Trouble

If you wish Berlin electro would occasionally stop to drop a Molotov then you need Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs; you need Orlando Higginbottom's wry voice and his skills on the decks. Dance can't be accused of being dead-eyed anymore.

Trouble is an album of bewitching treasures, equally at home in the bedroom or in the throes of the most intense club dance floor--an extremely impressive debut that introduces TEED as one of the UK's premier electronic artists.

This sparkling, streamlined display adds up to great headphone candy, but ultimately it's a record made for booming club speakers.

TEED is a strange beast, for sure – but the good news is that ‘Trouble’ is a quite remarkable specimen.

Five singles down the line – all of which feature here – most of us are now au fait with TEED’s brand of melancholic electro-house, and what you get here is more of the same star-crossed rave-pop.

If Orlando's vocals verge on the plangent, the female riffs on Your Love could be Black Box; The American Dream Part II, which is being used for a Vauxhall ad campaign, instils a dark euphoria.

Whereas many of his contemporaries in the dance world rely on buzz saw builds and drops to raise the temperature on the dance floor, Higginbottom prefers to switch up the mood with sudden chord changes, oddball synths and introspective emotion.

He may have won our attention with spectacle, but Trouble demonstrates Higginbottom as an artist capable of inimitably curious fusions on an LP that simultaneously manages to mesh exhilaration, anxiety, pounding electronics and delicate laments without losing identity or purpose.

Despite the Oxford-based house producer's goofy moniker and preferred costuming (feathered wings, feathered headdresses, stegosaurus spines, etc.), Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' pop-infused debut isn't incredibly showy.

If you don’t hold the periodically flaky nature of ‘Trouble’ against Higginbottom, this is pretty simple club music solely about the ‘now’ of dancing. And that can only be a good thing.

It’s as much a dance-based record as it is a self-reflective singer-songwriter affair.

Oxford boffin croons over early house signifiers as kaleidoscopic jazz butterflies flutter.

It's a mix that can fit well together, as on Trouble, where flighty synths and a Latin house rhythm underpin the plaintive chorus "You could make me happy", before giving way to a bass-driven section that suggests this happiness might not be immediately attainable. For the most part, however, enthusiasm and influences are not matched by the songwriting.