Elsewhere:Puff and breezes in seductive debut

By GRAHAM REID

CAIA The Magic Dragon (Guidance/Flavour)

Produced by Groove Armada's Andy Cato, this debut album by the precociously talented Maiku Takahashi deserves to find great favour in chill-out rooms, fashionable suburban lounges, with fans of Groove Armada's Vertigo, and everywhere else with those who enjoy a late-night mood.

For decades Japanese musicians - think Stomu Yamashta's more melodious solo stuff, Ryuichi Sakamoto and even the swelling chintzy-synths of Kitaro - have had a mainline to effortless melodic ambience and Takahashi intuitively combines that history with subtle break beats, a trip-hop sensibility and warm washes of synths.

There's sometimes a solid pulse behind proceedings, but the foregrounds deliver attractive and slightly downbeat breezes that are elevating and always interesting.

Very seductive and one of the most impressive debuts in the smile-inducing, thoughtful downbeat genre since Lemon Jelly. Go.

HOWLIN' WOLF The London Sessions (MCA Deluxe Edition)

One of the most beloved blues albums of the early 70s was this super-session recorded when Howlin' Wolf went to London to work with the Stones' rhythm section of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, guitarist Eric Clapton, and others including Stones' pianoman Ian Stewart. And an uncredited Ringo Starr on I Ain't Superstitious.

The subsequent album was earthy but disciplined, a meeting of the old school master from Chicago's Chess studios with young English blues musicians who had grown up on his sound and knew it intimately.

It commanded considerable turntable time then, was much sought after by collectors down the years, and now - in the same Deluxe Edition series which has given Bob Marley albums a makeover - gets remastered and reissued with an extra disc of alternative takes, different mixes and unreleased material.

Not the easiest of sessions - the grumpy and ill Wolf intimidated Clapton who wondered why he was there when Wolf had his own guitarist, the boy wonder Hubert Sumlin - but Watts and Wyman settled things down on the second day and the result was a classic meeting of blues generations. And it still cooks.

Listen to them work up Little Red Rooster through a false start, get a rockin' momentum on Willie Dixon's propulsive Do the Do and a menacing Wang Dang Doodle for proof. And know Jack and Meg White Stripe probably have the original album on vinyl. Yep, that crucial.

PIETA BROWN Pieta Brown (Trailer Records)

Daughter of rightly acclaimed, Iowa-born, New York City-smart singer-songwriter Greg Brown (whose '92 Poet Game and more recent Covenant and Milk of the Moon are much recommended) and produced by his equally hailed guitarist/producer Bo Ramsey, this debut album irritates as much as it delights. Brown The Younger has a lazy, slurry delivery much like Lucinda Williams but without the sensuality (does she ever actually enunciate the end of a word?), so it sounds like an affectation to cover a voice which might reveal its lack of power and depth if extended.

Despite that - and Ramsey's typically skeletal arrangements and production add an attractive evocative quality - there is considerable appeal to some of the material and she sounds highly promising. But too often her melancholy lyrics are undernourished, and the minimalism sounds like a substitute for the deeper unspoken emotions it seems to suggest. However sometimes saying very little repeatedly is just saying very little repeatedly, not an entry into gravitas.

Think an acoustic, slightly country Chrissie Hynde who aspires to be Williams' understudy.