*** Sasha + John Digweed

EXPEDITIONS

(Ultra/Sony)

Two of electronica's most house-music-friendly DJs, Sasha and John Digweed, collaborate here to create a 20-track, two-CD set of ambient, computer-tongued sounds riding atop a tense, cold beat that ranges in texture from fast trip-hop to hard Eurobeat to acid house. Voices rarely intrude upon these programs, at least not without suffering mischievous distortion. But they're not missed, because the DJs' electronic riffs take on a nearly vocal shape. And when combined with their frequent quoting from classic space disco -- note how often "Hills of Katmandu," the dream disco sequence from Celso Valli's 1979 hit Tantra, pops up -- the complex music has nearly as much narrative power as voices do in a standard pop song. When vocals do appear, as in "Lost Without You" and "Free," they lighten the music's feeling, placing the human elements in its comfort zone while consigning everything else in this sonic universe to a state of flux. Thus, subtly do Sasha and Digweed make it clear that however dramatic the external universe may be, people still matter most.

-- Michael Freedberg