Roni Size/Reprazent: In The Mode (Talkin Loud)
What do you do when your debut album takes over your life, wins a Mercury Music Award and sells and sells and sells? Well, if you are Roni Size, you gather your Reprazent collective for another outing and add some natural fusion to the mix. In The Mode rocks harder than any drum'n'bass album you care to mention. More hip and hop than drum'n'bass in places, the presence of Wu-Tang's Method Man, Roots mainman Rahzel and Rage Against The Machine voice Zack De La Rocha symbolise a new angle for Reprazent. While Size continues to float some jazzy licks in InOut, it's such tunes as Who Told You and In Tune With The Sound which really set the pace. A change, it seems, is as good as a rest.
Jim Carroll
The 4 Of Us: Off The Record (EMI)
With the success of last year's Classified Personal album, the Newry band are enjoying a revival of fortunes, but it's hard to see the logic behind this new album, a collection of reworked versions of old 4 Of Us songs. The Murphy brothers recorded these new versions in Antrim last summer, giving an acoustic chill-out flavour to early hits like Drag My Bad Name Down, and adding swirly electronic sounds to their best-known tune, Mary. To its credit, Off The Record throws the band's songwriting skills into sharp relief, the washes of keyboard and splashes of acoustic guitar allowing songs like Washington Down and She Hits Me to sparkle. With its laid-back production and easy pace, it will appeal to fans who bought Classified Personal, but I can't help thinking that The 4 Of Us should just pull the shades down on their back catalogue and get on with their bright-looking future.
Kevin Courtney
Andrew Strong: Out Of Time (EMI)
Just in case we've forgotten, the sticker on the CD cover reminds us that we're listening to the voice from The Commitments. Good thing they've told us, too, because you wouldn't know from this soul-less collection of covers by the singer who played Deco Cuffe in the Alan Parker movie. Strong is apparently big in Denmark, and this album has already shifted 50,000 units there - not bad for an album which sounds like a karaoke version of the Commitments soundtrack. The tunes could have been randomly chosen from a classic hits radio playlist, and include lumpen, lacklustre versions of Soul Man, Spinning Wheel, Forever Young, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, I'd Rather Go Blind and Born To Be Wild. It's bad enough that the musical arrangements are laboured and heavily lacquered, but the worst part is that Strong's voice seems to have lost that sweet, soulful instinct, and now sounds no different from a million other throaty rockers.
Kevin Courtney