The Beatles - Love (EMI B000JK8OYU)

A new album by the Beatles? This is a collection of their best remixed by George Martin and his son Giles for Cirque de Soleil's Las Vegas spectacular, Love. The tracks are not chronological, contain echoes of other Beatles tunes in the transitions between songs, sometimes brilliantly reworked and run together almost seamlessly. Some tracks are stripped right down, others substantially re-mixed, and they bring out aspects of over familiar songs you might not have remembered. It's a bit like a really good cover version of The Beatles by, um, The Beatles. If you are a Beatles fan, this is a must. If you are slightly nostalgic about them but feel sated by 40 years exposure to their repertoire, this may refresh your palate. In the end, however, it is a very high class, beautifully produced soundtrack to a Vegas spectacular. Perhaps that's inevitably the way music which once changed the world gets laid to rest.

JJ Cale and Eric Clapton - The Road to Escondido (Warners)

I better be moderate in what I say as I wouldn't want to have to make another recantation about the late career recordings of sixties legends. We know that these two fit perfectly together from Clapton's covers of Cocaine and After Midnight. And their voices and guitars work seamlessly together here. Indeed the opening track has a similar riff and the same structure as Cocaine. And later on there's a track with a strong similarity to Call Me The Breeze. This album won't challenge you, but it's high class blues shuffle and very listenable. It feels like snug, cosy fireside blues if you like, comfortable and warm. It's just that I prefer mine out in the wastelands, born in a cross-fire hurricane, and screaming in the teeth of a howling gale (to coin a phrase).

Damien Rice - 9 (14th Floor)

If you liked his debut album O you will like this. It's very much in the same vein - intense, intimate, haunting. For me 9 Crimes and Rootless Tree stand out. It is a class apart from David Gray and other modern acoustic singer songwriters and Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens wouldnt have bothered going back into the studio if he'd heard and thought about this first. A lot of it is about loss and therefore not to everyone's taste ("Does he have to drone on? What a dirge" was the reaction in the car ...) but I think it has moments of great beauty. The concert televised on BBC4 last year was one of the best recorded concerts I've ever seen.

Soweto Kinch - A Life In The Day of B19: Tales of the Tower Block - DUNE CD014

Two years after the multi-award winning 'Conversations With the Unseen' comes Soweto's second album. How's this for a synopsis; it's part one of a two-disc concept package based on the stories of 3 fictional characters living in a run-down flat block in Birmingham. Former Newsreader Moira Stewart acts as a narrator. Oh, and Soweto spends half his time rapping and the other half playing saxophone. Intrigued or put-off? Well, read on anyway.

It does make for quite a baffling read for those who haven't heard his work, just because it's such an ambitious album concept. Kinch is, however a very impressive saxophonist and lets the jazz songs really aquire a certain wistfulness amongst his blistering sax work. Which acts as a total compliment for his impressive narrative-rapping-storytelling style. There's nothing brash about his delivery, just a confidence, uniqueness and grasp of a totally different lyrical content which really sets him apart from anyone in the rap/hip-hop field.

High points for me, if I have to seperate them out are the stunning '10.30 Appointment' in which one of the album's characters, named 'S' visits the benefit office and has a disagreement about jobs with a Brummie employee (both voiced by Soweto himself). Also 'Adrian's Ballad' sticks out, a slow moving mid-life crisis sort of jazz song (come on, we all know them) with a ridiculously catchy sax refrain and the closing groove of 'The House That Love Built'.

It's very different to his previous album; there's more rapping and the jazz songs are a good amount shorter. However, this feels like a definite step up for the man, and quite simply it's a pretty daring, ambitious and incredible record. For sceptics, you can hear 4 songs from the album over at www.myspace.com/sowetokinch.