The best rhythm section in Jamaica wants to be the best rhythm section in the world. Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare have joined an axis of New York musicians, revolving around Language Barrier producer Bill Laswell, who are fashioning a new form of world music. The idea on this album is to combine jazz, reggae, Afro-Caribbean and soul music and emerge with a global fusion; but the illustrious guest musicians – including at least eight artists who have recorded their own albums – overlay their ideas and riffs and styles in a way that silences Sly and Robbie's muscular groove and replaces it with an indistinct notion of planetary pop.

Herbie Hancock's dominant keyboard punctuations and Doug E. Fresh's human beat-box hyperventilation make the instrumental "Bass and Trouble" sound like "The Fat Boys Remix 'Rockit.'" The phased vocal on "No Name on the Bullet" adds to the song's theme of random violence and Bob Dylan's wheezy harmonica fits perfectly, but neither makes the song particularly listenable. The group does borrow a nice melody from Miles Davis on "Miles (Black Satin)" and Shakespeare's bass rocks like a pounding heart, but the improvisation trips them up. And the title track, which aims to create a genuine world music by having Afrika Bambaataa invent a new vocabulary, is as silly as the Three Stooges' "Alphabet Song."

Laswell consistently keeps Sly and Robbie back in the mix, favoring a complex, collective propulsion common to African music. That seems okay with the duo, who declare an eight-minute manifesto on the album-opening "Make 'Em Move": "Keep the pace/Rock the whole damn place/It's a groove." But even as Bernie Worrell's pumping clavinet, Manu Dibango's vibrant sax and Daniel Ponce's cowbell lock into a steamy pace, Dunbar steals a lick from "Some Like It Hot." It's troubling to hear the same guy who rocked Dylan's and Jagger's recent albums, the same guy who can sustain Grace Jones' monotone over a whole album, borrowing from the Power Station. But on this record it's the only way to get noticed. (RS 459)

ROB TANNENBAUM