William Orbit´s Pieces in a Modern Style is an ambient album that rejigs 11 works by classical composers in a particularly tacky fashion. Even though Orbit has proved his mettle as an innovative and exciting producer for others--Blur´s 13 and Madonna´s Ray of Light--this is an ungainly meeting of the sublime and the absurd that, frankly, doesn´t work. Samuel Barber´s "Adagio for Strings," Ludwig van Beethoven´s "Triple Concerto," Henryk Gorecki´s "Piece in the Old Style I," and Antonio Vivaldi´s "L´Inverno" are four that unfortunately meet their maker in a crude pileup of flat, belching synths and wallpaper flourishes. If he had combined live instrumentation with a playful reverence for the arcane glories of the past, perhaps he could have managed to make reality out of that most elusive of notions: experimental music that actually sells. However, Orbit fails to do anything more than resemble a second-rate Vangelis.