As amazing as the repercussions of "Play" were, Moby has said that he's never aspired to do anything new. On "18," he doesn't. Instead, "18" distills the most influential down-tempo electronic music of the '90s into a record as smooth as beach glass. Some songs recall early Massive Attack, while others channel Air and Beth Orton's collaborations with William Orbit. The celestial strings and aquatic pings on the title song are pure Craig Armstrong, while the gospel loops of "In My Heart" and "One of These Mornings" could have been on Moby's own "Play." "18" is an alchemy of soul and new wave, with elements of hip-hop and disco. Conceptually, there's nothing novel here, which is why on the surface Moby's sudden ascendance into the limelight seems random.

Like "Play," "18" is distinctive without being original, in that it represents the final transformation of an underground sound into pure pop. "Play's" ubiquitous "Porcelain" -- featured in the film "The Beach," Nordstrom ads and several TV shows -- took the dreamy cascades of groups like Hooverphonic and polished them to a high gloss. Like Massive Attack and Stars, Moby's music contains myriad currents of darkness, but it's darkness of a significantly different, more marketable kind.

Instead of Massive Attack's struggling weariness on songs like "Protection" and the gut-churning dread of tracks like "Sly" and "Angel," Moby's blackness is pristinely romantic. It makes despair seem beautiful and noble rather than creepy. While you listen to it, the world takes on a sepia Sunday cast. "Sleep Alone" was originally a song about a couple dying together; in the wake of Sept. 11, he changed the lyrics to make the meaning more elusive, but the pain in it is still of the most rarefied and delicious kind.

That's not meant pejoratively. It is certainly true that Moby has done more than anyone else to lift electronic music out of the underground. But that underground had long since stopped being a vital or interesting place. If "18" is more accessible and lustrous than the vast majority of electronic music, that's partly because Moby is oriented toward the mainstream, and partly because he's an impeccable producer. Electronic music is so easy to make that it drastically lowered the bar for anyone who wanted to call themselves a musician; the resulting homemade simplicity defined the aesthetic but also limited it. Moby is a genuine pop composer who happens to work electronically. He's slicker than most of his peers, but he's also more talented.

At least, he's talented as a producer. Fame has ruined him in one way: He now insists on singing. Moby's voice is a thin, brittle thing. It doesn't even come close to the kind of ugly beauty of a Stephin Merritt or a Leonard Cohen, who somehow sing amazingly without being amazing singers.

The last time Moby sang this much was on his disastrously received 1996 rock record, "Animal Rights." This time, he takes the lead vocal on four songs, and while they're processed enough to be enjoyable, the tracks where other people sing are so superior that it's hard not to be disappointed whenever his voice appears. He's like Quentin Tarantino, who can't act yet insists on casting himself in otherwise good movies.

Yet just as Tarantino couldn't spoil "Pulp Fiction," Moby's croaking doesn't ruin "18." The record is familiar territory for anyone who's been listening to electronic music for a while, but then again, the fetish for musical novelty (as opposed to musical skill) is what fueled the underground's manic trend cycles and ultimately exhausted the genre. People can blather about selling out and cashing in, but just as Tarantino, however annoying he may be, remains an exponential improvement over, say, Jerry Bruckheimer, Moby's music beats almost everything that's on the radio. This album will probably be the soundtrack of the next "18" months. That that's a pleasant prospect is the most important thing about it.

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