POP: CD REVIEWS

POP

FIONA STURGES

G.LOVE AND SPECIAL SAUCE: PHILADELPHONIC (Epic)

Rumour has it that G.Love started life as buskers. That is not to suggest that their music is ramshackle; but it has always had a street eclecticism. With its bluesy harmonicas, Latin strings and breezy funk grooves, Philadelphonic sees G.Love staying true to their magpie beginnings and continuing genially to explore the possibilities of women, booze and cars. The hip-hop influences give it a more

contemporary feel, and Love's low-key rapping is more fluid than ever. It's the perfect feel-good album: not altogether challenging but as engaging as a frolic in the sun.

INNERZONE ORCHESTRA: PROGRAMMED (Talkin' Loud) You would think that those working in the experimental field would disassociate themselves from the ubiquitous pre-millennial angst. But in the blurb for Carl Craig's latest outing, he portentously observes that "We will be living in the future very soon". Mmmm. But this montage of slo-mo rap and stuttered drum loops plunders a decade of experimentalism, rather than looking forward as it purports. The opening track borrows Scanner's once-revolutionary penchant for bugging the airwaves, while other tracks contain nods to Plastikman and Shadow as well as post-rockers like Karamasov and Tortoise. Bombastic background noise.

DANCE

LAURENCE PHELAN

PESHAY: MILES FROM HOME (Blue)

Completed last year but left on the shelf while Mo' Wax boss James Lavelle worked on his UNKLE project, Peshay's debut has been dusted off by new Island offshoot, Blue. Miles From Home turns out to be the freshest drum'n'bass album since Roni Size's New Forms. It shares that album's live instrumentation vibe and double-bass fetish to finally deliver on everything that drum'n'bass's long courtship of jazz had promised. It's the album Art Blakey would have made if he had had an extra pair of arms and if his Jazz Messengers had kept up to date with developments in funk, electro, hip hop and jungle. Even garage is added when Eighties pop diva Kym Mazelle lays vocals over the relaxed piano melody, lush strings and precision breakbeat on "Truly", the track which might just see this fantastic, eclectic and innovative album break as big as it should.

m-ZIQ: ROYAL ASTRONOMY (Hut)

If you're ever listening to some disturbing but strangely beautiful music but think your hi-fi equipment may be faulty - the CD skips and you seem to get interference from a radio station playing the Grange Hill theme music circa 1984 - don't panic. It could just be that you are listening to the fifth album from quirky techno producer Mike Paradinas, aka m-Ziq (pronounced "musique"). Scattered between effortlessly musical tracks - like "Scaling", a Philip Glass-style string soundscape, or "The Hwicci Song", which sounds like Michael Nyman meeting the Scratch Perverts - are the usual aural doodles that sound like Paradinas has miked up a bunch of Clangers and fed them muesli. Occasionally the squelching acid basslines or scattershot breakbeats are obscured by that one loop too many. But if you persevere, m-Ziq's innate musicality wins out over his fondness for daft avant-gardism.

JAZZ

PHIL JOHNSON

MICHEL BENITA: LOWER THE WALLS (Label Bleu, distributed by New Note)

Gorgeously soppy and lyrical French jazz by a sextet which features the limpidly melodic sax of Englishman Andy Sheppard. Delicate acoustic backings by Benita on double bass, together with guitar and percussion, are decorated by Sheppard's tenor and soprano stipples, with occasional vocals by David Linx adding to the overall impressionistic effect. As a contribution to the genre of summer jazz - to be played ideally out of doors in a foreign country while drinking lots of dry white wine - this is hard to beat.