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Creating art is a solitary pursuit. Collaboration, on the other hand, is essentially a commercial activity. Which says a lot about contemporary dance music in general and something important about The Island, in particular.

A joint venture from Brazil's Gui Boratto and Germany's Martin Eyerer, it is both a perfectly serviceable record and an object lesson in why artists are generally better off plowing their own furrow.

The Island itself is a pretty, charming seven-minute cut that appears to seamlessly merge Boratto's lush, sensual melodies with Eyerer's more immediate, electro-inflected beats. Its funky, rhythmic skeleton is dextrously fleshed out with a slow-building melody and it is all very pretty and nice. B-side The Beach is less memorable: a minor-sounding, gradually blossoming instrumental that hums along on an almost inaudible bassline. Pleasant and totally inoffensive - but it fails to play to either artists' strengths.

Boratto is a musician, Eyerer is a producer. It's not the same thing. Make no mistake: Eyerer is a very good producer (his debut album Word Of Mouth, due on 28 March, is ample proof of that) but he doesn't add any magic here. Boratto, by contrast, when left to his own devices, is rarely less than transcendent. His album Chromophobia is a genuinely gorgeous, durable piece of music. Even his 'hit singles' like last year's Cocoon anthem Beautiful Life are sprinkled with magic dust.

Why collaborate? Eyerer's straight-to-the-floor electro tech, unadulterated, is more convincing in the club. And this woefully underplays Boratto's unique musicality. Almost by definition, the only reason they're both here is commercial. Double the exposure, double the potential audience, half the overheads. It makes sense, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but this record is somehow less than the sum of its parts.