Too often, Letherette is synthetic and manufactured, but in those slower, stranger moments it feels like the real deal.

Portraits resonates at a level of button-pushing sentimentality, but Maribou State are such deft directors of their sound, and so melodically gifted, that they still create moments of magic.

While McIlwain is operating within more rigid structures, another hangover from his ambient productions is that he can sometimes sound a bit directionless.

Still Trippin''s sound design too often lacks textural depth, and it sometimes undermines otherwise good songs. The hip-hop tracks are a mixed bag as well.

Love Letters is more mature, doleful and disconnected from club trends.

As ever, there are great songs here, underpinned by sharp, imaginative production.... The problem is that Lidell doesn't go far enough.

Hotel Amour doesn't cover new sonic ground.

It's an album that sounds less extreme than it has any right to, inspiring a cold and technical appreciation for Lopatin's craftsmanship, but not necessarily excitement.

The album gets off to a rough start with "Don't Leave Me Like This," whose poppy melancholy could be better appreciated if Bobby Raps's vocals weren't distorted to an infuriating chipmunk pitch. ... But on tracks like "Way Back," Moore shines, and his knack for earworm melodies, genre mashups and collaboration comes through.

The end result sounds like a shameful karaoke. Nonetheless, fans of Miss Kittin should still give Calling From The Stars a go, as it remains her most accomplished solo release to date.

For something as weighty as a debut album from a hotly-tipped artist, Parallel Memories feels a little too light for its own good.

Some of the work Power did as one half of Fuck Buttons matched the grandiosity of this record's melodies, but did so with emotional resonance. But with the sense of plastic emptiness so ever-present, Animated Violence Mild too directly mirrors the very thing it's critiquing.

On Turn Blue you can tell the duo remain integral and solidly at the core, new influences or not.

The first new Plastikman material in over ten years was always going to carry some high expectations, and as solid as it is, this one doesn't quite match up.

Power Of Anonymity merely repeats the ideas first laid out on Yours & Mine, sometimes improved yet other times untouched.

If there is one main flaw you could attach to Rapprocher, it's how Harper sticks so slavishly to the template laid out by her dance pop mentors.

Swinscoe has a knack for both producing lush orchestral movements and picking worthy collaborators. On To Believe, they are unfortunately not more than the sum of their parts.

Clearly, Stewart's future does not lie in crossover R&B--he should drill down into his musical imagination to open up ever weirder, deeper seams.

The inherent structural flaws of any given remix album also plague TKOL RMX--a lack of consistency, flow or narrative.

These tracks [with pop collaborations] amount to unremarkable radio fare and dilute the artistic voices of all involved. ... The instrumentals have more bite.

Most of The Triad lacks darkness or tension, which results in a lack of depth and contrast.

The duo's linear arrangements could keep a dance floor chuntering along, but they make for clunky pop songs.

The album is a ultimately a disappointment, but it has its moments nonetheless.

Ultimately, Rustie's purism exposes the limitations of his style.

It's something more functional, familiar and safe.

The sheer density of his music is its most interesting quality, but also a weakness. Like the panicked crowds filling the streets in your favourite disaster movie, Stringer's tracks run in a hundred directions at once and ultimately get nowhere.

After working together on and off for years, this trio obviously have a special connection, but it's only apparent in fits and spurts.

Good pop is often pliable, its message broad or ambiguous enough for listeners to flex it to their taste. Political pop can be like this without compromising its message, but most of Hopelessness has no interest in pliability. It regards its audience as either fervent believers in Anohni's cause or a pop mass in need of blunt polemic.

Those few powerful moments [on Boy] are the exception rather than the norm. Their rawness is an essential element that could have lent Skilled Mechanics the sort of organic, internalized anxiety that once defined Tricky.

When it comes to grime producers, there are two kinds: those who simply make music and those who act as creative directors, getting involved with collaborators, arrangements and often more. Judging from the unevenness of Disaster Piece, he needs both.

What's most disheartening about 32 Levels is how it floats by anonymously for 37 wishy-washy minutes, which is especially hard to take from a producer whose tracks used to command your attention.

Where Rashad's best work was light and agile like an expert dancer, some of Taso's tracks feel like they're dragging their feet.

