Various: Verve//Remixed 2

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)

The second collection on which the Verve jazz label lets many a name DJ-producer into the vaults to have their wicked way with the back catalogue. Like the first, this stands or falls on whether the cut'n'pasters can create something new out of the vintage ingredients, or just get by on the combination of names. Like golly gee, Nina Simone and Felix Da Housecat or Ella Fitzgerald and Layo & Bushwacka — how terribly cool. Only those particular tracks — especially the house version of Simone's Sinner Man, which reins the rampant original into a dull club-thud — sound very much less than the sum of their parts. Actually both those women get two makeovers a piece. It's arguable that no one was going to take a sampler to Simone until she was dead and buried out of sheer fear of her reaction.

Elsewhere, the instrumental combos, such as Mr Scruff's take on Ramsey Lewis' Do What You Wanna and the Mondo Grosso's reworking of Blues for Brother George Jackson, work better, mainly because the divide between the old and the new is neatly blurred and they swing like crazy. And just to remind you what some tracks have lost in the translation, there's a bonus CD of the Verve originals, titled somewhat stupidly Verve//Unmixed2. Great way to annoy a DJ though: Do you have the "unmixed" version of that song? No? Why ever not?

Label: Verve