Apparently there's nothing in Kabbalah that disallows sweaty, head-spinningly good dance music, because here comes a flame-haired Madonna hawking a dozen songs' worth: Confessions on a Dance Floor darts seamlessly from Madge's early days, when she emerged as the genre's enduring darling, through the political, kiddie, and acoustic pap that drove a wedge between her and early adopters of the fingerless glove look. Songs like the pop-leaning "Jump" and first single "Hung Up"-an adrenaline drip on high that, like many of these tracks, will inspire mild shame among those who've thrilled to the much thinner disco-dusted outpourings of younger divas recently-represent both a return to form and an unmistakable march into the future. "Get Together" is a sonic freak-out in the best sense; "Push" traffics in gut-level futuristic trance; and "Forbidden Love" loops in '80s blips and bleeps for a follow-me-into-the-past effect that's both neo and retro. For all the image-affirming innovations here, though, these confessions find Madonna framed in her share of reflective moments too. "Was it all worth it/How did I earn it?" she asks on "How High," a song featuring vocoder. "Nobody's perfect/I guess I deserve it," comes the answer. A later lyrical inquiry is left for the listener to judge: "Does this get any better?" Madonna wants to know. But that opens the door to a dizzying proposition-few of us would have guessed, after all, that it got this good. -Tammy La Gorce More to Explore Immaculate Collection (CD) GHV2 (binding) Madonna ~ Lotsa De Casha (Hardcover) Official Madonna Calendar See more Madonna.

The Avalanches are a much-feted six-man crew of sample-addicts from down-under, whose debut album Since I Left You is a bargain-bin vinyl throwback to the Daisy Age. Their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach is exemplified by their debut single, "Since I Left You", which opens the record with its wistful disco-samba shuffle and a scintillating sliced-and-diced soul vocal. The album is constructed like a mix tape and calculated to tweak the dance floor. Snatches of familiar rhythms bubble up throughout, giving the record a comfortable lived-in feel, but also betraying the fact that the group haven't dug very far through the crates to source their raw material. Vast chunks of records by Madonna, Art of Noise, Kid Creole And The Coconuts and Parisian hip-hoppers Saian Supa Crew are easily identifiable. There's little doubt that this kind of sample re-construction has become standard fare for retrogressive adolescents with a mania for collecting records and precious little musical flair. The Avalanches get full marks for their seamless mixing skills, but otherwise it all feels way too neat and tidy, bristling with its own inventiveness when it should strive for something that transcends its influences. For every innovator like DJ Shadow and Dan the Automator, there will be an avalanche of imitators. -Chris Campion.

Gwen Stefani's second solo album, The Sweet Escape, finds the sassy blonde starlet moving even farther away from her ska-punk No Doubt origins. This time around, as apparent from the album cover alone, the focus is clearly on bling, not swing. Which would explain why her collaborators on The Sweet Escape are practically a who's-who of contemporary urban music producers: Akon (who also guests on the title track), Nellee Hooper and, of course, The Neptunes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's The Neptunes, with their playful pop sensibilities, who are responsible for some of the catchiest tracks here-"Orange County Girl", which is a SoCal version of "Jenny From the Block", the sultry and sparse "Yummy" (which features vocals by Pharrell) and the Sound of Music sampling first single "Wind It Up". The lesser known Swizz Beatz, meanwhile, have somehow produced Stefani's most Neptunes-sounding track with "Now That You Got It". The most surprising track, considering the source, is "Early Winter", a straightforward rock ballad produced not by her longtime No Doubt collaborator Tony Kamal, but by slick R&B specialist Hooper. Fans looking for a return to Stefani's indie roots may find this album a bit of a shock, but The Sweet Escape should find a home in both dancefloors and the pop charts. -Ted Kord.

HIStory's two CDs (one hits, the other new) were Jackson's attempt to connect his glorious past to a dodgy present and-given it's commercial and artistic performance-cast a shadow on his future. Conceived as his formal coronation as the "King of Pop", HIStory's second disc instead presents Jackson as an epauletted, single-gloved Richard III. By turns paranoid, angry, bitter, sentimental, and, in one instance, possibly anti-Semitic, HIStory was less a collection of songs than a case history. A few tracks-mostly those produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-are sleek, modern pop/soul, but too much of HIStory has the overblown vacuousness of a musician who knows his time is past, but is unsure as to how to react to the situation. -Steven Mirkin HIStory's 2 CDs (one hits, the other new) were Jackson's attempt to connect his glorious past to a dodgy present and-given it's commercial and artistic performance-cast a shadow on his future. Conceived as his formal coronation as the "King of Pop," HIStory's second disc instead presents Jackson as an epauletted, single-gloved Richard III. By turns paranoid, angry, bitter, sentimental, and, in one instance, possibly anti-Semitic, HIStory was less a collection of songs than a case history. A few tracks-mostly those produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-are sleek, modern pop/soul, but too much of HIStory has the overblown vacuousness of a musician who knows his time is past, but is unsure as to how to react to the situation. -Steven Mirkin.

