Various, Cained

My name isn't Michael Caine. If it was, I would have been having dinner at Elton John's a few months back, as you do as fellow knights of the realm, listening to some cool balearic mixes, when I confessed to being a secret DJ who has made little compilation tapes for friends for 40 years. Would you Adam and Eve it, if Elton doesn't get on the phone to the president of Universal and get me a three-album deal on the spot.

The first album of 'chilled classics' selected by Sir Michael has the snappy title Cained - redolent of excess and a touch of kinkiness. The Caine brand remains strong, despite his having appeared in some of the worst films in history. (Of Jaws: the Revenge he said: 'I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.') But then he also made Alfie, Get Carter and The Ipcress File.

After Maurice Micklewhite shrunk his name he became one of the most exportable icons of Sixties swinging British masculinity along with other monosyllabically monikered sadistic flaneurs such as Steed and Bond, both of whose iPods we would like to hear. Chances are, however, they would view their little gadgets with suspicion, not least because usually they invite isolation and so are useless as a weapon of seduction - and this compilation aims to seduce. Ideally Cained should be played in a bachelor's penthouse whose contents include a leather sofa and a waterbed, plus a remote to close the curtains and adjust the lights. Add, too, an impressionable object of desire, preferably one who dreams of stardom and whose head is spinning from champagne.

For the most part, she would be impressed by Cained, although your more sophisticated types might be less taken by the odd track such as St Germain's 'Rose Rouge' (the one with the Marlena Shaw sample: 'I want you to get together') on the basis of over-familiarity. The first few tracks possess a certain somnolent cool - witness Chicane's 'No Ordinary Morning' and Doctor Rockit's 'Cafe de Flore' - after which Cained moves onto some fine examples of boozy good taste, such as Felix Da Housecat's mix of Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman' and John Martyn's 'Sunshine's Better'. Magnet's version of 'Lay Lady Lay' makes your intentions clear, Atman's 'Path of Love' and Agartha's 'Crossing' allow you to display your sensitive side, and Stan Getz ('Street Tattoo') and Eva Cassidy ('Fields of Gold') prepare the way for the killer finale, the immortal 'Move Closer' by Phyllis Nelson. And if after all of that no moving closer has transpired, it's probably not going to happen.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKWlqLake5FpZ3Bnkaq0cH2RaKeoqJGjsbO7wqRlrKCfpb2qusZqaQ%3D%3D