Since the release of his debut album, Far From The Maddening Crowds, Chicane's Nick Bracegirdle has been a bit of a busy chap. After tastefully reupholstered the Clannad classic "Theme From Harry's Game" into a melodic-trance masterpiece, he then confounded all expectations by taking rock atheist Bryan Adams to the top of the charts with the friskily euphoric "Don't Give Up". These pop-dance lovelies only paint half the picture though. In between the strident hooks and glacial breakdowns which characterise his Ibizan leanings, Bracegirdle also demonstrates a not-to-be-wasted classical training. The rest of the album pitches moist, velvety pads against ear-tickling flute and a smooth, cocooning ambience. The wistful "Autumn Tactics" glides along like a loved-up Beth Orton-distant guitars chiming over whispered breakbeats, while "Low Sun" taking the baton from A Man Called Adam is like a pure Balearic dawn. All in all, prerequisite summer listening. -Paul Tierney.

Once again, Keiren Hebden-aka Four Tet-has set the bar high for what can be done with dance music. Kicking off with "A Joy" (doing exactly what it says in the title), the benchmark for the whole album is set early, based around a frenetic fuzz bass riff and a drum loop, interspersed with backwards percussion, it's simultaneously uplifting and also terrifying. The following "Smile Around The Face" is another literal title, this time far more explicit in its positive vibe; more drum loops, but this time with a grin-inducing samples halfway between birdsong and organ. In fact, the drums are probably the raison d'etre for this album; in the same way that DJ Shadow's Endtroducing was a masterpiece of what can be done with drum breaks and instrumental snatches, so this album follows the same path, but on a less aggressive scale. The vigorous "Sun Drums and Soil" morphs into a jazz-tinged number; while a few of the tracks ("You Were there With Me" and "Clouding") are more collections of ambient chimes and noises. It's redundant to pick a highlight on such a strong collection; just enjoy. -Thom Allott.

ESCM, the second album from Washington DC-based producer Brian Transeau (aka BT), is proof-if any were needed-of the musical worth of dance music. Transeau started out as a classically trained musician, before turning his hand to house music in the early 1990s. This traditional background shines through on ESCM, with progressive house and trance rhythms being given string overdubs and sound washes reminiscent of Brian Eno or other avant garde ambient artists. "Flaming June" is an almost perfect club anthem, while "Remember", featuring the vocals of Jan Johnston, mixes breakbeats into BT's lush soundsape. Transeau manages to pull off huge changes in genre-from drum & bass (the breathtaking "Road to Lostwithiel" and "Orbitus Terranium") to dirty grunge (the confusing "Solar Plexus")-whilst still retaining a beautifully layered trademark sound. This is a great album, and one which can be savoured by club heads and armchair listeners alike. -Matt Anniss.

Uwe Schidt-the man behind the Senor Coconut persona-is known for cooking up tasty surprises like El Baile Aleman. Since the mid-90s he has been one of the most imaginative and entertaining producers (concept-wise) on the electronic music scene, creating an astonishing body of work under a bewildering variety of nom-de-disques including Atomheart, Flanger (with Burnt Friedman), Lassique Benthaus, LB, Geez 'n' Gosh and many more. This latest project was inspired principally by Schmidt's move to Chile a few years ago, where he began to explore Latin sounds and came up with the idea of merging them with the most contrastive sound he could think of: the rigid electronica of Kraftwerk. This attempt to meld supposedly polarised sounds shouldn't really work, but on it does. Though the album has a live, organic and thoroughly Latin feel to it, it was created solely by Schmidt on computers (apart from some vocalists he brought in)-his way of showing the blurred lines between live and programmed sounds. The stiff, reserved sounds of Germany's electronic legends give way surprisingly easily to Schmidt's swings and rumbas, lending the music a sexy edge it never quite had before. There's a political dimension too, in the fusion of first world electronica and third world folk sounds, which won't have escaped academic Schmidt, but first and foremost this is about making computers sound fun. Genius. -Paul Sullivan.

Historically speaking, it was at about this point that the Shamen drifted away from their traditional constituency-the rave crowd who'd supported them up to and including the En-Tact album-and began to make serious inroads on the UK and European charts, courtesy of a string of glossy, lightweight singles: "LSI (Love, Sex, Intelligence)", "Ebeneezer Goode" (with its notorious "Eezer good" chorus-perhaps the most crashingly unsubtle drug reference in pop history) and "Phorever People". The difference? Simply the increased prominence of vocalist Mr C. With his plummy, enunciated "raps", his fey, finger-waving dances, and his apparent lack of anything even vaguely resembling a groove, there was a lot of unkind speculation in the music press as to just what that "C" stood for-accompanied by much moaning on the part of the longtime fans-but as the group's sound shifted from techno to euro-pop, its bank balance never looked healthier. -Andrew McGuire.

Not so much a greatest-hits package as it is an overview of contemporary British club music, 808:88:98 recaps a decade's worth of electronica milestones and trends as filtered through the 808 State time machine. The Manchester group's eclectic mix of soulful grooves, grinding rhythms, and imaginative vocal performances reveals why they have managed to stay relevant in such a typically fickle genre after all this time. Granted, certain selections stand the test of time better than others, like the silky "Pacific 707" and Björk's early entrée into dance music on "Ooops," which still manages to tingle the spine. The bloated techno bombast of "In Your Face" and the terrifying cockney rap-laced "The Only Rhyme That Bites," however, sound like they passed their sell-by dates a long time ago. -Aidin Vaziri.