Paul Oakenfold

The most dramatic moment on Perfecto Presents Another World, the latest batch of electronic potpourri from trance titan Paul Oakenfold, is the puree job he does on Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You." Dubbed "The Quiver Mix," Oakenfold shreds, tosses, bends, and forms Zep's heavy, moldy blues into a spacey trance jam. Not that the blustery metal icons haven't inspired chemically fueled bursts of spiritual revelation and enlightenment in the past, but Oakenfold's update puts a brand new, natural twist on the song. This is the digital generation's variation on stoner rock.

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," the centerpiece of the two-disc Another World, also stands out because Oakenfold falls back, a tad too often, on the usual genre tricks throughout much of the rest of the album. Relying on the music of Dead Can Dance and its stylistic offspring, Another World aims for high concept. But after two and a half hours of thumping bass and repetitive, pounding beats, it manages only to lose itself in the mix. Unlike his atmospheric Tranceport, which lifted the music to often-celestial heights, these 24 tracks for the most part remain grounded. Another World is Oakenfold's warmest album, but also his most tedious. Once that Zeppelin cut drifts from memory, Another World settles for new age instead of new machine age. In the end, it's the same old song and trance.