A couple of years ago, Nick Darby, an A&R exec at U.K.'s DMC Records was talking with some colleagues about a great weekend that included a trip back to his house after a night of drinking to spin some records into the wee hours. "When the clubs were closing down, someone would always say 'OK, back to mine,'" says Darby. "The drinks were poured, people would pull out their records -- the more obscure the better -- and we'd just go on and on."

The recognition of the previous weekend's revelry soon turned into Back to Mine, a series of late-night mixes that reflected influences, inspiration and a general desire to be as obscure as possible. Darby went to the world's top DJs and electronic music acts for their contributions, and the result was a series that has to date included mixes by Nick Warren, Morcheeba, Groove Armada, Danny Tenaglia, Everything But the Girl, Talvin Singh and -- hitting stores today -- British techno godfathers Orbital. Mancunian mainstays New Order are up next in August, and Darby hopes to nail down Moby and Primal Scream for future releases.

As rave culture sticks its head above ground, major labels are now releasing "late-night chill" compilations, and the lights-low combination of electronic noodling and cocktail culture combine to provide a soundtrack to both drug-induced comedowns and yuppie dinner parties. But as Darby explains, and Orbital's Phil Hartnoll echoes, Back to Mine isn't about a drug comedown -- though it might still be good dinner-party music.

"The original clubbers in England are older and don't go out as much," says Darby. "There's a bar culture now, and this is the perfect music for that kind of gathering. They don't want the boom boom boom all the time."

As Orbital, Phil Hartnoll and his brother, Paul, have always set themselves apart from mainstream dance culture by writing, recording and performing their beat-heavy electronic soundscapes with live instrumentation. The choices they made for Back to Mine could not have deviated further from the music their fans are most used to. The disc opens with the eerie psycho-Seventies strings and Hammond organ of John Barry and His Orchestra on "The Knack," but soon slides into a stoned groove with Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Upsetters on "Justice to the People."

"We spent a lot of time thinking what our favorite records were," says Phil Hartnoll. "Ours isn't a chill out mix -- it's more literally the 'back to mine' concept. It's kind of crazy and messy, and nobody knows what record is going to come next."

Darby makes clear that when he signs artists up for an edition of the series, they get no specific guidance -- each artist takes a different tack, and the listener never knows what to expect. Warren and Tenaglia tied their mixes closely to club culture, while Morcheeba, Everything But the Girl and Faithless chose more ambient, seductive styles. "The Morcheeba one was a little odder than the rest," says Darby. "I found it quite quirky. And then there's the Orbital one -- there's old Sixties German porn soundtrack music on there, and Earth Leakage Trip's 'No Idea' used to freak me out when I went raving as a kid."

Hartnoll didn't intentionally mean to freak anyone out. "Our approach was much more like High Fidelity," he says, "making up tapes for a girl that show so much about you because you can't always explain it yourself." It's a mix-tape where the Divine Comedy seems perfectly at home with Tangerine Dream, while the Selecter fits nicely with Plaid.

Orbital even threw on one of their favorite rock tracks: "Living in the Past" by Jethro Tull. "When we were playing it back in the studio, they're like 'This track is when we were experimenting [with drugs] when I was fifteen,'" says Darby. "They used to play tapes of Jethro Tull and get stoned in a sewer pipe."

Hartnoll, who was adamant only in his desire not to create another chill-out mix, is very pleased with the results. "This is what you would get if you come back to mine after the pub -- going through your record collection in a mad, manic sort of way," he says. "You never play a song for more than a few minutes before you've got another one you have to put on."

ANDREW STRICKMAN
(July 16, 2002)