The Million Dollar Hotel - Various

The Million Dollar Hotel - Various (Island) We all know what Bono's been doing since U2's Popmart tour. Forthcoming Mel Gibson movie The Million Dollar Hotel has been his pet project: writing the original story for it, partly producing it, appearing in it, and putting together this soundtrack with U2 collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.

A string of other musicians also appears but, along with Bono's tracks with them, this is also a source of new U2 material: the single Stateless, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which the band recorded to lyrics by another old mate, Salman Rushdie. Curiously, it also features The First Time, from 1993 U2 album Zooropa, with its haunting, October-style piano; and from the same era (it was featured on the Zooropa tour) Lou Reed's Satellite Of Love, here delivered in three dreary versions, two featuring the movie's female lead, Milla Jovovich, who should stick to acting.

Everybody, it seems, is trying on different hats with this venture . . . all of which makes for a patchy CD. But that's appropriate, because early reports say the Wim Wenders-directed movie, a black comedy about a hotel for rich, mental outpatients (some of which can be heard on the album), is alternately boring and pretentious. Film-friendly U2 members had hits with the Goldeneye and Mission: Impossible themes; this could be a miss.

Stephen McCarty Joe Satriani - Engines Of Creation (Epic) To many rock heads, Joe Satriani is one of the guitar heroes of the 1980s - tutoring axe-crunchers such as Steve Vai and Metallica's Kirk Hammett, subbing for Richie Blackmore in a Deep Purple tour, and playing with Mick Jagger on his solo gigs. Most of all, he awed with his dazzling and technical guitar solos.

So what exactly is he doing fooling around with an electronica project? Same thing Eric Clapton was doing when he assumed a pseudonym and made the 1997 chill-out record Retail Therapy under the guise of TDF - testing new commercial ground.

Extended guitar solos, showboating and fret-fingering became outdated the day punk rock demonstrated that three chords was more than enough. So under the guise of staying hip, Satriani performs his jagged slashes to some Crystal Method and Prodigy-style programmed loops.

There is no denying Satriani's proficient six-string wizardry - part Robert Fripp, part Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello - but Engines Of Creation has little sense of innovation or point. The CD is an exercise in unique, even great guitar noise craft, but little art.