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After six long years without releasing a studio album, Ross Birchard (better known by his stage name Hudson Mohawke), returns with the insatiably anticipated album Lantern. In the space of six years Birchard has gone from exploding onto most people’s radar from nowhere to releasing one of the biggest albums of the year. In those six years he’s released his debut Butter, to critical acclaim, as well as stellar EPs such as Satin Panther, and popularised a mixture of house, trap and hip-hop, which still is in widespread use today. He has made a name for himself as a producer, working with the likes of Lil Wayne, Drake and Kanye West. In 2012, he teamed with Canadian producer Lunice, to form TNGHT, and won widespread fame with their uniquely trap infused stadium house.

So to say Birchard has been sitting on hands in the six year interim would be an overstatement, but after listening to Lantern you may think that he hasn’t spent a great deal of time working on his own music. Birchard has always confounded expectations, but with Lantern the only expectation he is confounding is the expectation of releasing a good record. The sense of wonder which you might have got listening to the sprawling, maximalist, electronic wonderlands created by Birchard in the past is well and truly gone. There are no moments, as with previous releases, where tracks like Cbat or ZOo00OOm make you sit up and think: Jesus fucking Christ, what am I listening to! Lantern provokes no such knee jerk response, in fact it provokes very little response at all; the majority of the songs are simply uninspired. Warriors might be one of the worst offenders, the lyrics are horrendous; it is probably impossible to fit more clichés into one song. It’s like pc music, but without any of the self-awareness. Similarly, Very First Breath sounds like it created in a laboratory to maximise its catchiness. These songs will get lots of airplay and people will like them, but they lack any of the innovation, character and heart of older Hudmo tracks.

Some tracks are worth listening to, for example Resistance, but even then the vocal collaboration and distortion has been used to hide unenterprising melodies. Even at just 47 minutes this album is a struggle – an attentive listener will become bored very quickly. It would be incorrect to say that Birchard ran out of ideas on this album, because it sounds like he didn’t really have any in the first place. It’s just boring melodies and beats, paired with cliched vocals, with the shit distorted out of all of it.