NO ORDINARY DUB

Imagine Sade nodding off mid-performance -- not hard to do, given her narcoleptic singing -- and her band thumping on as she's carried off stage. The results might sound like SWEETBACK (Epic), an offshoot project from the male members of Sade (keyboardist Andrew Hale, guitarist-saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, and bassist Paul Spencer Denman). Although the album is half instrumental, the trio adhere to the same trance-inducing sambas of Sade records, complete with come-hither saxes and island-breeze rhythms. Even songs with vocals -- Maxwell's falsetto serenade ''Softly Softly'' and rapper Bahamadia's I-am-woman strut ''Au Natural'' -- don't disrupt the album's warm, late-night ambiance.

Fortunately, Sweetback weren't content to make a Sade album without their frontwoman. They've also integrated innovative dance-club styles -- like trip-hop and dub -- into their penthouse make-out music. Even when the combination seems like a bland, co-opted version of the pure thing (''Cloud People'' verges perilously close to techno John Tesh), Sweetback accomplish something much more beguiling: They make cutting-edge burp-and-grind beats sound romantic, even seductive. B