Sounds of System Breakdown claim that the past two years have been spent further blurring the lines between dance and indie music, but their time might have been better served by choosing one or the other. The Dublin/London trio's second album is a mash-up of electronic and organic sounds, but none of these 13 tracks are fully convincing. The various squiggles and pings of synthesisers sound tacky and dated, particularly the hands-in-the-air chorus of Skin, a song suited to an Ibizan club in the mid-1990s. There is redemption in the form of the creative instrumental Silverfish and the intriguing closer Learning to Be Human, where understatement triumphs over clunky beats and squirm-inducing lyrics (Pony). Nomad seems like an apt title for a band audibly lost on their journey to find a compelling middle ground.
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Download: Silverfish, Learning to Be Human