Review: Various Artists, Back to Mine, Krafty Kuts

What do club DJs listen to when they get back home after the gig?  Providing an answer to that question is the idea behind the long running Back to Mine series of mix CDs.  Krafty Kuts (Martin Reaves) is an up and coming UK DJ and his Back to Mine is the 28th volume in the series. 

The set combines 18 segments of hip hop, funk, acid jazz, and various types of dance music into a mix that Krafty Kuts says was intended to “stand the test of time”.  As you would expect from a club DJ, the transitions between songs are often well done with the move from Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You” to the Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of “In-A-Gadda-D-Vida” being especially nice.  The set opens with “Pork Pie Stride” by obscure acid jazz group the Sharpshooters which is a terrific find.  If the mix had continued in the vein of fine and generally forgotten tracks like this it would have been a stone cold winner.  Unfortunately too many of the tunes in the mix such as Paul Hardcastle’s “Rain Forest”, Tyrone Brunson’s “The Smurf” and Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” are so familiar and so over used that they lend the entire set a feeling of been-there, done-that, tired-of-it.

Mix tapes tend to be more fun to put together than to listen to afterwards and often appeal more to the person who made them than to the listener.  The notes Krafty Kuts provides for this set indicate he put time and effort into the mix and the result has been a collection that holds both meaning and importance for him.  For the listener, on the other hand, it comes across as just another mix tape.