Halogen’s Baked is the first physical release for the Maternity label, following the artist’s digital EP, Recycled Broadcast.

Baked sets off with Moniker:Monica, as looped piano chords edge nervously beneath sampled atmospherics. On Millicent, Halogen expands melodically, allowing dulcet tones to flirt around a single key. Detailed electronic percussion then joins, lending the track a certain glitch aspect.

This seems to be the pattern for Halogen; anxious electronic melodies plying tenderly amidst melancholy backdrops. Little on the album stands out exclusively, but there a couple of tracks worth making note of. First, the warmly atmospheric title track, where low-end synths ponder beneath opposing high-pitched string sounds. The slowed sample of a train carriage crawling into the sidings makes for some persuasive mental imagery.

Elsewhere, the richly atmospheric Redux reminds one of Christian Fennesz’s irregular, multi-layered ambiences; albeit at a more fractious pace. The track, String Theory, meanwhile, introduces subtle string effects amidst a platitude of microscopically-placed effects – again, pleasing to listen to.

The devil is in the detail, and Baked is certainly a cerebral electronic record that is impressively programmed from a technical perspective. This aspect comes across very well for the most part, creating an excellent platform from which to build, but I still feel Halogen has more to do to elicit an emotional response from the listener.

That is perhaps the only aspect of this intelligent record that is missing; although regardless of that, Baked remains a notable body of work, especially likely to appeal to those with a liking for contemplative soundcapes constructed via a plateau of glitch-based frameworks.