One of Stevie Wonder's best albums, and the one where his more fanciful, free-form moments gel perfectly with his knack for irresistible pop singles. 1973's Innervisions swings between delicate and airy ballads, Latin-influenced rhythms (the hit "Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing"), and his own synth-heavy versions of gut-bucket soul (the determined spiritual questing of "Higher Ground"). The striking juxtaposition between "Vision", a barely breathed hope that a world of peace might be upon us, and the great "Living for the City", a funky, pulsing tale of racism, is powerful, haunting, and still all too relevant. -David Cantwell.

The Best of Groove Armada charts the success of one of the UK's most popular dance acts. Featuring the biggest hits from their last three albums, this anthology of their time on the Jive label is packed with downbeat and upbeat anthems, and an array of music as heard in film, television and radio. The subdued intro and trombone melody of "Superstylin" opens the collection softly with the now legendary bassline kicking in for a perfect euphoric moment. Other upbeat anthems include the piano house of "If Everybody Looked the Same", the Fatboy Slim mix of Gramma Funk's "I See You Baby" (both of which have been used to sell cars) and the more recent disco hit, "Easy". However, although Tom Findlay and Andy Kato pack dance floors every weekend, it's their downbeat soul that receives most attention, partly due to the "chillout" explosion of 2000 that made "At the River" a classic of the genre. With their last album Lovebox, GA showed a more versatile, band-influenced side with songs like the Status Quo sampling "Purple Haze", the rocky "Madder" and fun-loving ska of "But I feel Good". The Best of Groove Armada is a great selection of songs showing the diversity and musical progression of the band, a perfect introduction for the un-initiated and a good collection for those already converted. -Georgina Collins.

On Boy in the Corner, 18-year-old East Londoner Dylan "Dizzee Rascal" Mills sets himself the task of melding British hip-hop with UK-garage. Both styles have an unenviable history of providing a sonic backdrop to violence and criminality, and both are subject to excessive scrutiny from obsessive purists who view miscegenation as heresy. So it's little surprise that Mills' debut sounds so paranoid, claustrophobic and unsettling; this is front-line music, fidgety, distracted and distracting. It is, in the main slow, stripped-down and awkward, recalling Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa, Schooly D and LL Cool J as much as Dizzee's UK peers. At times it lives up to the extravagant praise many have already bestowed upon it. "I Luv U", the nagging single, is brilliantly conceived-boy and girl talking about one another without hearing, a perfect encapsulation of how disconnection is the norm, even if you've got two mobiles, a pager and an e-mail address. "Fix Up, Look Sharp", sampled from Billy Squier's 1980 rock classic "Big Beat", is as near as the record comes to straightforward rap, its joyous flavour provides a much needed moment of uplift to what is an often brilliant but densely oppressive album. -Angus Batey.

It takes a special sort of guts to call your debut album I Created Disco, but that's Calvin Harris all over. Hailing from Dumfries, Scotland, Harris comes on not unlike a day-glo cross between Les Rythmes Digitales, Prince and Mike `The Streets' Skinner, dropping witty rhymes and sweet falsetto melodies atop chunky, `80s influenced electro-pop. "Merrymaking at My Place" is an all-back-to-mine anthem built from digital squeaks and a palpitating disco bassline that sees Harris leading the party in swaggering geezer manner. "Vegas" is as close as you'll get to a bassbin-shaking ghetto anthem when you hail from north of Hadrian's Wall. And "Colours" is a cheeky plea to any potential girlfriend that they dress to impress: "Get some colours on!" Rumour has it Harris has been recording with Kylie, and it's easy to believe. Much like his lyrics, you see, these tracks are simple, but undeniably effective. Excellent breakthrough single "Acceptable In The `80s" bumps along with exactly the right mix of retro cheese and modern production gleam, while the title track pits stonking basslines and electronic whooshes against an amusing monologue about how Harris did, in fact, create disco. You won't believe him, exactly, but he's certainly got the patter. - Louis Pattison.

