Released on the heels of Lil Louis and the World's congruently titled From the Mind of Lil Louis, 'Ooo': The World of Baby Ford is an even more commendable attempt to inject some much needed teenybop blood and guts into the mind-wrecking technocracy of acid house. House music is at an important juncture right now: Having long ago peaked in the formal-innovation department, it's no longer part of the advance guard, and soul revisionism has proved as barren a dead end as continued electronic disruption. "Hip house," the overballyhooed merger of house and rap, keeps yielding the same record over and over again. Baby Ford has a better idea.

A crafty Brit phenom in the tradition of George Michael and Boy George – only weirder – Ford layers hooks on beats, then layers more beats on top, then more hooks. He stutters the groove, deploys Princely guitar when he covers "Children of the Revolution," by T. Rex, and lets his whooshing Mellotron cut through the relentless machine pulse like a sunbeam on a dark day. He writes wacky surrealist poetry for his album cover ("Do you remember how glorious life was when we lay down intoxicated by the smell of the berries around us?") and offers thanksgiving to Sylvester, Lou Reed, Barry White and his car. Said Cortina's malfunctioning engine inspired the rhythm of "Oochy Coochy," Ford's 1989 U.K. debut single, but on World he sticks to fluffier stuff. "The World Is in Love" is pure Pet Shop Boys, all the way down to falsetto talk of pacing the high streets and tossing taunts at shopkeepers; in joyful disco bounces like "Beach Bump" and "Change Your Ways," Ford whispers sweet nothings in your ear while soaking in a synthesized bubble bath, evoking the lush lovey-dovey feel of George Michael's "Hard Day" or "Careless Whisper." "Milky Trés/Chikki Chikki Ahh Ahh" rockets both congas and ad-libs around a reference to Huey "Piano" Smith's "Little Chicken Wah Wah" and doesn't spare the flutes.

Now and then, Baby Ford's voice gets almost laughably breathy, as if he were groaning decadent screeds for some naughty Belgian death-disco band. But nobody on Wax Trax Records, where death disco proliferates, has ever ridden as fluid a waterfall of syncopation as the one on World. There is nothing glum about Baby Ford – he imagines a "place of dreams and magic," and that's where he makes his home. (RS 576)

CHUCK EDDY