I NEED a shelter from the anodyne world of the charts, where being a success is about cover versions or votes on a Saturday night show.

I need a refuge from the insipid music of the mainstream, a hideaway from a world where diversity is a dirty word. I need JJ72. If Pete Waterman and his ilk are the illness, then JJ72 are the cure. Here's a band who have you reaching for comparisons as diverse as Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil and Smashing Pumpkins. Here's a band who, in album track Serpent Sky, have concocted a modern-day incarnation of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.

Listen, you must. This album - the band's second - is littered with gorgeous pieces of music, from the single Formulae to the wonderful Brother Sleep, which cries out for a full orchestra to launch it to a higher level. The trio visit Leeds Metropolitan University on November 12 - so catch them now before they take off...

Updated: 10:23 Thursday, October 31, 2002