SOMETIMES A SONG'S title says it all, and with Gene Page's "All Our Dreams Are Coming True," that's just the case – a great thing, since the track is an instrumental. Page (best-known credit: the soundtrack to Blacula) worked with late, great love walrus Barry White, and it shows in a string arrangement that rises and rises, Love Unlimited Orchestra-style, to a state of pure glory. The peak of "All Our Dreams Are Coming True" is tinged with just the right amount of melancholy, with the knowledge that this high can't last forever so you should enjoy it while it's here.

Which happens to be around four minutes, as many times as you play it. The song helps kick off Saint Etienne's contribution to the mix series The Trip (Family Recordings), mainlining pure gold right after the trebly glam prog of Serge Gainsbourg's "Cannabis" and right before "Move Me Baby," by Gwen McCrae, mistress of the sultry "me baby" (here and on her sole hit, "Rock Me Baby").

Every musician, celebrity, and his or her twisted sister may be a DJ these days, but Saint Etienne have been crate-digging for decades – the group's Bob Stanley was a critic for Melody Maker, and he and partner Pete Wiggs began spinning records in the wake of the Summer of Love. On The Trip, their passions run deep and travel far. People may have heard the Gregorian gaudiness of Ennio Morricone's "Deus Irae Psychedelico," but what about Kiss Inc.'s bombastic and monastic "Hey Mr. Holy Man"? Hardcore Motown and Philly soul devotees may know Marvin Gaye's "Symphony" (rhymed with timpani), the Isley Brothers' "My Love Is Your Love," and a Diana-less Supremes' "It's Time to Break Down," but it's unlikely they've heard Foster Sylvers's "Misdemeanor," a crooked stick of bubble gum starring a pip-squeak just as irrepressible as Michael Jackson when he really was a little kid.

San Francisco has been Saint Etienne's American second home, where their popularity counters their relative anonymity in the rest of the country. Clubs like Popscene have something to do with it, but the city's history with, and open mind about, disco is a major factor. In the hip-hop era, the West Coast has been just as disdainful of disco as the AOR Midwest once was – to its detriment, as Biggie, Puffy, and Kim's Sylvester sampling (if not 50's new "Disco Inferno") has proved. A steady diet of funk can grow stale, and the tinseled touch of the best disco is sometimes just as soulful.

An hour-plus joyride, The Trip's first CD illustrates that argument with bring-the-drama tracks like Gloria Scott's mournful "(A Case of) Too Much Lovemakin'." Instrumentals bridge the gap between the nightclub twirlers and the drug-laced euphoria of '60s pop like the Mamas and the Papas' "Shooting Star" and the Attack's "Lady Orange Peel." R.P.M. Generation's "Rona's Theme" is the best soundtrack for a TV show you've never seen, a way-fab stampede of horns and gnarled guitar solos that's 50 times more supercharged than the theme from Hawaii 5-0. On Lalo Schifrin's version of "Jaws," the deepest, bluest shark fin hits the dance floor and trips the light fantastic – look out, Tony Manero. Wire readers who worship Pierre Henry's "Psyche Rock" will discover its twin in Jeff Britton's proto-acid house stadium stomper "Rub Out."

Similarly campy psychedelia seeps into the second disc, which climbs into bed with British folk and warped easy-listening. Ice confess an odd, too-intense love for their neighborhood ice-cream vendor on "Ice Man," and Mother's little helpers have Mandy More (that's one o, not two) tripping hard on "If Not by Fire." More is one of a few Petula Clark types on The Trip, which is dominated by valiant sound-alikes whose days in the spotlight never came, often because their songs were just a tad too weird. Still, slightly more familiar names – Tim Hardin, the Left Banke – come through with some of disc two's highlights. Dating from the era when divas' album covers sported the kind of airbrushed horrors found in Jim Shaw's Thrift Store Paintings, "I Start Counting" (from the recently reissued See All Her Faces) finds Dusty Springfield gracefully wandering through a mirrored forest. John Barry's "A Doll's House" closes the set with a spangled merry-go-round of sound.

That Saint Etienne worship Springfield isn't news; their own "Nothing Can Stop Us" is built from the melody of one of her songs. That they worship the likes of Schifrin and White should also come as no surprise, as the group's own albums, sprinkled with bits of dialogue from Peeping Tom, Billy Liar and other films, have always been tied together by a cinematic sensibility. Allowing Stanley and Wiggs to employ a variety of vocalists in a way they can't on their own discs, this compilation gives them an opportunity to reveal the oft-superior influences behind their own ballads and up-tempo numbers. The result is a Trip that, unlike other installments, rescues obscurities no iPod can reach.