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

He can't find a way back into the very culture that created him. This tragedy, and its lack of resolution, defines the saccharine and overdone sound of In Waves, whose missing of the mark is evident from its earliest moments.

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.

Of course, this repetition is the point of a record titled Endlessness, yet it feels like a central motif seemingly existing for its own sake.

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.

This album has an overall ephemeral quality. It's commanding when it's on, but aside from a few highlights, it feels like a minor work in both artists' discography. Time will tell.

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.