Arabesque Various Artists Restless Records   Reviewed by Tim Keane	The colonial village of Rhinebeck, New York conjures up images of apple-picking and leaf-pressing, postseason baseball and Americana arts & crafts. On a recent visit, however, as I browsed through a textile and pottery shop, the spine-tingling music coming from the store's speakers propelled me somewhere else entirely. Loaded with North African backbeats and the haunting airs of a saz, the music put me in the mind of Paul Bowles' famous novel The Sheltering Sky, with its protagonist anticipating poetic bliss in Morocco's "sequestered rooms that looked on to bright alleys where cats gnawed fish-heads; in shaded cafes hung with reed matting, where the hashish smoke mingled with the fumes of mint from the hot tea; down on the docks, out at the end of the sebkha...beyond the mountains in the great Sahara, in the endless regions that were all of Africa." The CD proved to be Arabesque, released by Restless Records just before they were gobbled up by BMI. Pilgrims less adventurous than Bowles can tap into these same pleasures through this sensuous and ambitious compilation of house music, dance tracks, world beat and cross-over collaborations drawn from the most cutting-edge contemporary DJs, rock bands and solo artists, most of who made their names recently in the Paris and London club scenes. MC Sultan opens the disc with "Der Bauch" ("The Stomach") a pulsating hypnotic instrumental tour de force propelled by fat, undulating bass lines and relentless drums shot through with a shivering Turkish saz and Mediterranean voices. The result is a fever-dream, a sudden blow to the soul so addictive listeners might replay it so often they may never get to the collection's other gems. Once there you'll find London rappers Stereo MC, who made it big a few years ago in California playing to mostly Hispanic audiences. Here they offer up "Fever," a startling combination of plucking and strumming, flashy horn sections and Middle Eastern castanets and a host of percussive elements. Singer Omar Faruk Tekbilek gives us "Shashkin" with its Turkish clarinets and rhythmic crescendos, evoking dangerous yet sweet downward spiraling nights in Istanbul. Reaching as widely as the best world music collections do, Arabesque is exceptional for the crystal clarity of its production, the emotional intensities of the singers and the seamless diversity. The entire collection is sustained by each musician's mastery of their respective musical traditions and their willingness to set those atmospheres to contemporary urban grooves. So the velvet-voiced Natacha Atlas, a Jewish-Egyptian-English singer by way of the Morrocan neighborhoods of Brussels, turns "Kidda" (Egyptian for "That's how it is") into a song that makes it impossible to tell where her seduction will end and her revenge begin. Forty-something year old Algerian rocker Rachid Taha, known for his tributes to the master singers of the Maghreb, gives us "Valencia" which evokes the erotic wanderings of an ancient Arab love poet, and London DJ Radar collaborates with famed instrumentalist Christopher Goze for "Caravane," a thumping yet melodious set piece which, with its Indian tablar and intricate jazzy improvisation suggests the nightclubs of Lyon as much as the meditative chants of Tibetan monks. And Dahamane El Harrachi's traditional classic "Ya Rayah" is given a "bipolar remix" and the North African troubadour's ferocious chorus finds new dimensions through the addition of Mexican trumpets and a high tech wall of sound. Hypnotic Algerian-accented French is worked into the traditional vocal tropes of North African black slaves in "Gnawa Diffusion" by Ombre Elle. Elle is the son of the legendary North African writer Kateb Yacnine who, as it turns out, was a musical avatar to Western wanderer Jimi Hendrix when he visited Morocco. Now, how do you say "Purple Haze" in Arabic? | July 2004   Tim Keane is a poet and novelist based in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. You can visit him on the Web at www.timkeane.com.	Pilgrims less adventurous than Bowles can tap into these same pleasures through this sensuous and ambitious compilation of house music, dance tracks, world beat and cross-over collaborations drawn from the most cutting-edge contemporary DJs, rock bands and solo artists, most of who made their names recently in the Paris and London club scenes.