It's going on four years since a Slugabed album, but the man's been busy - running a label, working with others, and making a two scrapped LPs' worth of cuts similar in vibe to the hyper-pop of 2014's Coolest EP - happier, forest-y, more 'plinky-plonky.'

Which isn't to say "Inherit the Earth" is bereft of lyrics or even lighter moments. "Gold" plays like a trippy merger of Y2K pop and contemporary alt-R&B thanks, in part, to vocal and production contributions from Hairy Hands and Peter Lyons. Album ender "Earth Is Gone Sorry" is also less bleak than the name would suggest - Lum's soulful voice and the shimmering interstellar textures imply the universe may be better off without our planet making a mess of things. And for all of the slasher-flick effects of "Very Serious Puzzle" and speaker-blowing bass of "Infinite Wave," there is also the thick, glorious funk of "Time 2 Let It Go" and silly digitized brass of "Feeding Time."

TRACK LISTING

The Right Person To Talk To
Stupid Earth
Infinite Wave
Levitating Above My Own Useless Body
Gold (ft. Hairy Hands & Peter Lyons)
Very Serious Puzzle
Time 2 Let It Go
A Thousand Tiny Hands
Perfect Earth
Feeding Time
Virtuous Circle
Earth Is Gone Sorry (ft. Lum)

"Hexagonal crystals have a unique directionality," says Slugabed, "which must be aligned and oriented with Earth's spin axis for every crystal in the inner core." This idea led him to try a computational experiment. If all the crystals must point in the same direction, why not one big crystal?

Could an iron ball 1,500 miles across be a single crystal? Unheard of until now, the idea has prompted realisation that the temperature-pressure extremes of the inner core offer ideal conditions for crystal growth. Slugabed's high-pressure laboratories have conducted numerous experiments to test these theories.

The article "Time Team" is a concise documentation of these experiments.

Greg Feldwick is 23 years old and from Bath. He makes noises as Slugabed. His first releases were on Stuff, Ramp and then Planet Mu but now he is signed to the mothership, Ninja Tune. His music is suffused with a unique mix of humour, next level production, dancefloor smarts and melancholic emotion. “Time Team” is his debut album and we think it’s a belter. The album opens with “New Worlds", a heroic trudge across a vast space landscape, followed by the single “Sex”, a place of wildly suggestive synth squelch. He then takes us deeper, delving into the disembodied anime of “All This Time” and on to “Moonbeam Rider” which combines digital lyncanthropy with a kind of deep funk groove that ought to come with a warning label. Along with the nervous squeals of "Travel Sweets" and the widescreen spangling of “Unicorn Suplex” this is a record that evokes a very particular, very peculiar, but never less than beautiful worldview. An album highlight is “Mountains Come of The Sky”, which has a wonderful rolling rhythm and uplifting vocal, whilst the synth melody goes stratospheric at the mid-point. “Grandma Paints Nice,” distills yet more warmth and emotion from supposedly synthetic sounds, and “Climbing A Tree” sounds like the slow and wonderful death of a computer clinging on to its last, implanted false memory. Crowning the album, electro jam "Earth Claps" takes you on a field trip to the very core of the earth, melts you down and spits you out of a volcano. Lastly, the mood of dislocated melancholy is pushed almost to a nervous breakdown on the closing track “It’s When The Future Falls Plop On Your Head”.

Asked to explain “Time Team,” Feldwick responds that “it's to do with deep feelings about mostly inexpressible things.” It is indeed an album full of feeling and warmth and humor, a remarkable feat for a record composed mainly on synthesisers and drum machines. You will be hearing a lot more of Slugabed.

Something witty about crystals or whatever nonsense we were banging on about earlier.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Worlds
2. Sex
3. All This Time
4. Moonbeam Rider
5. Travel Sweets
6. Unicorn Suplex
7. Dragon Drums See All 2
8. Mountains Come Out Of The Sky
9. Grandma Paints Nice
10. Climbing A Tree
11. Earth Claps
12. It's When The Future Falls Plop On Your Head