***1/2 Megasoft Office

97

(F Communications/Chipie)

From France's F Communications, the home label of DJs Laurent Garnier and St. Germain, comes a "sequenced set of laid-back cuts" (as the CD's liner notes aptly put it) performed by some new acts on the label's roster, all of whom share a liking for the drowsy moods, spacy textures, and lazy low beats common to all European dreampop. The acts who contribute to the Megasoft program are no mere repeats of Robert Miles or Cerrone, however. The melodic dryness of "Way Form One" by Elegia, the jazzy sweets of Ready Made's "Saulbass Theme," and the sultry witchery of Nova Nova's "Bewildered," for instance, import into dreampop enough bits of musical flesh and blood to entice Anglos and Americans, with their taste for the flawed, material, empirical world. But not enough to overrule the fundamental ethereality of songs like Feedback's "Seasons," Chaotik Ramses's "No Way Out," and A Reminiscent Drive's "Footprints," which bind this compilation -- and all Eurobeat -- irretrievably to romantic idealism, perfection's touch, and Plato.

-- Michael Freedberg