(DMC Records)

I had to take a quick look twice at the press release accompanying this disc to confirm that DMC’s highly successful ‘Back To Mine’ mix CD series had reached its eighteenth instalment with this latest selection from 50% of the UK downtempo act Lamb – and looking back, the series has come a long way since its beginnings back in 1998. When the first few chapters of the Back To Mine series emerged on shelves, the focus was primarily upon taking a big name DJ usually known for pounding dancefloor action, and showcasing a hiterto unheard side of each one by persuading them to compile the sort of after-hours comedown set they’d assemble in their own home – hence the ‘Back To Mine’ title.

Following NYC DJ Danny Tenaglia’s contribution to the series (actually volume three), the focus of the series expanded to encompass a diverse spread of bands, DJs and producers (ranging from The Orb and bootleg king Richard X, right through to the stadium-straddling likes of New Order and Faithless), and perhaps most significantly, also marked a move away from the seamlessly mixed style of the early chapters. With later volumes, the emphasis was far more upon getting each compiler to assemble a version of the classic ‘favourites’ mixtape, manic genre-jumping and warts-and-all blending between tracks, with more attention given to track selection rather the demands of BPMs. Mind you, this transition was by no means a bad thing especially given the inclusion of many rare or deleted classics on previous volumes of the series – the unmixed nature of this compilation series means that you’re more than likely to pick a fully-intact version of that lost 12” you’ve been chasing for years.

Curiously, the arrival of this latest chapter in the Back To Mine series is timed almost simultaneously this month with the release of Lamb’s greatest hits compilation ‘Best Kept Secrets’ in stores, although in this case it’s actually the instrumental / producer half of Lamb, Andy Barlow who’s doing the track selection, with vocalist Louise Rhodes M.I.A. Appropriately subtitled ‘The Voodoo Sessions’, Barlow’s tracklisting leans firmly towards both dub and world music influences, and in many ways is also a much more thematically cohesive listen from start to finish when compared with other recent volumes in the series. Opening with a short track titled ‘Intro’ from Tricky / David Holmes collaborator Martina Topley-Bird that layers multilayered backing vocals around an Ella Fitzgerald-esque husky soul croon from Topley-Bird that could have jumped straight off David Holmes’ ‘Free Association’ release, things soon slide down into the deep, Middle-Eastern tinged dub pulse of African Headcharge’s ‘Dinosaur’s Lament.’

With what sounds like slowly strummed sitar and a range of other stringed instruments, bells and percussion around a bottomless Adrian Sherwood dub backbone, ‘Dinosaur’s Lament’ calls to mind the deep dub meets world music soundclashes of Bill Laswell / Material, its deep bass pulse slowly giving way to the New Orleans voodoo bayou blues vibe of Dr. John’s essential classic ‘I Walk On Gilded Splinters’ (liberally sampled by Beck for his ‘Loser’ single), spine-chilling multitracked female back-up vocals melting into grizzled bluesman Dr. John’s catlike growl. Masters At Work’s gorgeous reworking of Nina Simone’s ‘See-Line Woman’ follows, fuses an organic-sounding samba-house backing along with some melodic snaking flute melodies seamlessly with Simone’s original vocal take, leading into French vocalist Melaaz’s swooning downtempo Gallic-language cover of the Dawn Penn reggae classic ‘No No No’.

Nitin Sawnhey’s well-known track ‘Prophecy’ offers an acoustic-tinged shift at this point, with plucked guitar notes ringing out over a widescreen backdrop of tablas, stringed instruments and massed vocals that’s both serene and slightly eerie as it inexorably acclerates towards its chanted climax, before ‘Sacred Space’ – an inclusion from Andy Barlow’s Hipoptimist side-project adds a bit of digital sheen, cracking breakbeats riding alongside furious tabla loops and a touch of acid squelch, in one of this disc’s more outwardly drum and bass-tinged moments. UK downtempo producer Hefner’s stunning reworking of Pakistani artist Omar Faruk Tekbilek’s ‘Shashkin’ melds deep double bass and a shuffling breakbeat with wailing muezzin instruments and hard-drummed percussion, providing a perfect segue into Drome’s (actually another alias for Flanger / Non-Place Urban Field’s Berndt Friedman) ‘Hoax (What Did You Got?)’, which emerges from Scanner-style hijacked phone conversation samples into Bollywood string swells propelled by a tight breakbeat, all laid over a spectral backdrop of theremin sound through which fragments of cut-up voices weave.

Chris Thomas King’s ‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ stops the beats and electronics right in their tracks, with simply King’s weathered and weary blues vocal placed over a lone acoustic slide guitar, before The Bug vs. The Rootsman’s epic dancehell soundclash ‘Killer’ slams in with the sort of shredding serrated beats seen on The Bug’s recent storming ‘Pressure’, He-Man’s manic ragga toasting pushing the intensity levels up to boilerpoint levels – after the dubby depths of the previous tracks, it slightly smacks of waiting for everyone else to spliff up, before tossing a grenade into the room. Finally ‘Nabintou Diakite’ by Damon Albarn’s recent African music explorations as ‘Mali Music’ closes this selection with the soothing Malian vocals of an unnamed female singer slowly trailing off over what sounds like a strummed ukelele.

‘Back To Mine: Lamb’ is definitely one of the most cohesive start-to-finish listens out of recent volumes in the series in that it flows smoothly between tracks (with the notable exceptions of virtual dub ‘jack-in-the-box’ ‘Killer’), rather than jumping wildly between tempos and genres like a friend’s mixtape. Leaning directly into the dub / reggae and world music spheres, Andy Barlow’s latest instalment in the series brings all the characteristic surprise inclusions and must-have rarities (heck, the Dr. John track in its full eight minutes is worth the entry price alone) that fans of the Back To Mine series have come to expect – plus, it’s virtually unmixed; what else could you possibly ask for?Recommended.

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