Despite the obvious overkill of chill out compilations over the last couple of years, the 'Back To Mine' series is still going strong.
This is partly because it was there before the band wagon got rolling (this is ABM number 12), and partly because its policy of asking artists and DJs to select the music they rock to at home has spared it from the temptation of re-hashing major label back-catalogues.
As a producer Alex Paterson, aka The Orb, has a musical knowledge as deep as his tastes are broad. So while some of the selection digs back through the crates (Aphex Twins' 'Polynominal' from 1990, for example, opens the album), many of Paterson's choices are contemporary.
Tracks such as Charles Webster's soulful electro 'No One' (2002), snuggle next to B12's 'Interim' (1993) and the Chi-Lites' 'Have You Seen Her' (1971) rides incongruously out of Creature's 'Ow Much!'.
There's always a temptation on compilations for the selector to over-represent material by themselves and their friends and it's a charge of which Paterson is certainly not guilt-free. In fact we find his name and those of his collaborators (such as Thomas Fehlmann) on a majority of the album's tunes.
But, with the inclusion of tracks such as Julee Cruise's 'Falling', you suspect this is simply the stuff you'd hear chez-Paterson of a night.
Plus, for those wanting a preview from the forthcoming Orb album, there's a taster in the form of a track called 'The Land Of Green Ginger'.
