When US3 released their first album, Hand on the Torch, in 1993, the British acid-jazz crew – whose producer, Geoff Wilkinson, had secured the rights to sample anything from the archives of the fabled Blue Note jazz label – were hailed by some as pioneers of jazz-rap fusion. They were assailed by others for simply dressing up vintage jazz grooves as slick dancefloor hits. The reality was somewhere in between; tunes like the retro chic "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)," which borrowed heavily from Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island," made for interesting novelty but not much more.

For the follow-up, Broadway and 52nd (named after the former site of the famed New York jazz club Birdland), Wilkinson has tweaked the formula. He expanded the cast of live instrumentalists and rappers to flesh out the tracks, this time built mostly from obscure samples culled from deep in the Blue Note vaults. Unfortunately the album is mired by the same slavish devotion to a vintage jazz aesthetic. From the funky Horace Silver piano groove that drives "Caught Up in a Struggle" to the Lou Donaldson horn riff that runs through "Soul Brother" to the faux Beat poetry of "Sheep," the material too often sounds like something cooked up by Blue Note's marketing department rather than music with any vitality of its own.

There/are sparks of innovation. "Snakes," with its wiry 5/4 rhythm and aggressive rhyming by New York rapper KCB, and "Hymn for Her," a loose-limbed instrumental improvisation featuring saxophone and melodica, show how much Us3's jazz-rap framework can flex. But for the most part, the crew seems satisfied turning out gutless reworkings of '60s jazz. (RS 758)

JASON FINE