The English tradition of taking American pop styles from earlier generations, putting a fresh spin on them and zapping them back across the Atlantic is apparently inexhaustible. Lisa Stansfield is one of the first British stars to redo American pop-soul styles of the Seventies. Shaped with the help of her songwriting and producing collaborators Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, her retro disco crossbreeds the harmonic vocabulary of mid-Seventies Philly soul with the lush, cheesy textures of Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra. Up-to-the-minute electronic dance beats make it all sound contemporary.

What makes the mix special is Stansfield's wantonly emotive singing, which is as luscious as melting chocolate. On her second album, Real Love, her voice is even richer and the arrangements more inventive and far-reaching than on Affection, her 1989 debut. The new album's gem, "All Woman" is an almost overripe ballad about a long-suffering wife that sounds tailor-made for Gladys Knight, although Knight would have a hard time topping Stansfield's version. Like everything else on the album, from the trancelike disco prayer of the title track to the inspirational lover's promise "Set Your Loving Free," Real Love turns the world into a gold-and-velvet-trimmed valentine box in which romantic dreams are all that matter. (RS 621)

STEPHEN HOLDEN