Morcheeba: Dive Deep

The idea that Morcheeba might be a band for the

ages is vaguely insulting; the group's music wasn't terribly essential to begin

with. Yet here's another collection of lazy New Age bromides and upscale Muzak

atmospheres hell-bent on dragging trip-hop's corpse into the 21st century. A

series of low-rent vocalists slouch through Paul and Ross Godfrey's predictable

backdrops (defanged strings, genteel scratching), beginning with the shockingly

obvious "Enjoy The Ride," on which Judie Tzuke enjoins us to just, like, enjoy

life and stuff. This isn't an album, it's an office poster, complete with platitudes

masquerading as serene wisdom. "One Love Karma" is worse yet: Korean-American

rapper Cool Calm Pete sings the title with no shame. If nothing else,

Morcheeba's existence points out everything Air does right—both are calm

and inoffensive enough to serve as dinner music, but only one aspires to more.