People get excited about the prospect of a new Boards Of Canada album, and The Campfire Headphase again confirms exactly why. Coming just two years after Geogaddi-a blink of an eye, in Boards terms-this, the Scots duo's third full length LP unfurls 15 tracks of languid, warm, but strangely absorbing soundscapes of eddying beats and trilling synth. Lighter in tone than Geogaddi, the likes of "Satellite Anthem Icarus" replace Boards' eerie undercurrents with a brighter, more optimistic moods. New too is the presence of guitar, albeit often of the heavily-treated variety: "Constants Are Changing" hides ringing acoustic chords in a whirlpool of woozy keyboard wash, while "Hey Saturday Sun" loops a strange, cyclical melody that's nicely complemented by some thrumming synthetic bass lines. Mind you, the album stand-outs hail from a firmly electronic base-see "Oscar See Through Red Eye", which emerges from an ambient cocoon and gradually evolves into a distant cousin of acid house, dry handclaps and psychedelic digital blips dotted in the warm sonic mulch. Perhaps there's not enough fresh here to confirm Boards Of Canada as cutting-edge sonic trailblazers, but as ever, their familiarity remains a strong part of their appeal, and The Campfire Headphase confirms that their quality threshold remains way up there. -Louis Pattison.

Given that remixers' recourse to acoustica is the next logical link to down-tempo electronica, it's no surprise that the Kings of Convenience's beguiling debut has undergone this treatment. Versus sees the winsome, lovelorn ditties of Quiet is the New Loud reinterpreted by the likes of fellow Norwegians Royksopp (whose lovely remix of "I Don't Know What to Save You From" appeared on the "Failure" single), Four Tet, Ladytron and Alfie, amongst others. Apart from Ladytron, who opt for their characteristic warped synth-pop, on the whole the assembled cast choose to gently tweak the songs, rather than offer any radical reworking of them. Evil Tordivel update "Leaning Against the Wall" with sprightly horns and keyboards, leaving the song less introspective, but still recognisable. Wayward folksters Alfie remake "Failure" (also included on the single), but are less successful, as its skewed lo-fi tends to overbear much of the all-important melody. Riton's remix of "The Girl From Back Then" adds gentle sprinkles of nonchalant, shuffling beats, but the highlight, is the "Weight of My Words" remix by Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet. As showcased on his glorious Pause album, he melds bubbling electronica with an organic, folky ambience, perfectly demonstrating the premise of Versus. - Suzannah Brown.

After three albums that seemed to find Moby in some sort of creative stasis, Last Night sees the once-restless DJ/producer changing the record and returning to one of his first loves: the heaving dancefloors of his native New York. Soulful, uplifting piano rave is the order of the day here, and while some hallmarks of Play remain-Moby still has a fascination for long, tearful synth lines and sampled vocals, which he drops in here and there, seemingly to yield the maximum emotional response-Last Night still feels like a clean slate. "I Like to Move in Here" shimmies along on a languid house beat that doffs a cap to early hip-hop in the shape of a cameo from MC Grandmaster Caz, one of the writers of "Rapper's Delight", while "Everyday It's 1989" is the sort of overdriven, ecstatic piano house that Moby perfected on his 1995 classic Everything Is Wrong. There's more guest spots in the shape of British MC Aynzli, the Nigerian 419 Squad and Sylvia from dark NYC disco band Kudu, but the most impressive thing about Last Night is the peaks that Moby can reach when he's working alone: see the grand, emotive swell of "Sweet Apocalypse", cold synths and driving beats that, were it released by James Murphy, would be hailed as genius-and rightfully, too. -Louis Pattison.

"All pop music begins with Kraftwerk", it has been said-and, indeed, the 1970s experiments in minimalist electronics on the part of these four reclusive and bourgeois-looking young Dusseldorf men were directly responsible for the electrified landscape of subsequent decades of rock, pop and dance music. The album is dominated by its 22-minute title track, a beautiful electronic simulation of a motorway journey, from cranking up the engine to bowling along grey lanes cutting a swathe through the countryside, swerving and hooting the horn. Kraftwerk were prefiguring music's next step into the machine age but the antipathy they aroused in 1974 exposed the deluded Luddite tendencies of the pre-punk critical establishment who felt that music could only remain "real" by remaining as close to "nature" as possible. Kraftwerk slyly undermined this notion. After Kraftwerk, pop music would echo, not reject the sounds and rhythms of modern life. -David Stubbs.

For an artist who only released four proper albums in a 15-year career, it's astounding to recall how many hits Whitney Houston was able to achieve. The two CDs on Greatest Hits track Houston's rise from mid-1980s hit machine balladeer to standard-setting diva. Disc 1, CoolDown, runs chronologically through Houston's down-tempo love songs, from "Saving All My Love For You" and "I Will Always Love You" to the cleverly conceived new duet with Deborah Cox, "Same Script, Different Cast". She's also showcased as the remixee of choice for DJs on the second disc, Throw Down, which serves as the antidote to the lovesick first disc. Calling in marquee mix masters, Houston's old-shoe tunes get a new millennium polish. "My Love Is Your Love", reinterpreted by Jonathan Peters, captures the versatility of Houston's songs by making the downbeats danceable without going totally Euro-cheese. In contrast, Junior Vasquez's remix of 1985's "How Will I Know" pokes fun at the song's 1980s fluffiness by layering in bells, lasers effects, and echoes on top of Whitney's enthusiastic vocals. -Heidi Sherman.