DJ Shadow returns with a pretty DJ Shadow-sounding record

The twelve tracks that make up The Mountain Will Fall show that 25 years into his musical career Josh Davis has lost none of his ability to create a sonic patchwork, but neither does it show any desire to stray too far from a tried and tested formula.

His fifth studio album, and first since 2011, sees him turn down a slight, near parallel running side road and embark on a musical journey where samples wrap themselves in among a selection of live instrumentation. But on such tracks as the album titled opener - with its drawn out bed of synths sounds like the opening of a sci-fi sound track - there lies a slightly more futuristic take on traditional trip-hop.

Many parallels can be drawn to his previous releases as well as his work with James Lavelle for their collaborative 1998 UNKLE album Psyence Fiction, where guest vocalists such as Thom Yorke and Richard Ashcroft helped lift songs. The Mountain Will Fall harks back to his involvement in that project not only in the muscled production style, but in the way that big name collaborations are not totally out of the equation. Both EL-P and Killer Mike under their Run The Jewels banner are the lyrical forerunners on "Nobody Speak", where this album reaches its creative high point – a mixture of acerbic vocals over a brass-touched circular riff.

Scratch deep enough and there’s touches of 2002’s The Private Press hidden in "Mambo" and the Nils Frahm collaboration "Bergshrund", where the equally eclectically minded avant garde artist helps form glitch based melodies within shimmering electronica.

The 1996 debut Endtroducing may have been DJ Shadow's launchpad, but that mid 90s critical darling was truly innovative in its use of samples and set a high benchmark against which his latter work will always be measured. Though The Mountain Will Fall cannot be considered a failure by any means, it does continue the trend of his recent work being left firmly in the shadow of his past.