Usher f/ Beyoncé and Lil Wayne, “Love in This Club, Pt. 2″ (LaFace). You could call it a remix, but it is more of an adjustment, even though the original continues to ride high(er). Beyoncé gets thrown into the mix, Jeezy is replaced with Weezy (who is hilarious, despite being a distraction), and the initial mix’s bleariness is transformed into a sugared glide; you can never go wrong with the gentle bass boom accented with a little synthetic cowbell. Nothing could make up for Confessions‘ “Throwback” not being released as a single, but this comes surprisingly close. It’s the first single this year to go straight to the Top 20 of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. (Bizarrely, it has more or less stalled).

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Joel Martin and Matt Edwards take their alias from Martin Denny’s exotica landmark, yet their approach can be likened — not just through the title but in its sound as well — to “Quiet Pillage,” the slack but unease-inducing interpretation of “Quiet Village” by experimentalist post-punks 23 Skidoo. Beneath the tracklist of Silent Movie, an album highlighted by material released in small runs on 12″ during 2005 and 2006, the duo thanks “everyone that’s been involved in making this album. You know who you are.” It’s probable that not everyone knows who they are, at least not in this case. The most creative and affecting sample-reliant album since the Avalanches’ Since I Left You, Silent Movie plucks from numerous forms of marginalia, whether obscure, loathed by the stereotypical record store clerk, or loved by legions of geeks who were dealt wedgies in high school by Van Halen-loving jocks: prog rock and yacht rock punchlines, new age pin cushions, unhip singer/songwriters, largely unknown Italian film-music composers, and several others. For the most part, these sources are not so uncool that they are cool. They are so uncool that they are… extremely uncool.

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Kissey Asplund, “Beam Me Up” (from Plethora). Like a number of tracks on this Swedish space cadet’s first album, “Beam Me Up” seems to materialize and evaporate rather than begin and end. Half of the time, Asplund’s either fading in and out of consciousness or singing in her sleep, her multi-tracked voice about as tangible as the aimlessly swarming waves of synths. There’s more punch to the remainder of Plethora, laced in varying combinations by the French production team PapaJazz, who are — like most other exponents of off-center R&B these days — children of Dilla and Premier, but nothing is quite as hypnotizing as this, even if it could use some Vulcan lute.

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Bookended by a pair of mostly dissimilar cuts similar only in their levitating tropical lushness, and stuffed with some of the most colorful and uplifting cross-cultural dance music made, Going Places is dressed up to place a necessary spotlight upon August Darnell, but it’s just as much a showcase for the architect’s extended gang of associates. Together, Darnell and company functioned for several years as a Tin Pan Alley-influenced post-disco equivalent of Parliament-Funkadelic and all of its offshoots, with 12″ singles and albums credited to several names — including Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band (led by Darnell’s brother Stony), Don Armando’s Second Avenue Rhumba Band, Gichy Dan’s Beechwood #9, Aural Exciters and, of course, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, not to mention “solo” spin-offs and collaborations — with much of the personnel shared from release to release. Partial roll call of the more recognizable names: Darnell’s right-hand man Andy “Coati Munti” Hernandez, Taana Gardner, Fonda Rae, Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

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The debut album from London native Estelle, 2004’s The 18th Day, stalled at number 40 on the U.K. chart. Uneven and tentative but not without a handful of major standouts — like the wistful and animated “1980,” where she displayed her MC’ing chops, and the Mary J. Blige-worthy slow groove “Dance with Me” — it wasn’t enough to further her label’s support. Estelle proposed a John Legend-produced follow-up, which V2 did not approve, so she relocated to the U.S. and secured a deal with Atlantic through Legend’s Homeschool boutique label. Capping a cunningly punitive turn of events orchestrated by a once-shunned artist (i.e., “How ya like them apples?”), “American Boy” — a flirty disco-funk track featuring Kanye West and production from will.i.am, who re-heated the beat from his own “Impatient” — took a swift route the top of the U.K. pop chart. When Shine was released, just after the chart feat, the song had yet to make as much of a splash in the States.

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Lalah Hathaway, “Let Go” (Stax/Concord). Written with Rex Rideout (Roy Ayers, Will Downing, Angie Stone) and Rahsaan Patterson (Brandy, Ledisi, Rahsaan Patterson), “Let Go” is an uncomplicated but richly detailed breakup tune in the shape of a gently lapping midtempo groove. What is with the Auto-Tune, though? It’s not a deal-breaker; it’s used only as an accent at the opening and closing of the song, thankfully, but the Cher/T-Pain effect never adds anything to material featuring a voice that can sing in the technically proficient sense. Hathaway’s fourth album, Self Portrait, is due in June.

Ne-Yo, “Closer” (Def Jam). A presumably unintentional re-write of Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind” over a straight house beat, plus predictable StarGate presence? Vomitorium on paper, but much more appealing than that on speakers. This will be on The Year of the Gentlemen, Ne-Yo’s third album in as many years, due this summer.

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Lloyd f/ Ludacris, “How We Do It” (The-Inc). It’s hard to get worked up about any of the R&B tracks that entered the April 5 and April 12 editions of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. This one, from Lloyd’s upcoming Lessons in Love (due in July and likely lacking in Level 42 covers), might be the best of the bunch, if only by a hair — Raheem DeVaughn’s uncharacteristically uptempo “Energy” is pretty close. “How We Do It” wins out for its grinding glam shuffle, but don’t expect to hear it spun at a club between Goldfrapp and Gary Glitter.

Karina Pasian, “16 @ War” (Def Jam). Quincy Jones’ goddaughter debuts with a song that, from a production standpoint, does not offer much more than listless thudding — pretty surprising, given that it was put together by “Tricky” Stewart (Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine”). Lyrically, it’s another story (the lyrics were written by frequent Stewart partner the-Dream), beginning with “Ain’t no daddies where I’m from, it’s just mad mothers/And eyes that still seem they can’t look past color” and working its way through a number of pressures placed upon young females of color. The remainder of the songs on Pasian’s MySpace page are in the slow, dramatic, inspirational vein. There will hopefully be more variety on her Def Jam debut, but at least it seems she is making a major effort to provide alternatives to glamorous/brainless escapism while relating to young women her age.

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Closing in on 20 years since their last album, the whole gang is here, pretty much — the core of Don and David Was and Sir Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson, along with Was (Not Was) vets Luis Resto, David McMurray, Wayne Kramer, Donald Ray Mitchell, and Randy Jacobs, as well as roughly a couple dozen additional accomplices, from Booker T. Jones to (of course) Kris Kristofferson. Mixing and matching funk, rock, and soul with a little jazz and blues, and enhanced on occasion by some seamlessly incorporated electronics, Boo! delivers robust good-time material with plenty of straight-faced, sidesplitting/head-scratching humor… precisely what you’d expect from them, then. They’ve remained ageless all along, balancing their adolescent pranksterism with sharp social observations and deliriously random humor, deploying it all over sturdy grooves that roam unselfconsciously across the history of R&B. Most of it here is dressed up in the absurd: the opening “Semi-Interesting Week” is filled with it, just to ensure that the proper tone is set, while one of the album’s more riotous vocal refrains goes “High in fiber, low in fat/Come at your mama with a baseball bat.” But they occasionally pull the rug out for something disarming, as on “From the Head to the Heart,” where the heartstrings get a firm tug while waiting for the punchline that never comes. And yes, “Needletooth” is about as nonsensical as an admirer of “Hello Dad…I’m in Jail” could possibly hope.

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