Killing Puritans

Getting through this album is a challenge. While Van Helden hits the mark on a few occasions, the bulk of Puritans irritates and frustrates as annoying samples create agonizingly long intros to otherwise solid tracks.

Van Helden continues to battle being pigeonholed by throwing disparate musical elements into the mix; unfortunately, the resulting musical tapestry is uneven.

And if nothing on Killing Puritans has quite the commercial potential of last year's You Don't Know Me (a UK Number 1), it does have the same cheekily opportunistic spirit, Van Helden's sticky fingers busily probing all kinds of forgotten pop cultural corners.

Harking back to the glory days of late-'80s acid-house, it's heavy on dark club jams that work around a simplistic sample with diva theatrics and rapper freestyles. As such, most of these tracks work much better on the dancefloor than the living room.

Van Helden's compositional modus operandi doesn't vary much between the 11 tracks, but it's a combination that rarely fails to deliver a knockout punch. He introduces one element -- a vocal snippet or a jazzy drum break -- and milks it for a spell, before introducing a contrasting timbre. The two begin to climb in and around each other, as Van Helden tweaks and twists various effects, bringing the music and momentum to a dizzy, unsettling pitch.

In drawing on rock, hip hop, electro, drum 'n' bass and early electronic artists, Van Helden mirrors the developments dance acts have been making in the UK and Europe, rather than US artists.

Ultimately, 'Killing Puritans' is well-crafted and commendably diverse, but somewhat joyless and cold. It aspires to social significance without having much serious to say, just as its creator casts himself as a taboo-trashing auteur rather than accept his true status as a skilled artisan in the commercial dance field.