This album announces its intent fairly clearly in the opening moments: you will be seduced, then confused, then alienated, then hugged by the womb-like production. Wonky is the word. It’s incredible that this album represents the far end of the dubstep spectrum from Katy B and Tinie Tempah.

The music and lyrical content is so sparse to the extent of nonexistence in places, but never less than effective at communicating serious emotion. The Wilhelm Scream (named for a sound effect) is a great example of this: over a single more-or-less repeated verse, one ends up with a great sense of resigned despair. I Never Learnt To Share takes this further repeating the lyric “My brother and my sister / Don’t speak to me / But I don’t blame them” to an abstractly burbling backing which swells like a monster-movie soundtrack to a defiant resolution. Elsewhere the mood is contemplative, meditative almost. It’s difficult to hear through the serious autotune (well, vocoder) effects on his vocals, but he’s got a great voice. If you need proof, listen to this version of Joni Mitchell’s A Case Of You he performed for a BBC session, or the cover of Feist’s Limit To Your Love. This latter includes the excellent phrasing of “slow motion” drawn out over a bar-and-a-half, present in the original, but feeling here like a longing sigh. I love this album - it provides a perfect mood-altering experience when listened to on headphones, in a similar vein to Spiritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space.

♫ Listen ♫