First Listen: Carl Craig, 'Versus'

It's easy to approach — a long-gestating collaboration between Detroit's electronic-music deity Carl Craig, the Paris-based Les Siècles Orchestra (under the direction of François-Xavier Roth) and techno-loving classical pianist Francesco Tristano — as the latest attempt to bring club music to the rarefied atmosphere of a concert hall. This desire has seduced many an artist during the recording age — from jazz symphonists, and rock opera conceptualists, to exquisite post-modernists like and — with varying degrees of creative success. And Carl Craig cops to that ambition from the get-go, in the liner notes, calling these orchestral