New Albums From VCMG, Brad Mehldau Trio and Henry Cole "Ssss" (Mute) VCMG is a 30-year reunion of sorts for two synth-pop masters, Vince Clarke and Martin L. Gore, both songwriters who rarely sing. After writing nearly all of Depeche Mode's 1981 debut album, "Speak & Spell," Mr. Clarke left the band, going on to start Yazoo (billed Yaz in the United States) and then Erasure. Mr. Gore stayed on as Depeche Mode's songwriter, turning in more ominous directions while Mr. Clarke favored utopian love songs. Both had strings of hits, staying on the dance-music charts into the 2000s. When Mr. Clarke got the idea of making an album of minimal dance music, he contacted Mr. Gore, and they started assembling tracks in home studios, collaborating via e-mail. They met face to face again last May. "Ssss" is a modest, genially impersonal effort: 10 instrumental tracks that don't flaunt their authorship. The cavernous spaces of Depeche Mode and the shimmery tones of Erasure are both largely set aside in favor of crisply efficient beats and repeated, uninflected synthesizer riffs. Some tracks have deadpan, self-explanatory titles like "Bendy Bass" and "Single Blip." But behind the poker face of the VCMG partnership there's clearly a craftsmanlike pleasure in getting the most propulsion out of the fewest notes then tossing in surprises. "Spock," the first single, takes its minimal-techno-Minimalism seriously, building itself out of staticky zaps and ticks and barely budging off one chord even as percussive bits and shadowy chords - ah, there's a little Depeche Mode - start to accumulate around the bass pulse. "Skip This Track" goes retro, with neat but distorted analog-flavored bass and old-fashioned canned handclaps. "Zaat" tops its simplistic four-on-the-floor drum with a synthesizer lick that seems to stumble repeatedly over the beat. "Aftermaths" gets around to something like a pop melody, even though it's only two notes with a sawtoothed tone sliding up and down. "Ssss" is not a radical album, but it's not simply utilitarian dance music either. As mechanized as the tracks pretend to be, and as distant as its collaborators were, it's easy to imagine Mr. Clarke and Mr. Gore chuckling with each tweak they added before hitting the "send" button. "Ode" (Nonesuch) Brad Mehldau has often seemed like the ultimate introspective jazz musician, a pianist and composer whose ideas tend to spring from within. "Ode," his fine new album, ostensibly draws inspiration from sources beyond himself: former collaborators, like the saxophonist Michael Brecker; members of his immediate family, specifically his wife and young son; and indelible pop-culture figures from childhood, like Aquaman. If that doesn't sound like too far a departure from interiority, give the man credit for trying. "Ode," which consists entirely of original material, is the first studio album featuring Mr. Mehldau's current trio, with the bassist Larry Grenadier and the drummer Jeff Ballard, since "Day Is Done," the 2005 release that announced the group's initiation. Since then there have been marquee collaborations and fertile digressions, including "Highway Rider," a sprawling, stylistically restless suite with the trio nestled warmly at its core. In comparison "Ode" feels modest and unburdened, delivering the most comfortably centered work of Mr. Mehldau's recent career. That shouldn't be taken as faint praise. This trio has developed its own language and a sound that's instantly recognizable despite a growing field of emulators. Most of the tracks on "Ode" were recorded in November 2008, with three exceptions dating to last April; presumably some small refinements have been made in the meantime. But most of the trio's hallmarks are here: resonant lyricism, floating locomotion, a harmonic approach that brings depth to simple structures and sleekness to the more complex ones. A brisk, boppish workout like "Stan the Man" feels as loose and unhurried as a drifting waltz like "26." A few other themes border on the self-referential. "Twiggy," with its springy, percussive thrum, and "Dream Sketch," with its somber, stately chord progression, both bear some resemblance to tracks found on "Highway Rider." The brooding groove of "Kurt Vibe," for the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, calls to mind some of the music that Mr. Mehldau has recorded with him. And the piano solo on "Bee Blues" suggests a wink in the direction of Lennie Tristano, one of several points of reference that Mr. Mehldau used to take pains to disavow. The album's most uncharacteristic moment comes on "Wyatt's Eulogy for George Hanson," a reference to Jack Nicholson's character in "Easy Rider," and the rare instance in which Mr. Mehldau reaches toward rhythmic abstraction. It's striking, but still not as potently expressive as the title track, a somber theme handled with the freest sort of care. Roots Before Branches The New York jazz scene rewards big cross-cultural ideas, and the drummer Henry Cole runs with them. Over the last five years or so Mr. Cole, originally from Puerto Rico, has helped realize the visions of bandleaders who enfold jazz with elements of Afro-Latin and classical and rock and other languages, including Miguel Zenón, Fabian Almazan and David Sánchez. He plays music that depends on complexity - polyrhythm, odd-metered and upbeat-stressing dance beats, songs embedded within songs - but makes it all sound logical, reasonable, flowing. It's no surprise that he'd end up making his own big synthesis. "Roots Before Branches," a self-produced album, is the first recording by Mr. Cole's Afrobeat Collective, an array of 20 or so musicians from New York and Puerto Rico, in addition to a poet and some singers. It was recorded in pieces, in both places. And the sound of Afrobeat, with its orchestral-sounding trap-set drum grooves and saxophone vamps, gives the record a center. Its best stretches are earthy and complex, with Roy Guzman's clanky, swinging rhythm guitar, Billy Carrion Jr."s baritone saxophone, keyboards by Egui Santiago from the Puerto Rican rock band Circo and funk horn arrangements. Roots are what you come from, but they're also what you are. So here's Afrobeat filtered through the music scenes in San Juan and New York, and through a lot of different individual mindsets, some simple and strong, some academic or jazz-pedagogic. There's rock, bebop, poetic recitation, floating Ornette Coleman-style melodies, elegiac string-quartet writing, ambient electronics. A few seriously evolved jazz musicians swoop in for cathartic solos, including Mr. Sánchez and Mr. Zenón. And then there's "Música Para un Sueño," which is either over-thought or under-thought: it tips over into garish electro-pop hooks, splashy drum solos, and tired jazz licks. But elsewhere the record achieves the feeling of a strong intuition, an informed proposal, and Mr. Cole's strong drumming makes it cohere. Next Tuesday a 10-piece version of Mr. Cole's Afrobeat Collective - with Mr. Zenón and the guitarist Adam Rogers as guests - will play at Joe's Pub; it'll be good to see the hypothetical made real.