[Drumcode]

Jerome Sydenham has proven a conflicting figure, and recently a tragic example of diminishing returns. With a rich and often fascinating musical history, the man not only has interesting stories to tell but has wet his toes in several varieties of techno and house music over the years. Unfortunately, the seeming end of that sort of dilettantism has landed Sydenham in unflattering waters; his newfound focus on harder and darker techno has unfortunately resulted in some of the most faceless music of his career. There’s certainly a market for faceless techno, but while the brains behind some of last decade’s most renowned white labels had that certain je ne sais quoi, the music on Sydenham’s latest for Drumcode has no such alluring francophone mystery.

Trombipulation is all surface-level. The tracks rarely do anything unpredictable and they’re often strangely grooveless, content to lifelessly beat away on their precisely tracked paths. Barring some interesting textural contrasts — the primitive hats drowning out the sleek sampling in “Bite,” almost like deep house colliding head on with techno, particularly stands out — too often it sounds like Sydenham is aping his stylistic peers. His heart doesn’t sound in it, or it’s buried beneath too many layers of perfunctory boom. There are two tracks, however, that showcase Sydenham’s expert control of space and pressure, and they’re the two where he actually gets to let loose. “In The Zone” invites a galloping house motif to crash through the side, completely taking over as it sends the track into spasms of willful destruction, while “Trombipulation” holds every one of its elements in frantic motion for a jerky and frenetic ride. But when he’s doing it by numbers it’s hard to disguises the fact, which makes these standouts all the more frustrating. Maybe it’s time for Sydenham to slow down, because two decent tracks out of five just doesn’t cut it in these days of flooded techno markets.