Zomby – With Love

Excepting its mammoth run-time, With Love feels similar in both form and execution to Zomby's previous album, Dedication. This time the shadows are a little deeper, perhaps; the tone almost wistful on occasion – in fact, the overall effect of the music can almost be likened to a grime/house/hardcore-centric approximation of James Kirby's work as The Caretaker, as the listener is presented with a hypnotic patchwork of looped memories and abstracted feelings.

Filtered synths and elegant melodic loops once again provide the bread and butter; with Zomby's crisp, purposeful beats feeling equally familiar – notwithstanding a more sustained dalliance in trap beats on tracks like Pyrex Nights and Soliloquy. There's a handful of decayed breaks here and there, together with a few looped vocal fragments, but whilst Zomby clearly takes his cues from the dancefloor, this is music that seems designed for introspection and revery above all else.

Zomby's commitment to short tracks, abrupt endings and fast fade-outs also carries over from Dedication, and though it's tempting to write off as a stylistic tic at this point, on an album as long as With Love it really serves to underscore how slight many of Zomby's ideas are – not to mention how happy he is to repeat himself. With Love certainly serves as a fine showcase for Zomby's singular vision but it also paints a picture of an artist in his comfort zone; a one-time maverick who has started, at last, to sound somewhat predictable.