There are many supposed roots for the nom de plume of Airick Woodhead, a.k.a. Doldrums. Apparently the moniker has been extracted from contemporary fairy tale, The Phantom Tollbooth, named after the mysterious land where thinking and laughing aren’t allowed.

It could also refer to his involvement in a semi-philosophical collective which is a “community reacting to overhype, the plasticity of modern youth culture and its ultimately alienating nature – his music deals with the loss of the individual in an increasingly altruistic society”. Deep stuff.

Whichever it is, it can be safely assumed that he didn’t simply pluck the dictionary definition of Doldrums, i.e. a state of stagnant depression. If anything, this record pushes more boundaries, and is less doldrum-like than those he’s often likened to: Crystal Castles, Purity Ring and regular chum, Grimes (the two producers are pretty close, with Miss Boucher even letting Woodhead record his debut on her laptop).

This first full-length effort, Lesser Evil, has been highly anticipated, even managing to feature on an end of year list before its release. The 23 year old Montreal producer has performed impressive slots at Iceland Airwaves and Great Escape, showcasing his glitchy salmagundi of rough-hewn samples, schizo-beats and fiendish, haywire experimentalisms – with a live band. Lesser Evil conjoins some of those aural hors d’oeuvres with some sneaky new material, championing a (somehow) weirder variety of glitch-pop/electrodelia than that which Canada is already spritzing into the airwaves.

Album opener (Björk-y overture, ‘Intro’ aside) ‘Anomaly’ is a bewitching slab of twitchy clicks and layered ethereal vocals. It’s dark, a punch-drunk helping of scatterbrained villainy, somehow simultaneously evil and uplifting, breeding a desolate hope akin to the last glimmer of moonlight in an otherwise pitch bleakness. ‘Egypt’ enters with the pitter-patter of raindrop synths, buzzing and gyrating like a robotic shower. Laced with strange pop noises and a psychedelic vocal line, the cut is a torn up by miniature percussive taps, some truly huge bass wubs and a slaggy disregard for any one sound for more than a few seconds. It’s disorienting, it flicks up your hackles and casual causes a general aura of uneasiness and confusion – that would appear to be a fascinating theme on Lesser Evil.

‘Golden Calf’ is quasi-dance, home to post-dubstep blips like Disclosure, but never anything as coherent. There’s an infectious stop-start beat infesting the sampled flotsam and dissonant jetsam. ‘Painted Black’ welcomes the end of the record, with glossy golden-era-of-Hollywood-vignette vocals, submerged in a ghostly echo and death-clock ticks. Samples squeal and bells toll within the melodic mess, and although it’s chopped to oblivion, it excels as one of the simplest pop glimmers on the album. The record isn’t inherently devious, or deliberately full of disillusionment, but in creating something to expound the message of flawed homogeneity, Woodhouse has created something that is drenched in hooks and motivating shards of splintered poppery, yet too avante-garde to ever properly dance to. Thinking about it, that’s probably entirely the point – create something so far removed from the norm of flaccid pop that it’s almost unrecognisable and thus a bloody masterpiece. It’s like he looked at every popular music convention and scribbled over them with a permanent marker.

Though it will never be something you can boogie on down to, or strut your wiggly bits at, it will, without a shadow of a doubt, hold your attention. It’s hypnotic in its allurement, drawing you in to explore the sonic finery and oddly entrancing miasma – you’ll be gripped, you’ll be astounded, and while you might not exactly know why, you’ll love this.