Though Roni Size grudgingly became the poster boy for drum-n-bass, MJ Cole has fully welcomed the armfuls of plaudit lilies that have been lobbed his way. Cole, not coincidentally on Reprazent's label, has become the figurehead for UK garage. Also known as two-step, this hybrid style of dance music borrows basslines and raga stylings from jungle, and sweet vocals from US deep house and R&B.;

Two-step had an awkward neotenous phase, known as speed garage, whose practitioners relied heavily on ripping off New Jersey's deep house god, Todd Edwards, and pitching anything and everything up to +8. But the initial rush has since worn off and UK garage is looking at a calm, mature future. Its concerns are lost love, faithless love, and love of fine things (Moët, caviar, Prada luggage), yet not in a ghettodelic way.

Wookie, released not long after the sophisticated sheen of Cole's Sincere album, offers a different slant on the same scene. Where Cole surveys the high life and discovers that even the swankiest scenesters suffer post-modern anxieties (there are no more limited edition crocodile skin sneakers to be found on Bond Street, for instance), Wookie's Jason Chue looks to the struggles of everyday and how they oppress people who rely on mass transit. In this important regard, Wookie represents the What's Going On vibe of the two-step scene.

Nowhere is this concern more, erm, sincere than during the expressive single, "Battle." Wookie's vocalist, Lain, exhorts us in a restrained but gospelly manner to get through the battles of our daily routines. He assures us that our fortitude and perseverance will not go unnoticed. Wookie's accompaniment is an insistently off-kilter synth stab that mimetically becomes all the tribulations that Lain hopes we'll overcome.

"Down on Me" makes explicit two-step's lineage from drum-n-bass. With a skittering array of percussion licks and a bassline direct from some chthonic tunnel, the tune is the less bandit cousin of the massively popular "138 Trek" by the Ganja Kru's DJ Zinc.

"Back Up, Back Up, Back Up" gives Wookie an opportunity to dazzle us with his guitar chops. And while he's certainly no Wes Montgomery, he's hardly Mike Hedges, either. Wookie cops a Bukem stance for "Success," but unlike the intelligent junglist, he never rides off into the sunset of his own ass. "VCF" bounces on tubular sub-bass and emanates a massively spacy vibe-- sort of a Hackney Tangerine Dream!

"What's Going On" incorporates a sample of Soul II Soul's "Back to Life," and comes away with the true crowd-pleaser title. Updating Jazzy B's Brit-funk by adding Latin flourishes is a perilous proposition. But Wookie's vocalist is equally as sensual and plaintive a performer as Caron Wheeler, who voiced the original, and we need have no doubts about Wookie's proficiency in handling the production duties.

Throughout his astonishingly overachieving debut, Wookie's production consistently opposes the Royal College of Music grandiosity that threads through Cole's record. Where Cole will tinkle out Satie-isms on a concert Steinway, Wookie will snag a beat-up, thoroughly chipped Fender Rhodes. Wookie's beats are far snappier, pungent with underground disdain for Cole's high-heeled percussive turns. And while both albums admirably mark a return to excellence for UK R&B;, Wookie is the top dog in this soulful ring.

-Paul Cooper