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

Like most Caribou albums, Our Love is a grower.

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.

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.

Homogenous and slightly predictable, Panorama Bar 05 is not Steffi at her most adventurous.

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

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.

Sometimes producers catch a wave, sometimes they wipe out. But this theory is quickly rubbished by Hauff's own back catalogue. She's released consistent albums and EPs that said a lot with a little. Qualm achieves the same, but only in moments.

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.

So while Cold Spring is in many ways a massive leap forward for Mount Kimbie, it's also the sort of transitional album you might expect from a group with a knockout debut.

Overstuffed with ideas, some of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never's odd juxtapositions and clever references feel merely "neat." You don't get the sense Lopatin's deeply invested—more that he's throwing concepts at the wall and seeing what sticks. There are stunning moments on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never.

Movement, then, is more a proof of concept than a fully fleshed-out thought, though Herndon brings enough passion to her sound to suggest one is coming.

It never fully sounds laid back, as if the producer is unwilling to let his sounds run as rampant or give into the funk quite like his Californian counterparts.

Their tenth LP, For That Beautiful Feeling, returns to their well-established formula once again, at times surging with renewed ambition and other times falling curiously flat.

A solid diversion from two artists who we know can do better.

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.

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

Magazine 13 doesn't feel like a coherent album so much as a more open-ended platform for the same thing we get on his 12-inches.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Though not without its charms, the floundering moments of Crash suggests that Charli XCX may be most comfortable making subversive music.

While a clearing of the cobwebs is liberating for the artist, the resulting record is a tough sell for its audience, even one as dedicated as Vladislav Delay's. Rakka could be a step towards something great. But too often, getting through it is like walking with a stone in your shoe.

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.

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.

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

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.

His fans might find this fascinating. For anyone else, there are better entry points into Jonson's catalogue.

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.

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

There are many occasions on Modern Worship when the surging synths sweep you along with the force of a dopamine rush, but there are a few others when you're left with a nagging sense that Hyetal could take things that little bit further.

If The Phoenix is that feature film we were waiting for, it could stand an edit or two.

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.

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.

Food might sound pretty, but it's weaker than the sum of its parts.

There's a near-perfect EP buried in here somewhere, and an inventive musical personality waiting to burst out, but Moiré's debut album does a better job of showcasing his potential than realizing it.

Even with an album's worth of new material, there's something missing here; the format might be Herculean in scale, but Craig's efforts don't match up.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Though far from the full-on dance album Yorke's DJ gigs and 50 Weapons single had presaged, Amok does feel like a collection of tracks, not songs.

Coming from a producer who habitually finds new ways to dazzle, Pearson Sound is uncharacteristically average.

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.

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.

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.

Beneath its stylish veneer, Unspell lacks substance.

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

Feel It Break feels a bit front-loaded: its second half sags a bit with more ballad-oriented material, but closes on a strong note with "The Beast."

Tropics' debut album stands its ground as a promising start for an artist still figuring out exactly what he wants to say.

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

What she's lost in subtlety she's gained in star power, off the back of two years of touring and a slow-burning hit album.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

It's a wild, theatrical and, at times, bloated ride.

It's something more functional, familiar and safe.

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

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.

It's unclear if Elements of Light represents an evolutionary mark for the producer or a one-off exercise inspired by a summer's day in Oslo, but as an effort at minimalism, it's a modest success at best.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Predicting Machine sounds more like a homage to various styles, from the naive, exploratory ambient works of Radioactivity-era Kraftwerk ("Radio Channel"), to the whimsical homespun techno of label-mate Superpitcher ("Orbiter").

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

Copeland is an accomplished collage artist adept at combining the highbrow and the trashy, but when the individual bits are laid out on their own they can seem a bit throwaway.

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

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

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

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.

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.

ESTOILE NAIANT is perfectly pleasant while it’s playing, but you might not remember it so well afterwards.

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.

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.

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.

Wraetlic has the lingering feeling of prematurity, offering snatches of brilliance too easily snuffed out by its own tendency to hide its features in the dark.

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.

Too much of the album feels restrained, unable to truly revel in the bliss of melody.