Grace Jones

Hurricane Dub Wall of Sound**

It really should have come out much better in the wash. Given Grace Jones's dancefloor smarts and fondness for dark, intense rhythms, you'd expect that a dub reworking of her 2008 album would be firing on all cylinders. Yet Hurricane Dub, part of a repackaged Hurricane, falls well short of the mark. The original capped a remarkable return to form for Jones, so it's surprising that the diva gave the nod to this one. Instead of embellishing and reimagining the original tunes, producer Ivor Guest simply fiddles with the knobs until the results bear little or no resemblance to the originals. There are plenty of decent precedents for pop-turned-dub albums (Massive Attack's Protectionrecycled by Mad Professor, Primal Scream's Vanishing Pointreworked by Adrian Sherwood), which makes this lifeless affair all the more disappointing. See theworld ofgracejones.com

Download track: Hurricane Dub