Coming Home

Tim "Love" Lee got his start as an organist for 1980s pop legends Katrina & the Waves before embarking on a solo career as a producer and remix artist and building a solid reputation as a master of downtempo grooves and rare groove arcana. For Coming Home he has brought together a wide variety of favorite tracks and managed to imbue all of them with something of his own wistful, borderline hippie style. That he's able to do so consistently with such disparate material as the faux-jazz "He Needs Me" by Incog, the retro-pop "She Is Groovy" by the White Sport, the swinging "Moochin'" by Brother from Another Planet, and the weirdly glitchy "No Hopper" by Al Chem is testimony to both his catholic tastes and his ability to impose his own influence without sapping the essence of other artists' work. Other notable tracks on this album include a contribution from Dub Syndicate (though "Wellie" was perhaps not the strongest possible choice from that group's deep catalog), a bizarre tango-flavored mix of Gudrun Gut's "Move Me," and Lee's own abstract and strange "First Base Bossa." The album slows down and softens up toward the end, but retains a nicely chilled (if less interesting) mood. Recommended. ~ Rick Anderson|