If you've been following the latest round of genre hybridization, Xyzr_Kx (it's pronounced "scissor kicks") won't take you by surprise. Jon Monteverde, the man behind this tongue-twisting string of consonants and vowel-alternates, favors a smooth, lo-fi musical blend: give opener "Specific Nature" a quick spin and you'll hear earnest acoustic indie-folk, overdriven power-pop drums 'n' riffs, shoegazer-style blurriness and a relentless woodblock foundation beat that sounds like it was recorded from several rooms away. But don't finalize those expectations just yet; "LUV" delivers a spot-on Aphex Twin/µ-ziq drill 'n' bass blast that downshifts into an ultra-intimate acoustic guitar tune at the song's halfway mark, then transitions back again a minute or two later. The cut's unassuming middle section seems almost unreal, and the fact that the two elements don't mix at all makes the experience feel more like signal drift than a proper stylistic juxtaposition.

"Waltz (For Ankong)" heads into more familiar territory -- it's a languid slowcore sprawl with smears of IDM-derived production, shifting into a more powerful, drum-driven electro-pop hybrid late in the game for a sort of low-budget, over-modulated New Order effect -- and "I've Said This Before" sticks determinedly to a single style, pushing a blustery storm front of fuzzed-out guitars ahead of its streamlined dreampop denouement. And so it goes for the remaining four songs: Monteverde dabbles in quietly earnest folk-pop, narcoleptic electronica, and various points between.

It's a satisfying, relaxing sound, but tellingly, the album's most interesting bits are also the most aggressive: the jaw-dropping power behind "LUV"'s initial percussive ramp-up, the bristling Dykehouse riffs that enliven "Specific Instance", the shimmering melodic haze that settles over the ten-minute "Road". When Falls Off the Curb, Chump Style (great title, by the way) slows down, as it does on "Symphoniques" and "I Can't Wait", Monteverde's singing gets our full attention -- which it probably shouldn't. He's neither entirely on-key nor endearingly off it, and the generally high quality of his composition and production magnifies this fault. Our advice: Monteverde should hook up with a female vocalist as distinctive as his fascinatingly bipolar compositions -- perhaps Bardo Pond's Isobel Sollenberger, or The Eames Era's Ashlin Phillips -- the better to dispel the inevitable, inaccurate Postal Service comparisons.