Where Mala In Cuba boiled, Mirrors barely gets to a simmer.

The album's mix of chipmunk samples, sound shards and tender melodies sounds contemporary, but it fails to bring out the ingenuity and energy of Carnell's best music. On Value, he bares his soul, but we don't learn much.

Beneath its stylish veneer, Unspell lacks substance.

As a whole, the music is warm and pleasant, even occasionally gorgeous, but it feels a bit bloodless.

Jaar's samples might not seem obvious, but 2012-2017 can feel generic. Most tracks are just looped soul samples fastened to heavy kicks. They might be uplifting if they didn't feel so utilitarian.

Much like switching on a 24-hour news channel, No No is engrossing for the first ten minutes or so. Then the parade of lurid images continues, and sure enough, they give you a headache.

There's a dreamlike logic to much of Care: it's atmospheric, but it doesn't make sense.

No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, with its stylistic and thematic missteps, too often shakes us out of this trademark groove.

Despite the name, Crooked Man's greatest fault is ultimately how straight Barratt plays it.

Where Bad Vibes had a dynamic range of feeling, Dark Red is melodramatic to the point of being alienating.

Runddans is an intriguing and sometimes fun experiment, but it's not quite a meeting of great musical minds.

As the white noise whooshes and the snares roll on Adrian Hour's "Make You Feel Good" (a track that was released on Toolroom four years ago), it's difficult not to sense an artist also drifting in the opposite direction, towards a sound that he'd struggle to call his own.

What we're left with is an uneven album that's rarely as profound or as meaningful as it tries to be.

Caracal has the effect of a magician performing a trick twice in a row, rendering once clandestine, miraculous movements suddenly obvious, over-rehearsed and unnatural.

Even though Brighter falls short, in this context it does illustrates that the indie WhoMadeWho infuse their dance with has more funk and attitude than most.

Listening to Imagin is like pulling on a old pair of trainers: comfortable, familiar and, ultimately, rather boring.

A somewhat stunted, companion piece to their debut, all the more frustrating for their lack of real development.

Ghettoville doesn't sound like the work of a producer who's no longer able to make wondrous music; there's enough craft and intention here to suggest that, for whatever reason, he just didn't this time.

There's an excellent 12-inch (or two) hidden in Addison Groove Presents James Grieve.

Ultimately, Reachy Prints is a bravura performance that lacks bite.

Brute's most interesting flourishes are all surface-level. Take them away and you're left with Al Qadiri reusing the same musical ideas.

The reason that the DJ-Kicks series has remained relevant is that even at its so-called worst, it was still saying something about the overall state of electronic dance music. With Gold Panda's entry-despite its cleverness and state-of-the-art, diverse penchants-you're left with the impression the famous !K7 cycle has nothing more this time than a muted episode on its hands.

The album has bags of character and is big on ideas. Unfortunately, not all of them work. ... Jarring sounds and heavy-handed ideas dominate the album's second half and ultimately spoil the record.

The endorphin-rush techno of "Forgive Me," meanwhile, is sure to ignite one of his main stage festival sets. That's the setting in which Boratto shows his energy and confidence as an artist. Too much of Pentagram, by contrast, feels tired or confused.

At its best, the LP touches on the dizzying maximalism that made past records so thrilling. But at other times it treads the same ground as the healing frequency meditation videos that proliferate on YouTube.

Glow dumbs down Niemerski's music into mass market-ready chunks.

The album certainly isn't a waste of time, but most disappointing is that it lacks an intensity and message.

Rundell and Goddard are still crafting warm, well-balanced tracks, but the parts that reveal their personalities—namely the lyrics--are often awkward and strangely didactic.

Stones and Woods is a frustrating body of work, with good ideas poorly realised and arresting moments interrupted by annoying ones.

As you unspool slowly into Aimlessness, you can't help but wish for a more mediating human touch.

Gately describes her method as a question: "How much can I add before it just sounds too crazy. What's the most obnoxious thing I can make the song do?" With Color, she's overshot.

Suddenly is a frustrating listen. Snaith's talent for writing earworms, hooks and choruses has never been so apparent. But overall he sounds like he's trying too hard, taking influence from too many places.

