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

Factory Floor's aesthetic is rarely comforting, and yet their new music settles into itself as it revisits old habits.

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.

Pagan is a singular vision. There's plenty to enjoy--no individual track is a misstep. But consumed as whole, Pagan goes from sugary pop to sickly sweet, and is ultimately unsatisfying.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The album is overproduced and polished to a fault, often vague and uninteresting. It's the defining characteristic of Become Alive. The individual performances are undeniably full of flavor and complexity, but put together they can overwhelm.

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.

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

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.

For sure, Animal Collective still have plenty of whimsical creativity left in them, but on Painting With they mostly color inside the lines.

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

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

Despite its shortcomings, Howl is a fine album for those interested in analog electronics and curious what can be done with them outside of a club environment.

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.

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

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.

The Curved Line is a pretty harmless, quirky listen, and enjoyable enough if you've got a bit of a sweet tooth.

It's something more functional, familiar and safe.

Born In The Echoes follows the duo's formula of saving the more psychedelic tracks for the end.

There's the occasional hint of another, more vivid album.... Elsewhere they often seem all too separate, like combatants squaring off in a strange, airless room.

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.

Starfire won't get stuck in your head for days, but you could spend weeks unpacking it and still never quite get to the bottom of it.