***1/2 Robert Miles

DREAMLAND

(Arista)

No CD better exemplifies the purification of form going on right now in dance music than this debut CD from Milan. All instrumental except for a few soprano-voiced drop-ins, its 10 tracks of sweet strings, gentle orchestrations, and soft, fast four-to-the-floor beats capture the exquisite light touch that made European space-movie-theme music so irresistible on 1970s dance floors. Miles's search, like that of disco auteurs Cerrone and Boris Midney before him, is for inner space unadorned, its rhythms, textures, and glow points joyous and vulnerable, without obfuscation. Thus, gossamer tone poems like "Fantasya," "In the Dawn," "Fable" (in two versions), and the full-length version of "Children" itself wing their way stress-free through one's head without scratch mixing, sampling, voice rips, and all the other devices that trance and trip-hop, for example, use to deny the immanence of unrestricted joy.

-- Michael Freedberg