Various Artists: Perfecto Presents Another World : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Any computer can splice together a dance-mix compilation. The challenge for DJs is to create a montage of music that actually says something and still puts bodies in motion. A veteran label boss, remixer, rock producer and superstar DJ, England's Paul Oakenfold can coax the likes of Dead Can Dance, Vangelis and Tim Buckley onto the dance floor without resorting to gimmickry. With unexpected juxtapositions learned from hip-hop and a sense of spiritual release gleaned from underground disco, Oakenfold steers the ultra-European, classical-minded pulse of trance toward syncopated rhythms, drum-free interludes and actual songs. Robert Plant's thirty-year-old vocals swim through Quiver's watery reinvention of Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," while club favorites like Salt Tank's Tori Amos-sampling "Eugina" get dreamy new mixes. Bigger than the two-and-a-half-hour sum of its substantial parts, Another World takes you to a spectral sphere where New Age talks to old rock via the universal language of soothing, steady, stimulating beats. (RS 851)

BARRY WALTERS