B. Fleischmann

There's no denying B. Fleischmann's career has been less than perfect. Since his 1999 debut, Poploops for Breakfast - arguably Fleischmann's high-water mark - the Austrian-born minimalist has struggled to keep his "sensitive guy" electro afloat, dropping several pleasant but by no means brilliant releases. And while this trend continues with Angst Is Not a Weltanschauung, the album does find the "electrokaiser" recapturing a bit of that old glory. Despite the album's noticeably weak mid-section, which is bogged down by an uninspiring set of organic pop songs, Fleischmann's laptop-generated compositions sound denser and more hypnotic than they have in ages. This is especially true of "Phones, Machines and King Kong," where Fleischmann sets Daniel Johnston's heat-tugging "King Kong" vocal line to layers of chopped-up loops, piano and skittering beats. And while a few of the more traditional vocal-led tracks do hit their mark (such as the two sung by Fleischmann), this album would have best been served on a strict diet of ones and zeros.