Album Review: William Orbit, Pieces in a Modern Style

William Orbit

Pieces in a Modern Style

(Maverick)

Pieces in a Modern Style

(Maverick)

The synthesizer is a gambler's instrument. It lures musicians with its gaudy array of textures and noises, but it can also deaden their performances. Sometimes, only sometimes, the gamble pays off. William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style, a collection of synthesizer arrangements of pieces by classical greats ranging from Vivaldi to Satie, is a case in point. When Orbit, Madonna's producer, sticks close to the composers' arrangements and instrumentation, as he does on Barber's "Adagio for Strings," the songs don't profit from the synthesizer's virtues and still suffer its vices. "Adagio" sounds like the work of a very tired string orchestra.

But for the most part, the songs on this UK-top-10 album use the music as a point of departure, and that approach works. In Handel's "Largo from Xerxes," the sounds drift by: shimmering chords, spacey burbles, eerie bells, groans, rumbles, tinkling chimes, thumping bass and more. This is pleasing, unobtrusive mood music, where pure sound is the main attraction.

It's not impossible to use a synthesizer to turn classical music into.... really cool classical music. But since Orbit entered the public ear as the Material Girl's producer, it shouldn't be a great surprise that he gets a payoff only when he uses his synthesizer to turn classical into chill-out pop. B