The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 35

Arts I Must KBST Deep In A Dream. Just how much Hail's bite and swing are camouflaged by his retiring sound and low-key dynamics is audible in bis slewing runs and skipping figures on the uptempo Lucky Thing. The material doesn't entirely hold up over the full duration, and it isn't music to make your friends dance around the room with flowers in their teeth, but it's the improviser's art at full stretch in unfashionable territory. BOBBY WELLIHS Nomad Hot House HHCD 1008 IN THE haunting querulousness of his tone, the spine-chilling inclination to lapse into a sudden anguished cry in the midst of an apparently affable improvisation (like someone at a party opening a door on a private crisis) and in his all-round ability to personalise familiar jazz genres, Bobby Wellins has been the Scottish Art Pepper since around 1960. He isn't as dramatic, or quite as unguardedly frank as Pepper was, and for stretches he can sound like a good many other highly skilful exponents of swinging mainstream saxophone, Blue Note bop with a West Coast tinge.

But in the end there's always that pungent discomfiting yelp or fraught, evasive murmur that makes you draw a sharp breath. His performance on Stan Tracey's Starless and Bible Black is one of the great British jazz solos or just plain great jazz solos for that matter. This is Welllns's first CD for five yean, a brisk work-out with a good band including a partnership of recent arrivals in pianist Jonathan Gee and singer Claire Martin (the latter appearing on three tracks). In its unpretentious, down-the-line cymbal beat, four-square timing and inclination toward such devices as raucous Blakeyesque blues-marches. Nomad's closest relatives are the Blue Note hard bop discs of the sixties, and Bobby Timmons (Dat Dere) and Hank Mobley (This I Dig Of You) are unsurprisingly among the composers.

It also has a lot in common with the feel of a Stan Tracey band, but there's nothing dutiful about this session, from the lapel-grabbing wall with which Wellins comes back after the piano solo on his opening Clifford Brown tribute, through the sinister, galumphing chords that open Love For Sale and a seamlessly poignant slide from there into Willow Weep For Me. Claire Martin, usually an empa-thetic interpreter of lyrics, doesn't sound entirely at ease, though her smoky virtuosity disguises it, but Jonathan Gee's piano playing is a lesson in unflashy succinctness and logical shape. Not a set to fling open any doors, but a fine performance from a real original. John Fordham LimelightMusic Masters 518 445-2 JIM HALL may be some people's idea of just what cocktail-lounge jazz sounds like, but they don't call him the thinking fan's guitarist for nothing, nor were the likes of John Scofield and Bill Frisell wasting their time when they checked him out on the way up. This graceful trio set features Hall with the pianist (Larry Gol-dings) he brought here for the London Jazz Festival last May, plus bassist Steve Laspina.

Hall runs down how to deliver an AnUguan party-music atmosphere at whispering volume out of just a handful of gleaming harmonics and a softly shuffling rhythm-guitar pattern over a bass riff, and plays West Side Story's Somewhere with the same meticulous devotion to the weight and contours of every note that always marks him out, and Goldlngs sounds punchier than he did in London. There's a burst of slightly self-conscious free music and an old Hall lyrical chorda! favourite in PHOTOGRAPH: HENRIETTA BUTLER Burke as the inflexible Inquisitor and Anthony O'Donnell as Galileo's prophetic friend is also exemplary. What I missed was the visual clarity of the Berliner Ensemble and the vital information about what year or place we were in. But although Kent's production does not match the unencumbered lightness of Hare's text, Galileo remains a seminal masterwork about the eternal struggle of reason against superstition and self-betrayal. At the Almeida Theatre, Islington (071-359-4404), until March 31.

MM to 4T MM1T a VI Ml Richard Griffiths as Galileo leo: the sensual life lover, the silky ironist and, above all, the moral coward prepared to sacrifice others, but not himself, to the diligent pursuitof truth. There's a genuinely shocking moment when without a Bicker of hesitation he squashes his daughter's marital prospects to prosecute his forbidden sun-spot experiments. Griffiths unsentimentally presents us with the blind egotism of the born innovator. The supporting cast including Edward de Souza as Cardinal Bar-berini who becomes more oppressive as he dons the Papal robes, Alfred Caroline Sullivan CELINE DKMii Tha Colour Of My Leva Epic 4747432 IF QUEBEC'S Celine Dion hadn't begun recording in English two albums ago, we would probably have been spared her bodice-bursting version of The Power Of Love, this week's number five single. How does she do it? Her histrionic way with nafihess like "For I am your ladyAnd you are my man" (The Power Of Love) is identical to that of every other North American pop diva.

The other 14 tracks suffer from similar ultra-sincerity and epic string arrangements. Celine's sweet-but-powerful voice takes on each number with identical gusto, starting quietly and climaxing in a sinus-clearing sob of passion. Just once did a cooler head prevail; the broody, gypsy violin-tinged Refuse To Dance is as subtle as the others are beefy. BITTY MoLBANi Juat To Lot You Know Brilliant BRIL CD1 DELROY "Bitty" McLean used his position as tape operator at UB40's studio to record his own reggae tunes. The 'Tninimalistic'' results have been plumped up and polished into a light-hearted indeed, UB40-esque LP.

But this is a fairly minor addition to the traditional reggae canon. His decision to rework old numbers such as Fats Domino's It Keeps Rainin' is imaginative, but shows up the relative light-weight nature of his mm own material. It's quite a step from Leroy Sibbles's cri de coeur. Stop This World (I Want To Get Oft), to Bitty's declaration that "My love is a river that will never run dry." There's potential here; the problem seems to be lack of experience rather than lack of ability. BARK PSYCHOSIS) Hex Circa CIRCD29 THIS is a tough one.

These east London indie faves formerly dealt in tranquil ambient music coarsened by patches of noisy guitar, but they've dropped the guitar and are now Just ambient The sound-textures vary from feathery softness to muddy denseness, but mainly err on the side af barely tangible airiness. Hence, the music is lovely, but tends to disperse into the ether as it's playing. One or two songs, like Fingerspit, do toy with clangy guitar effects or spooky, mumbled vocals, jarring you till the next soothing stretch. Notably for ambient music, most of Hex is not produced on a computer keyboard; there's a real trumpeter, flautist and string section, and even a man who plays the triangle. Beautiful record; shame about the group's name.

MAONAPOPi Hot Boxing Play It Again Sam BIAS 251 MAGNAPOP, on the other hand, have an excellent name, but play guitar-pop of the most usual sort This album does actually get better the further in you get Some of the three-minute tunes are interestingly fraught Free Mud is a fine mixture of trilled female vocals and crunching bass guitar. However, too much of Hot Boxing is plain anonymous, and as for the sleeve's boast that Sugar's Bob Mould produced is that meant to be a enticement?.