The latest releases reviewed.

FLYING LOTUS Reset Warp ****

Those who have yet to fall under the spell of Steven Ellison's space- age soul music can make amends right away with this cracking mini-album. Ellison first got heads nodding with last year's 1983 album for the Plug Research label, but these tracks show that the LA producer with family connections to the Coltrane jazz dynasty lives in a very different musical galaxy. It's striking how Ellison can coax and tease so much loveliness and sensuality from the simplest of sounds and ideas. On Tea Leaf Dancers, for instance, singer Andreya Triana virtually glides over Ellison's ocean of ambient swirls, patterns and bubbles, while Spicy Sammich has oodles of vibrant colours and loose-limbed hip-hop structures. We'll doubtless hear much more from this quarter in time. www.myspace.com/flyinglotus

JIM CARROLL

Download tracks: Tea Leaf Dancers, Vegas Collie