With more misses than hits on Bibio's new LP, it's apparent that his array of influences are best served in separate portions rather than blended together.

Melidis has surely succeeded at creating a sunny, idea-rich patchwork. But listeners looking for some emotional nuance might find it a touch saccharine overall.

DVA is most successful when he edits out the excess and focuses his production on a handful of strong elements. As a producer, it's self-control, not talent, that he's lacking.

Despite appearances from the likes of Mala, dBridge, Flying Lotus, Gang Gang Dance, and Cooly G, King Midas Sound's collection of Waiting for You remixes largely feels uneven and half-baked.

All in all, too little of Mst lets us hear Gretschmann shine within this chosen framework.

In collecting the a-sides from both of his 2012 singles and propping them up with another half-hour's worth of songs, Airhead's debut full-length only makes that stylistic restlessness more frustrating.

Despite scattered flashes of brilliance, too often it's an album that feels unambitious, as though it's content to dwell in the middle ground where the two producers' back catalogs intersect rather than forge something new.

The Music Scene adds new knots to Blockhead's sly, ironic take on boom-bap, incorporating shifting structures that spiral into changing tempos, half-remembered snippets of soul horns and gnarly old guitars, and occasional drifts into hazy, shimmering psychedelia. Sadly, this fog thickly enshrouds the back half of the disc as the tempos stagnate, rendering it inert and crying out for a shot of adrenaline.

There are some songs which start off tepid, become lukewarm, and emit flickers of Blake’s usual brilliance. ... hile it's easy to criticise Blake’s chart-pandering forays into trap and pop, it is actually Assume Form’s most unashamed pop songs that rescue it from insufferable drabness.

What makes Magnifique work best as album experience, rather than a collection of individual songs; any shapeless moments are grafted onto the studier elements in the listener’s memory, leading to a rewarding overall experience in spite of the lulls in the action.

Ultimately, E-Funk proves to be an effort that finds its creators trying to pull in something that's just beyond their reach.

While The Devil's Walk may not be an absolute blemish on the Apparat discography, those who found his earlier works (such as Duplex, Walls, and the excellent remix collection, Things to be Frickled) so rewarding will find that this album unfortunately pales in comparison.

Raw Money Raps is fascinating and inventive, though not the game-changer many were hoping for.

It wanders more like a Hype Williams album would, and leaves that opening promise to dangle unfulfilled.

An LP that restlessly moves between ideas and struggles to find a solid footing, but not without touching on some real promise and originality along the way.

Tranklements is straining to belong somewhere; in the process, it ends up sounding more like it wants to be defiant instead of inspired.

It's a better idea to approach the album for what it is: a pretty, if somewhat slight take on sun-saturated psychedelia.

Dream pop is rarely celebrated for its attention to melody, as it usually places texture and atmosphere higher up on the totem poll, but At Home would have benefitted from a few more melodies that were capable of sticking with the listener past the album's running time.

Props to Britton for trying out new templates--but she’s on firmer ground when she’s in her 4/4 comfort zone, and Donna’s at its best when it plays to her emo-house strengths.

It points the way towards a possible new sound but lacks the polish, originality, and final touches that would make it stand out as a serious work of its own.

For an LP about the infinite unknown, it isn't that meditative or self-aware. Where Cosmogramma and Los Angeles made plot secondary, You're Dead! forces its cast to bend to an unwieldy storyline that ultimately only makes complete sense inside Ellison's head.

Salton Sea is good, but ultimately doesn't leave as strong an impression as it intends.

Truly, there's nothing outrightly offensive about There's More to Life Than This, but there's little to hold on to either.

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

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.

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.

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.