Reaping the benefits of an educational decade, the support from an American and British underground fan base, and the endorsement of and collaboration with respected bands like Jane’s Addiction, Static-X, and Soul Coughing, Mephisto Odyssey allows their latest CD, The Deep Red Connection, to run riot. Connection dares the listener to deny their inner animalist, beat-loving freak.

"Some Kinda Freak" begins the dare. Starting with gentle samplings of Marlene Clark in the Bill Gunn film, Ganja and Hess, "Freak" culminates into a blur of instrumental synchronicity and effusive, seismologic composition, offering more change-ups than any club buzz in recent memory.

"I’m The Man" is what you’d get if you dumped Ice Cube and New Order into a blender and hit frappe. While telling his fiery opinion of big business and government (a.k.a. "The muthafuckin’ Man"), Oakland, CA’s, Bigg Sauce provides obligatory profanity that you can dance to.

The syrupy reverberation of "I Breathe You" languishes in the sexuality of the vocals provided by Iceland’s Angelcat, which sound less sultry because her pitch is more folksy and doesn’t exactly compliment the viscous beat, but still provides the score for erotic dancing.

After the easy, decadent climate of "Breathe," start bouncing. With the vagabond tang and ripping scat of N.Y.C. MC Jamalski on "Jump," the conscious effort to not bob your head while biting your bottom lip dissolves. Jamalski fibrillates and whips his words like bullets at the dancer’s feet, making them simultaneously dance and evade injury. "Jump" is dancer’s crack: addicting and dangerous as it forces the shedding of inhibition on the dance floor.

Mad Lion then growls out a great auto blaster with hopping, pseudo-reggae lyrics about the Zen of technologic interaction amid fat, lowrider bombast in "Soundman Connection."

"Crash," which is on the DVD soundtrack for the animated motion picture, Batman Beyond, and which Warner Bros. Records Publicist, Jay Wilson, told me would probably be the first single, features the angry, metal voice of Wayne Static of Static-X. "Crash" is filigreed with whispers of electric piano and lacerations of guitar performed by Koichi Fukuda, which counter Static’s devastating lungs.

The CD, however, ends disappointingly with "Wish," a moaning, ethereal dirge that seems to rain drearily all over the parade. The warbling, atonal vocals of Paula Frazer from Tarnation send pictures of a forlorn girl with wet hair walking barefoot and confused in a white nightgown across an overcast, Scottish cliff side.

As the CD plays on, you only get mere hints that the same artists wrote each of these compositions. While the classic house music is well represented with "Red Drums," "Sexy Dancer," and the funk/disco/house version of the Dragnet theme "Killah," Connection moves through as many variations of style as there are songs. Forget that new high-protein diet and get some carb-loading food: you’ll need the energy. (Warner Bros.)

Furtado’s powerful, sometimes nasal-tinged, often rapid-fire vocals are on display throughout the disc’s 12 tracks, all of which feature lyrics penned by the songstress. From the album’s first single, "I’m Like a Bird," in which she makes the best of a break-up with the help of a superb pop arrangement to "…On The Radio (Remember The Days)," in which she confronts the idea that she has become a sell-out, complete with a well-crafted chorus and the scratching of a turntable, to "Legend" in which she muses over a newfound love to the strains of the bossa nova, Furtado’s influence on the album is evident, in the musical style and in the words. Furtado is a sponge, and this album is a reflection of the influences and sounds that have inspired her. At 21, her lyrics are catchy — though sometimes hindered by Furtado’s tendency to place just a tad too much emphasis on capturing a hook — but, still, they are heads-and-shoulders above most of what is topping the charts.

As debut albums go, this one is definitely a keeper. Furtado’s voice is solid, her sense of humor is rich, and the quirks and eccentricities that are just beginning to bloom on this disc are sure to do nothing but flourish in her later works.