Chill-out used be all about Venusian sunsets, bleeting sheep, harmonic spheres and the nasal chant of Andean llama-pygmies. These days, such weighty subjects for supine shuffling have evaporated, making way for just-exotic-enough Braziliana. Recent releases from Groove Armada, Thievery Corporation, Bebel Gilberto, and Joe Claussell all represent Brazil as a lilting samba paradise where every girl skips to Ipanema and every boy possesses chiseled bon-bons.

But Sao Paulo, the real life in Brazil, is home to Carandiru, one of the most brutal prisons in the world. There, in 1992, 111 inmates were massacred by their guards. In Carandiru, rule is maintained by the inmates' own feudal government, and where-- who'd have thought it?-- South American record companies are exploiting pent-up rows of reality gangsta rappers who are incarcerated, brutalized, and ready to rock the mic sooner than their addicted cellmates can get junk-hungry.

The exquisite, ever-so-slightly sinful sounds of Brazilian Portuguese are all the outside world is offered, but even the Carandiru rappers have a sensual flow to their caustic indictments of a barred existence. When Bebel Gilberto purrs in Portuguese, I am transported to the gentle shores of Paradise. And so it is with Da Lata's vocalist, Liliana Chachian (are all Brazilian women gorgeously named?). It's Chachian's gossamer voice that distracts me from her restrained accompaniment. And how restrained the music is! Renowned chill-out DJ Patrick Forge has paired up with Smoke City multi-instrumentalist Chris Franck to create delightful bossa/samba grooves. Though the duo have periodically recorded together since 1992, they're only now releasing their debut album.

The phrase "Da Lata" (meaning "from the tin") is Brazilian Portuguese's rough equivalent to "dope" or "awesome"; legend has it that tins of the smoothest marijuana were once washed up along the Brazilian coastline. Hence, the phrase has come to denote anything fine. So, does this album deserve such accolades?

In the UK, Songs from the Tin's hit single, "Pra Manha," sold more than 10,000 copies on vinyl alone, and that's not surprising. The only working DJs who wouldn't need this essential tune in their box would be skull-fuck gabba DJs. The song is blissful enough to fit into a chill moment of a trance set and beefy enough to lift anyone's downtempo session out of the coffee bar and into Gilles Peterson territory. And "Ponteio," one of Da Lata's non-album singles, received heavy rotation from the Thievery Corporation, so you get the idea of whose goolies get grabbed by this stuff.

As coffeetable nu-bossanova fluff goes, Songs from the Tin is accomplished and substantial. Da Lata never over-samba or get prissy on the production. But as for its staying power, I'm unconvinced. The project lacks grit; it's a bourgeois fantasy, even though, mercifully, it doesn't strive for the excesses of its Martin Denny-obsessed, bachelor-pad predecessors.

From listening to Songs from the Tin, I don't get any more sense of what it means to be Brazilian than I would from gazing at sanitized photos in a travel brochure. In a similar fashion, hipsters, driven paranoid and xenophobic by the Cold War, listened to Yma Sumac and learnt nothing about Sumac's supposed Incan lineage. But though Songs from the Tin is definitely more open-minded and less patronizing than most exotica, it nonetheless remains a deceitful, escapist vision. And that is its ultimate shortcoming.

-Paul Cooper