Everything But The Girl: Ultra Obscene

For much of the '80s, Everything But The Girl remained a beautiful but forgettable cult act, like Sade minus the boffo lite-rock success. But things changed in the band's favor when house maven Todd Terry transformed its gentle "Missing," from 1994's Amplified Heart, into an unstoppable club anthem. Suddenly, EBTG's Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn became perceived as hip masters of club-pop fusion. The timing couldn't have been better: Still learning to cope with a debilitating auto-immune disease, Watt had been steeping himself in England's DJ scene. Having boned up on house and drum-and-bass and hung out with Massive Attack, Watt and Thorn then released Walking Wounded, an album that did a good job fusing dance music with the quiet, exotic pop tendencies that have always defined the duo. Temperamental continues the trend, offering up 10 ambient house, hip-hop, and drum-and-bass tracks produced by the increasingly beat-savvy Watt for easy digestion. The band's hybrid music isn't nearly as revolutionary as knee-jerk praise would imply: "The Future Of The Future" (a reprise of EBTG's crossover collaboration with Deep Dish), "Lullaby Of Clubland," and the title track aren't all that different from what The Beloved has been doing for 10 years. But the results are so emotionally effusive and Muzak-smooth that they're hard to hate. Breakbeat Era, the latest project of Bristol drum-and-bass pioneer Roni Size, isn't so much hard to hate as eager to be loved: Compared to the manic and excitable outfit, Everything But The Girl hardly registers. Size was introduced to Americans with his epic album New Forms, an ambitious project that attempted to bring drum-and-bass to a new level of pop accessibility. The album did set a precedent with two impressive advances: Size's programming actually worked better live than it did on record, and after years of trying to make computers and samples sound like real musicians, he launched a quest to make real instruments sound like computers and samples. Yet Breakbeat Era, which also features DJ Die and vocalist Leonie Laws, is more than pop deconstruction. With hectic drum parts flying about and sub-bass melodies burbling to the surface, Ultra Obscene is as invigorating and ingratiating as the best live music. If it lacks the effortless grace and subtlety of Temperamental, it does present an adrenaline-fueled prediction of how pop music could sound in the near future.