Deee-Lite is a design-conscious sound system with a utopian purpose that grooves on positive attitude and fashion madness. The trio's yummy looks embody the kind of smiley-face retro-eclecticism that World Clique claims as revolutionary: Japanese B-boy Jungle DJ Towa Towa provides computer-literate beats; the Lady Miss Kier, a space-age fox, does the soul-mama thing (which she seems to identify solely with growling); and the uptown pimp dandy behind the mixing board is a Soviet émigré who calls himself Super DJ Dmitry. But three preening club kids with a taste for soul, sampling and expressing themselves do not a revolution make, even if their disparate points of origin hold delicious possibilities for a funky global village.

World Clique finds something to love about the Sixties (hippie good vibes, daisies), the Seventies (Sly Stone's message soul, Parliament-Funkadelic's very existence, sexual abandon on the disco floor) and the Eighties (undeniable house music), and the group squeezes it all onto the database. But it prints out poorly, this stuff – coming off as a selective history of pop culture played as house music and compressed into easily swallowable three-minute bites. Only the presence of the incomparable Bootsy Collins and the Horny Horns' sexy tooting on "Groove Is in the Heart" and "Smile On" pull Deee-Lite beyond formulaic well-chosen beats and not-quite-powerful vocals. Should the threesome open a boutique, on the other hand, we'll be first in line. (RS 590)

ARION BERGER