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Various The Real Blonde soundtrack (Milan/BMG)
Silk Road Music Endless (Jericho Beach/Festival) Two discs that bend the rules of the world music purism. Deep Forest's latest has a panglobal perspective, checking Arab, African and Brazilian bites off the list over rather cheesy synths and ho-hum beats. Quite tolerable, but frankly one gets the feeling that the noble good vibes that Comparsa strives for are a bit forced. More successful, if less accessible, is Silk Road Music's challenge to Chinese classical music. Endless turns tradition on its head, translating jazz, Celtic and (again) Brazilian passages within the established context of instruments like the erhu, pipa and ruan. Deep Forest 7/10, Silk Road Music 8.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg) Fan Modine Slow Road to Tiny Empire (Slow River/Ryko/Outside)
Various WOW 1998, The Year's 30 Top Christian Artists and Songs (EMI)
Christian rock? Jumpin' Jesus, how oxymoronic can you get? Wasn't it the Christians who thought that Elvis's pelvis was a one-way ticket to H-E-double-hockeysticks? When I think of rock 'n' roll I think about people marrying their 13-year-old cousins. When I think of Christians making music, I think of nuns clutching acoustic guitars singing "Onward Christian Soldiers." Oops, maybe that's the Lilith Fair I'm thinking of, but holy bejeezus, does rock 'n' roll really need the safe warblings of bands like DC Talk and Jars Of Clay? Fuck, no! Hail Satan! 666/10 (Johnson Cummins)
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It's a tug of war twixt futurist emotronics and retro gin & tonics, and the listener's the winner. This is the soundtrack to the latest from Tom DiCillo, the cat responsible for Living in Oblivion and Johnny Suede. He juggles his selections carefully: the icy, synthetic cool of Hooverphonic bleeds smoothly into the Latin loungeries of Joey Altruda's "Martini for Mancini," the dark twang of the Fireballs segues into Fluke's dancefloor hypnotics. Even party-crasher Kool Moe Dee can't throw the vibe, considering he's sandwiched between Brit astronauts Space and '80s artifacts Yello. The crowning touch, though, is Jim Farmer's original score material. He strove for "Hanna Barbera meeting Peter Gunn at the Cotton Club," and pretty much pulled it off. Kitschy without being corny... there's a difference, you know, and this disc proves it. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
Deep Forest Comparsa (550 Music/Sony)
Scenario: fledgling filmmaker Gordon Zacharias takes inspiration from his Boston Chinatown 'hood and comes up with a character named Fandemian Kirk Modine, an American pop star living in China. But no money, no movie--so Gord proffers a concept album instead, which seems more based on the music of Lou Barlow, Eric Matthews and Stephin Merritt. How about a novelization of the screenplay? 7/10 (Chris Yurkiw)