Customer Reviews

Back to Mine

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Back to Mine Series has consisitently delivered smooth mixes of great downtempo music. Faithless' lives up to the reputation and more. Starting off as a family affair(Dido being Rollo's younger sister)we are greeted by Rollo's side project Dusted. This is effortlessly blended into the beautiful "Past" by Sub Sub. At this point, you know that you are in for a classic record. Faithless manage to cover all of the bases. Be it trippy Mushrooms by Marshall Jefferson vs. the Noosa Heads, or the soulful "Solo Flying Mystery Man" by Pauline Taylor. What binds all of the eclectic selections together is that they have soul. Far from some experimental ambient nonsense, this album continually delivers with quality laid back music. This is defined by Bent's I love my Man and Carl Craig's all time classic, Throw, under his paperclip people pseudonym. If you like this, check out Groove Armada's entry in the Back to Mine series or Nick Warren's rather hard to find, but well worth searching for, offering.

This compilation is a great entry in the Back to Mine series. Sister Bliss and Rollo chose the tracks and wrote the liner notes. Pauline Taylor's (a regular Faithless contributer)song "Solo Flying Mystery Man" kicks .... I highly recommend this very relaxing cd to everyone.

It seems the big thing now a days is the chill out music. Clubs and raves have chill out rooms and DJs are doing chill out mixes. This is a good thing, but only when done properly. Take for example this album (not all the guys from Faithless, just producer Rollo and producer/DJ/keyboardist) where a lot of "chill out albums" are just ambient sounding... this is blissfull, soulfull and just flat out groovy. A lot of R-n-B influenced tracks and a great track from Rollo's other band Dusted (the song is called Childhood, check out Dusted's album "When We Were Young, it's very good).

All in all a wonderfull CD, great comedown music.

Time to relax, is it? Those in the market for mellow will find the very definition open to wide interpretation. Soul, trip-hop, folk, and world beat, these influences form just the starting point for ideal chilling out, exploited never as thoroughly or thoughtfully as in the Back to Mine mixes.

"Back to Mine" roughly paraphrases as a retreat home after a hard night's clubbing. This series elbowed into the thoroughly marketed niches of British music in 1999, launching with world-class DJs Dave Seaman and Nick Warren at the record needle. America being slow on the uptake, we're just now received contributions from Danny Tenaglia, (overrated) Groove Armada, and now Faithless, with Everything But the Girl waiting in the wings.

But back to that notion of chillout music; whatever ethereal concept you may hold, there's no doubt that its essence is found in the playful melancholy of Dusted "Childhood" or within the blissful autumn magic of Sub Sub "Past." Taking a broader view, the droopy hip-hop of Marshall Jefferson Vs Noosa Heads "Mushrooms" and sample-based work of artists Bent and Alex Gopher evoke a sensible charm that carefully avoids too-kitch tendencies littering the scene.

Like every volume so far a few eclectic reaches are tossed in so critics can praise the "hip" factor - Paperclip People's screeching "Throw" certainly has no place on this plastic. Tasteful selection and smooth album flow, however, allow Faithless to squeeze even those square pegs into round holes. Listeners just found a smooth cocktail for that 4am eternal.

I've collected a number of the "Back to Mine" series, but this one by Faithless keeps calling me back. It's partly the wonderful eclecticism - from Marshall Jefferson to Pauline Taylor, Tindersticks to Aaron Neville. Highly recommended.

I always liked Faithless and bought this cd on a whim. I had heard of the Back to Mine series, so I knew I wasn't in for the usual hard edm of Faithless.

To date, this is still my favorite Back to Mine album.

They start out with a nice tribute to Dido, who is actually Rollo's sister. The cd builds for the next couple of songs and before you know it, you're swept away by Mushrooms.

The cd picks up the pace a little bit from here, but not too much. The Aaron Neville song fits in nice. The cd ends with the unmixed wahacked out version of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". This is a great after hours cd, but it is also an amazing bedroom cd.

In the beginning I thought this was going to be an album of originals, not a compilation of songs that Sister Bliss and Rollo mixed. I'll admit I was disappointed but now that I have the cd and listened to it, I think this is totally classic Faithless. Rollo and Sister Bliss put together a great compilation of excellent chill out music, or as they see it...soul music. "Back to Mine" is a great tasty little morsel while waiting for the band's next album of original material.

This is a seamless album that I go back to again and again. The mixing is good, and it's a fun chill journey that's my favorite in the Back To Mine series. I find it a little more enjoyable than the Everything But the Girl BTM, but that's also good. I recommend this one and often lend it to friends who hear it.

This is one of the best chillout CD's I've purchased. The "Back to Mine" series is generally great to exceptionally and this CD is right there. Starts out with very dreamy songs - Dusted, Dido and then works up to a great upbeat rhythm, Bent, Alex Gopher - ends with some classics - Mazzy Star and Aaron Neville. Awesome Faithless CD.

A long term Faithless fan who was pleased to hear something from their highly creative minds, filling the long gap between releases. The CD wasn't what I expected in that many of the tracks are true to their original form, however this is an eclectic and excellent collection of songs. Given the recent popularity of Dido (who appears on the CD), I suspect that this will open up a new audience for Faithless and many of the artists within the mix which includes the brilliant Tindersticks. Enjoy.