hails from, or when it was made, it just matters that it fits like a jigsaw piece into the musical whole. Be it off world jazz music or vocoder led robo-disco music; whether decades old or pressed to vinyl for the first time, everything on these flawless ‘Balearic Breakfast’ collections just needs to flow together and bring the listener into the sunshine, whatever time of year they’re listening.
The fourth ‘Balearic Breakfast’ compilation sees Cosmo take this head trip further than ever before. From the opening track’s swoop and glide that nods to Vangelis’s ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack before gliding into its own expansive voyage to the stars (‘Kandeen Love Song’) to Cosmo’s own glorious Parisienne stroll through Saint Etienne’s recent ‘Alone Together’ to Ilya Santana’s Spanish space disco anthem ‘Cosmovision’, a track that rolls through like a turbo-powered ‘Supernature’, and the phenomenal 2015 disco version of Gloria Ann Taylor’s early 1970s classic ‘Love Is A Hurtin’ Thing’, this ‘Balearic Breakfast’ offers the perfect soundtrack to the summer, whether it’s actually happening outside or just taking place in your head. After all, they don’t call breakfast the most important meal of the day for nothing.
As with each of the previous ‘Balearic Breakfast’ albums, many of the tracks featured have never been available on vinyl before, and the ones that have been usually go for eye watering sums of money on certain internet sites.