rom the mid-90’s to the first year or so of this decade, there was a brief and brilliant flash that emerged when Big Beat, House, and Club/Dance combined. The electronic sub-genres alone spawned numerous acolytes and associations, but this specific collusion acted as a soft counterweight the Roided out Jock Jams of purist Big Beat musicians like Junkie XL and Prodigy—who achieved their popular apogee in the same period. It’s perhaps not too much of a stretch to say that among such drum machine bangers there existed diplomats who sought concert in combination. Representative albums included Leftfield’s Leftism and Rhythm and Stealth, Fluke’s Risotto, and Deep Dish’s Junk Science and representative groups included Daft Punk and Underworld—who, yes, while being predominantly House, fit into the cadre perfectly.

The thrill is gone now. Leftfield left after two albums, Underworld went under after a mostly resplendent decade of work, Fluke’s last album Puppy was one, and most Daft Punk fans were disappointed by the duo’s newfound “humanity.” Which leaves Deep Dish, who’ve been hiding for seven years through singles, mixes, and a slew of Global Underground comps. If anything, the cuts on George Is On signify only the addled nature of their once intelligent mix of sub-genres, one that performed marvelously given numerous stilts on which to stand and rested as a recalcitrant invalid when nobody offers a healthy shove. Furthermore, the duo finds itself in an environment that lacks both sages (e.g. Leftfield) and idiot-savants (e.g. Prodigy) in House and Big Beat. In other words, in 2005 people neither wanted to Smack their Bitch Up nor Open Up.

Deep Dish instead hover in a relatively safe zone of Big Beat and Club/Dance, sequestering pretty much all gauche influences that were emblematic of the tiramisu under Junk Science and offer an almost negatively hypnotizing centricity. The first two tracks—“No Stopping for Nicotine” and “Sacramento,” both of which feature Richard Morel—are standard fare, mid-tempo fodder filled with disposable, vacuous lines. Now, this isn’t an inherent problem since, after all, Madonna’s latest return to dance works using the same rubric, but her album had two obvious exceptions: the better vocals and the better beats. Morel, ironically enough, sounds like Fluke’s Jon Fugler trying to sing: no range, no resonance, and no real reason to. Electric guitar samples are weaved through both, but that doesn’t prevent them from becoming dead weight dance cuts.

“Flashdance” is built on an alluring guitar and drum loop but never builds to a climax. The vocals I suppose could represent choruses, but their repetition doesn’t necessarily constitute one and neither the drum nor guitar loop change when the vocals enter. Instead the entire movement simply stalls and repeats, and when you catch on (which doesn’t take long) the entire thing begins to simply stagnate. Some redemption is found in its follower “Swallow Me.” In it orchestral samples guide the listener as well as the piece, but its agreeable direction makes it novel only in lieu of the preceding disappointments. You begin to wonder if this is the same duo who did so well on Junk Science, but it’s on some of the following tracks that you begin to think they may have performed even better.

“Everybody’s Wearing My Head” sounds a bit like a remix upon first listen, its throbbing bass line resembling a Club-ready version of LCD Soundsystem’s “Trials and Tribulations,” and comes as a very pleasant counterpoint to the five-song tessellation that came before. The duo of “Dub Shepherd” and “Sexy III” are akin to lightning striking in duplicate for them. Straightforward Dance and House songs, they form a late backbone to a terribly soft return album and even though they do not salvage entirely the disappointing experience, they at least provide memorable stamps.

It’s on “Dreams” with Stevie Nicks that the album’s fundamental flaws come to the fore, especially since many have been comparing that song to “Future of The Future (Stay Gold)” with Tracy Thorn from Junk Science. To say they are equivalent as artistic statements is entirely malapropos, since “Dreams” pushes Nicks’s vocals eagerly to the front while the duo middles with some perfunctory beats behind her. On top of that, Nicks is a good vocalist, but her performance here feels phoned-in. Compare that to “Future of The Future” where Thorne basked in the music without hesitancy or disconnect, easily interlarding herself with the beats and samples, and the differences are glaring. While “Future of The Future” was a centerpiece of the brief Dance/House/Big Beat fusion as a connected, kinetic organism, “Dreams” is just Dance as mostly an uncreative appendage. It’s the latter type that’s most emblematic of not only George Is On but the graveyard of albums and musicians who were once members of a great guild.