racy Thorne's voice is a curious, if not entirely alien creature. Born of the cool fog of Hull, England, it first crawled timidly but without weakness or reticence, initially with the Marine Girls, then supported exquisitely by Ben Watt's acoustic bridges and brilliant flashes of pop as Everything But The Girl. Their esoteric existence made them more puissant to their fans, as though the unintelligible mass of the world couldn't possibly appreciate the miracle bequeathed them: this beautiful, strange infant they called Everything But The Girl. After a decade or so, however, Todd Terry stumbled on their little alcove and introduced the duo to a new environ through his remix of “Missing.”

The song's success in the club world even leaked into the greater mainstream, and a new mass who hadn't heard of Thorne or Watt were craving more, all while a still-enraptured enclave existed who were unwilling to simply let their baby go. So Watt and Thorne evolved, but not hurriedly to the desiccated, enchanting streets of Hull or the unending, engrossing club sea. They took to the skies, where everything is fair, past the binary battle below, and released two beautiful albums: Walking Wounded in 1996 and Temperamental in 1999. Their new form wasn't an answer to listeners but a question: Will they maintain a crude subsistence on the earth, viewing every choice as a necessary point, or will they follow their child to the sky? Thorne and Watt asked if their fans would adapt or die.

Adapt or Die isn’t for those unfamiliar with EBTG; this isn’t a compilation meant to sway the uninitiated nor act as a proper introduction. But know this: Thorne and Watt did not switch from pop and acoustic to electronic as an afterthought, but rather harvested fully their combined energies to ensure that neither aspect of their fan base was ever disheartened by the change. Their catalogue is one of effort and sapience, of care and cool. The same standard is required of those who remixed for Adapt or Die: they can't be haphazard or flippant about the endeavor because only EBTG's fans will be listening.

The successful pieces don't try to change the structure of each song from without—because that will certainly fail—but amplify and deemphasize certain influences. Jay "Sinister" Sealle's remix of “Lullaby of Clubland” is a good example, as he playfully reconstructs the basslines so as to emphasize the song's dance orientation, while the Brad Wood Memphis Remix of “Single” updates Thorne's powerful sincerity, mutating the beat pattern to make it more kinetic while keeping the string samples from the original. The Fabio Remix of “Blame” showcases Walking Wounded's jungle predilections, while DJ Jazzy Jeff's remix of “Mirrorball” adds sprinkles of R&B.

Their cover of Astrud Gilberto’s “Corcovado,” edited nicely by Ben Watt himself, maintains the sentiment of the original without attempting to overshoot the bossa nova mood. The manner in which the tracks are arranged is also notable; established without concern for chronology, songs instead flow as independent elements fixed only by their particular personalities, yet flow and merge without artificial buffers. The only real failure of the entire album is the Pull Timewarp Remix of “Temperamental,” slowing down Thorne's performance to match the desired beat in a crude, almost sleight-of-hand fashion. Though this is the only example of outright dismantling, it still adulterates the otherwise stellar collection.

Sadly, Thorne and Watt may not be making music for a while as they both retired to raise a family. Yet a lot of effort went into their last two compilations. Their greatest hits album Like The Deserts Miss The Rain mashed indiscriminately the duo's career so as to show synthesis and symmetry rather than the coarse, fictive division between post-Terry and pre-Terry EBTG. The Adapt or Die compilation is a nearly flawless display of the duo's creative mark made bright because of superb handling by so many different hands. In hindsight then, Thorne and Watt leaving to raise a family makes sense: the next step of any organism's evolutionary process is to create another life.