Mark de Clive-Lowe – Renegades

Vaguely pitched as a 40 minute sketch of contemporary globetrotting club music, Mark de Clive-Lowe's ninth studio album is an assuredly well-travelled affair, with many of the musicians featured boasting collaborative links, tenuous or otherwise, with a formidable cast that includes D'Angelo, Flying Lotus and Prince.

Without exception, Renegades is tastefully assembled and impeccably produced, but such albums – flirting as they do with non-threatening, pastel shades of soul and R&B – are often ensnared by the predatory embrace of a Caffè Nero soundsystem. Once the record dispenses with risible, try-hard funk (a sample lyric from Push: 'let the milk turn sour, my cream rises to the top'), it approaches something resembling excellence.

Hooligan, one of five songs that feature vocalist Nia Andrews, is a wonderful sample of organic R&B and jazz, while the melodic funk/house of the Omar and Sheila E assisted Get Started seems closer in spirit to the canvas that Clive-Lowe had intended to commit to record.