Gibson's earlier work mixed pop mastery with genuine feeling. Actual Life 3 is the Hollywood remake, with not-quite-convincing lookalikes and a script laden with clichés.

Without its academic trappings, Projections starts to grate, with its middle-of-the-road niceness and mood of tepid celebration. With them, it's borderline offensive.

The whole album sounds like it was mastered from a chewed-up old C90--it's post-chillwave music, busy and glitchy, but as relaxing as a soak in a warm bath.

Listening to the album feels like opening a time capsule to the early and mid-10s, a period marked by a cheesy, over-the-top hedonism that might only be truly understood if you survived the Great Recession and saw Obama become president twice. ... It's easier to get behind Quest For Fire when Moore's dubstep influences are subtler.

Caramel is a collection of half-finished songs that force you to fill in the blanks. It's just as frustrating and occasionally enlightening as that sounds.

Wonder Where We Land pads its vocal tracks with plush instrumentals, morsels of melody that would have been strong points if they weren't so half-baked.

A collection of big, bouncy and immaculately produced club tunes, it brings together some fine productions. But it's also a tough record to love.

There's something so inherently off-kilter about Scruff's kaleidoscopic production that it just doesn't jell with the sound of a human voice being all serious.

It's nice indeed, but it may leave you craving something a little stronger.

You'll have to cherry-pick the best moments from Wonderful Frequency Band, but that's Justus Köhncke. He may bemuse you, but you can never write him off.

Secret Life is undeniably gorgeous. But it's a mainstream, you-know-how-this-ends kind of gorgeous, like a Hollywood remake of some European arthouse film. ... It's difficult to be mad at Secret Life. But the bigger problem is that it's hard to feel anything at all.

While it might be beautiful to gaze at momentarily, by the end of the record it's treading water.

Without any contrast, his vibraphone seems to grin vacantly, as if pumped full of sedatives.

As its title implies, Migration was meant to be about Green's experience moving to a new home and traveling around the world. But rather than taking his sound anywhere, Migration stays put.

It's all meticulously crafted with a keen ear for mood and emotion, and yet Creatures has trouble moving beyond a pastiche of Castex's record collection.

In losing sight of the dance floor, Battle Lines does away with Bob Moses' greatest strength, and the quality that made them stand out from countless other pop and rock acts.

The problem is the tone, which, from the album's first whimper to the comically bad poetry reading that closes it, is hackneyed and overwrought all the way through. These ten tracks are defined by somber pianos, bittersweet strings and quivering pads--like Sigur Rós, but drained of all mystery. Worst of all, though, is the singing, a half-coherent moan that falls somewhere between Thom Yorke and '90s radio balladeers like David Gray or Five For Fighting.

If The Mainframe is a film, then it's a Michael Bay blockbuster: slick and engaging but totally adolescent in worldview, its plot tortuous, its characters flimsily drawn, all of it an excuse for a string of eye-popping action set-pieces.

Some of Davis's early records still sound exciting because of the raw talent and vision behind them, and because of the way he stitched together the threads of old songs into captivating new ones. Now, his music sounds bland, as if it was designed for chillout compilations or cocktail lounges.

King Perry (released on Tricky's label—he also co-produces four tracks) simply falls flat, lost in technological tricks and devoid of Perry's classic, quizzical warmth.

If you come to Foals from an exclusively indie rock perspective, this may blow your tiny mind. But if this is Foals' attempt to infiltrate clubland proper, it falls short.

Eve sounds self-referential, dated and pretty low on ideas.

Even at its biggest, it sounds disappointingly thin.

In its studio form, though, II remains a lukewarm, ambivalent understatement.

With By Your Side, Ed Banger and Breakbot seem more and more lost in a Tumblr-tinged display of self-referencing: very now but just not very new.

There's no denying that Iradelphic is Clark's most accessible and friendly work in ages... Unfortunately, comfort is boring.

Where their first album felt like a definitive statement, Natural Selection sounds, as so many second albums do, like a diffuse bunch of half-realised ideas.

It is the very overfamiliarity with those same [80's] tropes that makes TRST an ultimately unsurprising, par for the course listen.

It's appealing stuff, but dig deeper and you'll find there's not much beneath the pristine surface.