Amr Diab

Your attention is invited to a collection of albums of the now legendary Putumayo World Music label.
Each album is supplied with a colorful booklet containing a lot of interesting information about the music styles within the chosen themes for an album (the names of the albums are always bright - they speak for themselves), and also about the musicians-performers.

The Buddha Bar series has become a band name by now, and Buddha Bar, Vol. 4 does nothing to break the new tradition. Compiled by David Visan, the two-CD set is divided into "Dinner" and "Drink." The former is definitely music for the consumption of comestibles, pleasant and polite with exotic touches of world music, like Nitin Sawhney's "Moonrise" or Gotan Project's revolution of the tango with "Una Musical Brutal," but they're the mildest examples of the artists' output, never pushing themselves forward, but providing a backdrop for food and civilized conversation. "Drink" fares a little better, but has traces of anonymity - Time Passing with "Party People," for example, or Chris Spheeris and "Dancing With The Muse" could both come from a modern TV ad - although its less afraid of imposing itself…