I swear to God I had to check the spelling. How many Photeks could there possibly be in the world? Well, none in the phonebook; but two that I know of: the visionary junglist who masterminded the steely noir Modus Operandi and Risk vs. Reward, and the self-satisfied hack behind the lackluster Solaris. In his novel of the same name, Stanislaw Lem's Solaris was a massive oceanic planet that functioned as a brain in dead space. Andrei Tarkovsky's lengthy but nonetheless mesmerizing 1972 film adaptation gave the science fiction classic a visual resonance to rival one's own imagination. When I got my hands on Photek's Solaris and gazed into the deep, dead, blue sea on the album cover, I thought Rupert Parkes had finally lighted on a theme worthy of his considerable talents. Photek's Solaris, however, is not the madness of the liquid space mind; it's the surgically enhanced decadence of the French Riviera.

Solaris is an anthem for Eurotrash everywhere. Its sins are ultimately sloth and indifference. Eschewing the brilliantly cold futurism of earlier efforts, Photek has crafted a dull excursion into the sunnier latitudes of electronic music: a tropical cocktail of salt-rimmed drum n' bass, faux-sexual bedroom ambient and lifeless house. Robert Owens' love-you-down soul crooning is the baby parasol in the ice-blended mix. This shit may wash at the Club Med, but not here.

The album starts off with promise. I was willing to embrace the hot tribal primitivism of the first track, "Terminus": the heavy congas and the twittering winds reverberated easily into the synths and noise. The Psykick Warriors Ov Gaia had virtually perfected this sound on the underrated Ov Biospheres and Sacred Grooves. But where the Warriors embraced the lush aesthetics of non-Western rhythms, Photek comes off as dilettantish, flirting with the organic rather than wholeheartedly immersing himself in a new approach to sound. "Terminus" is one of Solaris' strongest tracks, but his dabbling grows cartoonish after repeated listenings.

The third track, "Glamourama" (the title aptly cribbed from a Brett Easton Ellis novel), is the first huge misstep: the dullest of house breaks and vapid basslines serve as little more than a couch for the running sample of Italian dialogue, which Parkes lifted from Vedette, a film by his new bride, the Dutch director Miriam Kruishoop. Parkes' claims that he was going for the sound of bored, rich decadence and he may have succeeded in spite of himself: "Glamourama" is the dullest moment on Solaris, so dominated by what must be brilliant Italian dialogue that Photek could forego any imaginative contribution whatsoever.

What happens next is a travesty. Chicago-native and former Fingers, Inc. vocalist, Robert Owens takes the helm for two of the flimsiest, most predictable house numbers ever created, "Mine to Give" and "Can't Come Down." Synths splash and breaks bounce cheerfully under Owens' abominable lyrics, "If that don't make you happy/ I don't know/ I don't know," or "What I can do/ What can I do to make your dreams come true/ Every day of your life/ I'll try to make it right/ Girl, believe me, girl/ I'm right here by your side." This is the music of lobotomy: all the eerie anxiety and evasion of earlier Photek efforts were bartered away for day-glo and a caricature of human sexuality.

"Infinity" is faded and dreamy enough to push the bile back down to mid-throat. The clipped drums hit like science, but there isn't much by way of variation. The whooshing whispers and curious synthesizers craft an atmosphere of dense fog and confusion. The urgent thud of the bass makes one feel late for something important; the forgettable title track, unworthy of its allusions, offers up more disco filler. The lumbering, echoey "Halogen" is easily the album's strongest number (which is saying very little), reminiscent of Bill Laswell's countless excursions into world-dub fusion. The deep, torpid beats continue in "Lost Blue Heaven," under Simone Simone's melodramatic vocals. The New Age pseudo-profundity of "Under the Palms" concludes the album in a tidal wash of lazy synthesizer.

Unfortunately, Solaris seems uninspired from start to finish; what works can easily be found elsewhere. The album plays like a toss-off, aspiring to neither coherence nor originality. The fact that this will be filed in any proximity to Modus Operandi seems like sacrilege. In any case, Rupert Parkes and his new wife should get their telephone number listed. I'll take it upon myself to call him and tell him that whoever's recording under his Photek moniker has been pissing in the swimming pool.

-Brent S. Sirota