Sly & The Family Stone might have psychedelicised soul music, but Marvin Gaye personalised it. Although the powers-that-were Motown didn't even want to release the record, the unexpected success of What's Going On, issued in 1971, inspired Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and just about every other black artist on the planet to take greater responsibility for their music and its meaning. Gaye co-wrote the songs and produced the album, flavouring it with layer upon layer of his own multi-tracked vocals, oceans of hand percussion, strings, flutes and jazzy horn solos. Spacy and loose as a spliff-fuelled Sunday afternoon jam in the park, the nine songs all played like hit singles. The title track- inspired by his brother's return from the Vietnam War-and the obvious social commentary of "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" actually were hit singles. Two other tracks ("Wholly Holy" and "Save the Children") would inspire hit covers by Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross, respectively. Nevertheless, What's Going On sounds as fresh today as it did the week that it came out. -Don Waller.

By the late 1990s Vienna production duo Richard Dorfmeister and Peter Kruder had firmly established themselves as remixers par excellence, selecting key elements of other people's compositions and rebuilding them in their unique framework, which saw a collusion of Latin, dub and bossa. This outing on K7 collates their finest works in a double CD set, and though compiled in the spirit of DJ Kicks retains much of each track with the mixing itself barely noticeable as the material segues gently from outtro to intro. All of their best work is here, from the opening strains of Kruder's take on Roni Size's "Heroes" right through to the closing washes of "Million Town," highlights taking the form of a breathtaking, space aged dub of Depeche Mode's "Useless" and "Trans Fatty Acid" from Lamb, which weaves Louise Rhodes' angelic vocal into a sprawling, live groove. Fascinating late-night listening. -Kingsley Marshall.

Moon Safari, the first album proper by this pair of middle-class Frenchmen, easily survives unscathed from its billing as that most deadly of sub-genres: dinner party music. True, Moon Safari, with its blatant bliss-provoking easy listening chimes, sits well beside Everything But the Girl's Walking Wounded or Portishead's Dummy, but the album is steeped in too much musical verve and gallic humour to become as dull as Chardonnay. "Sexy Boy", the first single, is a rock-out slab of electronica about a toy monkey, for instance-hardly the thing to discuss in polite society. This album's highs come with their two marriages with the contributing vocals of American Beth Hirsch. "All I Need" and "You Make It Easy" are shockingly successful, with Hirsch bringing gravitas and sincerity, flagging the album with strong emotional pointers in the midst of their musical adventures. If you didn't know, you'd think her words were sampled from a lost jazz classic-that's how good this record sounds. -Charlie Porter.

The beat that got a generation dancing and brought ska back into the public eye. Produced by Elvis Costello, then still a boy wonder himself, the album built on the sound of the Specials' first two singles, and gave the world its first extended look at Two Tone. Inspired writing and arranging (much of it down to founder Jerry Dammers) with Terry Hall as the laconic front man made for a perfect combination, the riddim of ska and the speed of punk. As a testament to its power, two decades haven't lessened its impact. -Chris Nickson.

The young Frederick "Toots" Hibberts honed his vocal skills in the church. No surprise then that the music he recorded with The Maytals is largely gospel-tinged and very effectively backed up by the fervent, energetic rhythms of ska, the sound of the era in which much of it was recorded. Concentrating on their most productive period (between 1966 when Toots was released from jail on a cannabis charge and 1974), this collection features most of the group's biggest hits, many of which were successful in the UK as well as back home. It's a pure joy to listen to classics such as "54-46 That's My Number" (famously sampled by the Rebel MC in later years), "Pressure Drop" (covered by The Clash), "Bam Bam" (which won them the Jamaican Festival Song Competition), "Monkey Man" (a much covered hit that went down a storm in the UK) and "Do The Reggay", allegedly the record that coined the name, albeit with a different spelling. There is more than a dash of reggae and roots vibes sprinkled throughout these tracks and Toots's voice shines through the often heavy riddims with a beautiful, soulful clarity that cannot be denied. -Paul Sullivan.