RECORD RACK

It’s not surprising that many world music traditionalists are not exactly entranced by the success of Deep Forest. The French duo of Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez has constructed a music that essentially lays down a danceable groove beneath an almost endless collection of world music sounds. And they’ve done it with tremendous success--a Grammy for their second album, “Boheme,” and more than 3 million albums sold worldwide.

“Comparsa,” perhaps predictably, takes a similar tack. This time out, the sounds trace largely to sun countries such as Mexico, Madagascar and the Caribbean, with some of the more intriguing moments provided by Wes Madiko, a Bantu griot, and Mama Sana, a 100- year-old Malagasy who died prior to the completion of the album. While one can be bothered by Deep Forest’s superficial, commercial exploitation of ethnic sounds, there’s no denying the fact that the unit effectively achieves its goal of creating a kind of rhythmic, bubbling, world-music stew.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good), four stars (excellent).

Hear the Music

* Excerpts from these albums and other recent releases are available on The Times’ World Wide Web site. Point your browser to:

https://www.latimes.com/soundclips