*** Strato Brado

FERTILIZER SOUND FOR PLANET EARS

(Irma)

For those who still haven't heard Italian house music, there's this collection of trance-tempo'd, flirtatious rhythms, orchestral dreaminess, and sleepytime vocals. All 10 tracks are produced by the three guys who perform as Jestofunk, Italy's best-known funk and disco group. Strato Brado, however, is no repeat of the soulfully vocal Jestofunk style. Here, from the spaciness of "Move Around" and "Pulsar" to the soft shimmy of "Funky Rash in a Flash" to the (sometimes Kraftwerkish) tribal beat of "Hubble One Two" and "The Rain," instrumental arrangements and beat portraiture handle the heavy lifting. Voices, though present, merely peek in from the sides, ornamenting but not changing the music's shape or direction. Yes, people inhabit Strato Brado's lazy world of texture and illusion, but they never give it orders. Even the rhythm seems to go to sleep in jams as loose as a magic-carpet ride -- on someone else's carpet.

-- Michael Freedberg