*1/2 Enigma

THE SCREEN BEHIND THE MIRROR

(Virgin)

The producer/conceptualizer behind Enigma, Romanian-born Michael Cretu, helped jump-start the Gregorian-chant craze of the early '90s by combining liturgical drone with techno trance grooves and a vaguely menacing style of art direction. He's been recycling the formula ever since, and if you don't count the remixed versions of the first two Enigma albums that were recycled for the project's third release, he hasn't come up with any new ideas in six years.

He's not about to mess with his successful formula now. The Screen offers the expected smoky trance beats and atmospheric studio gloss that hypnotized buyers into sucking 25 million units of Enigma product off the shelves in the '90s. This is new-age music for people who wouldn't be caught dead buying anything that looks new-agey. Cretu borrows a few licks from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana ("O Fortuna") here and even gives the composer credit (or maybe the copyright lawyers are getting better at their jobs, who knows?). But what you get is a fair-to-middling album of snooze music with enough pop pretension -- especially the metallic bombast on "Modern Crusaders" -- to keep you awake, if just barely.

-- J. Poet