Old rock stars pull a lot of annoying, trite stunts, but nothing is more insufferable than the late-career “sequel”— an ostensible follow-up to a classic work. For every one that succeeds (Paul Simon’s “So Beautiful Or So What,” a surprisingly good quasi-sequel to “Graceland”), there are a million that fail (Ryan Adams’ “Heartbreaker” throwback “Ashes & Fire,” much of Beck’s ’00s catalog).

Experimental musicians are supposed to be impervious to this trend — after all, aren’t they supposed to be hip and cool? If Fennesz’s new “Bécs” is any indication, not always.

“Bécs”(pronounce “betch”) is an ostensible follow-up to “Endless Summer,” the 2001 album that’s haunted the Austrian producer-guitarist throughout his long career. No ensuing Fennesz work even compares to this album, and it’s still one of the defining achievements in 21st-century experimental electronica.

But even in a mire of slightly disappointing releases over the last thirteen years, Fennesz has never cowed to critics’ demands for another “Endless Summer” until now. The result is dramatically disappointing, and it’s the first truly poor album Fennesz has ever made.

The seven-track album is divided between shameless attempts at replicating “Endless Summer” and tracks that paradoxically carry no trace of Fennesz’s personality — the worst crime for anyone trying to reclaim their legacy to make.

The former trend is shown in opener “Static Kings” and closer “Paroles.” “Static Kings” is a promising opener that replicates the rough beauty of “Endless Summer” without wading too far into pastiche. “Paroles,” meanwhile, is difficult to see as anything else but a simulacrum of “Endless Summer” highlight “Shisheido.”

The latter trend is personified by the five middle tracks. Most are aimless sheets of noise that sound like less inspired versions of the ones on Fennesz’s post-”Endless Summer” releases “Venice” and “Black Sea.” (The latter’s “Saffron Revolution” dwarfs every other attempt Fennesz has made at such a composition.)

The one outlier is “Pallas Athene,” a mellow, drifting track with more in common with the work of Fennesz’s guitar-tronica contemporary Keith Fullerton Whitman than anything from the man’s prior catalog.

The one thing they all have in common is that they could have been made by anyone but Fennesz.

(The “anyone” angle is taken to the extreme in the title track, which sounds like a 14-year-old experimenting with the “Distortion” presets in GarageBand and bears none of the characteristic elegance with which Fennesz generally blends noise and melody.)

Despite being an attempted return to form, “Bécs” manages to sound less like Fennesz than a lot of his own imitators.  Though much of my criticism of this album comes from the context of its attempt to replicate “Endless Summer,“ it would fail on its own simply through this glaring lack of personality.

There are a million albums like this, both before and after Fennesz’s rise to prominence, that try to blend digital abstraction with pop melody. Most of them, even the pastiches, have their own unique qualities to distinguish them.

This cannot be said for “Bécs.” This is the sound of an artist ripping himself off in the most disheartening way possible. And while I won’t discount the possibility that Fennesz has more great music left in him, his decision to crawl back into the past suggests he may simply be out of steam.