It is what he decides to do with his production skills that is questionable, and although glimpses of solid tunes do show up every so often, Ask the Dust is nonetheless a disappointment.

Something happened in the shift from Games' That People Play EP to Channel Pressure. That welcome looseness was lost in lieu of Ford & Lopatin's more focused and (dare we say) over-thought songwriting and production, and it's as if there are too many cultural cues being thrown our way this time around.

Weighing of the Heart is, to me, an unripe album. The recording is slick and the mix is by the guy who mixed the last Gorillaz album, but I just don’t feel any outstanding music-making talent or skill. I see a marketable product.

On the whole, Blurred is an uneven release. Huxley's ambition is laudable, but it's only his decision to hedge his bets a little that saves the album from being a completely subpar outing.

Purity Ring suffers from the all-too-popular idea that pitch-shifted vocal samples and well-calibrated washes of reverb are enough to create haunting, enigmatic music, as opposed to crafting singular worlds of sound that convey the soul of their creator and resonate within the listener.

So many things have been synthesized into Chewed Corners from so many sources and ideas that any sense of direction, reaction, or engagement with the cutting edge is markedly less adventurous than most releases on his own label.

Bjorke's ear candy is delightful when consumed, but rarely worth a repeat. Still, Bjorke has plenty of sonic reach, and his album is worth a spin to find the scattering of gems.

The main problem is that the songs too often feel like sketches. The punchline is sold too quickly, the finish too abrupt.

Most tracks play like one elongated idea and only a few songs sound fully fleshed-out, giving Thing a half-baked, underwhelming vibe.

Bespoke features a wealth of sounds and guest singers, but Darlington often lacks the glue to hold them together.

The speedy segue between Jungle Buddha’s raucous DnB cut “Drug Me” and Black Acid’s eponymous 303 track is the pick of the early exchanges, but it feels rushed and airless--deeply contrasting with Burial’s trademark spacey sound-chasms. ... [OKZharp & Manthe Ribane’s “Treasure Erasure”] arrives during a decent section that also includes the more gentle timbres of Ben Frost (remixed by Jlin) and Proc Fiskal (also on Hyperdub); these are nice, but are separated by the squeaky rudeboy MCing of Dean Blunt’s Babyfather alter-ego, another bizarrely jarring selection. ... FabricLive 100 feels hurried, uncomfortable, and impossible to feel truly at peace in.

The LP is merely a collection of somewhat compelling, hip-hop-leaning beats that largely go nowhere; it's more like a dressed-up beat tape, and not a particularly exciting one at that.

If only Slava had focused on the highlights and cut the weaker numbers from his debut LP, he might have had a rather strong EP to share.

More often than not, those organic sounds [dusty record pops, nocturnal nature recordings, tape hiss, distant car radios, bleeping busy signals, and street noise] feel like the music's most relatable characteristics, providing moments of unpredictability and liveliness to an album which paints almost exclusively with monochrome hues.

If the last four years were a journey through the night for these two, the dawn on the other side is all loose ends, with only a few engaging moments here and there.

Glow feels bloated from the start.

Knowing what he is capable of with his band, though, one can't help but feel a little unfulfilled by his solo effort. If anything, SUM/ONE's moments of constriction emphasize how vital the expansive jam aspect is to Gang Gang Dance.

The LP has a padded running time; 52 minutes is a long-ish album by any measure, but this one could have benefited from some serious editing.

Taken as a whole, Abaporu isn't a bad LP, and for fans of classic Kompakt records by the Modernist, SCSI-9, or even The Field, the album might be exactly what they're looking for. More adventurous listeners, however, are advised to look elsewhere.

Somehow, when put together, the artists' individual strengths are watered down, resulting in a mixture of the benign and the over-the-top, depending on the particular song.

Snow Ghosts has arrived with 10 songs straight out the gate, leaving us with a strong first impression and a lingering suspicion that there may not be much fertile ground for Augustus Ghost and Throwing Snow to find together.

All in all, most every cut on Sam Baker's Album is solid in its own right, but maybe 40 minutes is just too much, considering that the lines which box in the instrumental hip-hop genre become only more clear as the album pushes on.

Cooly G is still present here, but maybe she's a bit too present to fully elicit the kind of seduction she's singing about.

While it's obvious that Hicks and Hall know their way around both sound- and songcraft, they rarely--if ever--use those skills to sound like anything but a band even the most casual synth-pop fan would be familiar with.

While there very well could be a single or two from this record that eventually does break through to join the current wave of club crossover hits, Glow, as an album, does not live up to its promise, regardless of whether it's evaluated in "mainstream" or "underground" terms.

The resulting album is light and breezy.

The resulting album, which has been 18 months in the making, is certainly more complicated, although not more sophisticated than previous work.

Now and then, Wolf will offer thoughtful contemplations surrounded by muted chimes and generous xylophone twinkles, but if it's a matter of Wolf's work being particularly groundbreaking, then we'd urge him to think before taking the red-eye.