Scott Hansen issues his follow-up album on Ghostly, upon which the San Francisco-based graphic artist/producer can be found immersed in a raft of driving ambient-electronic instrumentals.

Dive starts wonderfully with A Walk, where opulent keyboard tones, carrying fragments of distortion, swim in a sea of lush, atmospheric melodies, sporadic thrusting drum patterns and acoustic guitar.

The title track brings a certain shoegaze element more to the fore, with female vocals adding echoey refractions amidst the plethora of reverb-driven synths, drums and bass.

However, for all of Tycho’s pleasant and relaxing moods and tones, the album suffers from a repetition of sorts. It’s hard to pin down, but the tranche of sounds used throughout the album are samey and standout melodies few and far between. This often relegates Dive to background music status; you may find your focus starting to slacken in places.

A good case in point is the plucked guitars of Ascension, which carry no melodic refrains; merely integrating into rather than complementing or enhancing the surrounding haze of melody tones. This is unfortunate, as, from a production viewpoint, the ingredients are certainly there to produce a more memorable album, and Dive is effortlessly mixed.

Melanine delves into Boards of Canada-style mood music, without ever capturing that essential sense of mystery or wonder. This is what separates the wheat from the chaff, and therefore Dive merely drifts incongruously, glistening and sparkling but always struggling to capture the imagination or elicit a heightened emotional response.

Frustratingly, the closing Elegy hints at white might have been, with the use of guitar providing broader chordal strokes from which the shimmering melodies evolve. Dive is an agreeable and tranquil album, which occasionally surpasses other albums of its ilk, but rarely achieves excellence.