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Ever since the BBC's superb Jazz 625 series in the mid-Sixties when Humphrey Lyttelton introduced the likes of Art Blakey Thelonious Monk

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Ever since the BBC's superb Jazz 625 series in the mid-Sixties, when Humphrey Lyttelton introduced the likes of Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk and Cannonball Adderley to both a live studio audience and a nation of viewers watching the wonderfully high contrast black and white broadcasts at home, jazz has had to struggle to find a place in the schedules at all, and then struggle once again for sympathetic treatment. More worrying, though, is the fact that none of the producers can disguise the depredations of time upon that mighty voice, which seems shrill and strained, a brittle reflection of its original power - most grievously on Dupri's appropriately fatalistic "Here We Go Again", where, in attempting the kind of annoying showboating now considered de rigueur for soul divas, she emits an embarrassing series of squawks, all the more painful for our knowing how far short they fall of Aretha's capabilities.. The strategy of pairing her in turn with all the big swingbeat and contemporary R&B producers - the likes of Sean "Puffy" Combs, Narada Michael Walden, Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin and Daryl Simmons - is uninspired at best, and betrays a more general lack of conviction. By any other name, this Rose would stink - if it's not the worst album of Aretha's illustrious career, it shaves it pretty close. It's not often you get to applaud a musician's courageous asininity, but such is the undeniably weird appeal of Push the Button.ARETHA FRANKLINA Rose is Still a Rose (Arista 07822 18987 2)But not all roses smell as sweet.

Equally oddball in a variety of styles from Latin to funk, jungle to punk, Mark's at his most engaging on simple, ingenuous pieces such as "Tomorrow Will Be Like Today" and the single "Maybe I'm Dead", though even then he can't resist the disjunction between the song's curious sentiment and its agreeably mild delivery. There's a scattershot, Beck-ish playfulness about this second album from the man they're calling "the fourth Beastie", and though it's ultimately not quite as adhesive or rewarding as Beck's best work - there's a little too much cheesy lounge music here for comfort, if that's not a contradiction in terms - it's diverting enough for the most part. But the revolutionary/terrorist action hailed in tracks such as "Naxalite" and "Assassin" is, significantly, historical, concerned with the Indian subcontinent's situation in, respectively, the late Sixties and the late Thirties. The positive cross-cultural drive of "Culture Move" and "Black White" carries much greater hope for the future. As rapper Deeder Zaman states, with irrefutable logic, "As the world is getting smaller/We can only get closer and closer".MONEY MARK Push the Button (Mo'Wax MWO 90CD)If push came to shove, keyboard wizard Mark Ramos-Nishita could probably provide a reasonably comprehensive survey of American music culture all on his own, judging by the admirably eclectic Push the Button. mixing up the flavours to suit every taste".It's not all sweetness and light, of course: the single "Free Satpal Ram" draws attention to an old wound in need of attention - the lengthy imprisonment of an Indian waiter who killed while defending himself from racist attack - and there are sadly familiar complaints about police oppression and injustice.

In ADF's "Dub Mentality", dub itself is characterised as a symbolic miscegenation, a case of "Different communities meet[ing] up in the same place ... Asian Dub Foundation's music says more about the UK's ethnic mix than any concept album could: the stew of house, rap, indie, Asian and Caribbean modes in Rafi's Revenge celebrates by example the cultural diversity of a Britain whose people are, on the whole, rather more generous than Enoch Powell ever gave them credit for. Check it out.ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION Rafi's Revenge (ffrr 556 006-2)Fortunately, multi-cultural eclecticism is a much more natural, less mannered occurrence in modern Britain than it is in America. But it's a noble enough project, intended to remind Americans of a multi-cultural legacy, and one that should interest anyone attracted to the likes of Tom Waits, the Band, or even rootsy young upstarts like Gomez. Elsewhere, Lauper excels on "White Man's Melody", a luxuriantly sexy torch ballad that includes the album's most winning lines: "From the loins of Liberace/Sprang a million little tunes/And they whirled around Eliza/Like so many little moons."Largo does, admittedly, lose some of its power towards the end, especially when Carole King shows up to offer a maundering sermon about how we should all live together in peace and love; and it's probably a mistake to have Willie Nile portray a Pakistani cab-driver in New York - as the latest in a long line of huddled masses plucking at the Statue of Liberty's hem - with no hint of the requisite Asian musical input. Several tracks are strongly reminiscent of the Band, and not just those on which Hudson or Levon Helm appear: Rob Hyman does a good impression of Hudson's woozy- organ style, and there's a lovely undercurrent of country-funk coursing through much of the album.

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