Money" Mark Ramos Nishita is an archive of outdated sounds: He could fill an ocean with stoopidfresh noises from Moog synthesizers, melodicas, old beatboxes and crappy guitar tones. But Nishita, the keyboardist for the Beastie Boys, isn't just a detritus man; he knows a pop song, and the breadth of his enthusiasm makes him one of the more valuable basement auteurs out there. Push the Button, his second album, needs eighteen tracks to get it all out: Nick Lowe-style power pop ("Tomorrow Will Be Like Today"), samba ("Bossa Nova 101"), Latin boogaloo ("Crowns") and Indian raga ("Dha Teen Ta").

It's a big step ahead from his last album, Mark's Keyboard Repair, in which Nishita filled thirty tracks with promising but undeveloped sketches. He can write songs with hooks, even songs well-suited to his narrow and thoroughly so-so singing voice. Even at his most conceptually clean (as in "All the People," a tender electric-piano soul crawl that recalls Al Green's The Belle Album), he doesn't transmit much; his lyrics are cold-fish attempts at warming up to his referents, and there's an inside-joke, late-night experimental feel to the record that doesn't break outside of a fairly shallow emotional perimeter. Highly recommended to all subscribers of Grand Royal magazine; others might not care. (RS 789)

BEN RATLIFF