Post-rock, avant-garde jazz, folktronica: Kieran Hebden has had his share of labels as listeners struggle to categorise his inventive output.

This, the first Four Tet album in five years, avoids pigeonholes once more but - despite passages of real beauty and delicacy - suggests Hebden’s resistance to classification might just be an inability to sustain a winning theme.

All nine tracks have drawn inspiration from anywhere and anything – Pablo’s Heart is simply 11 seconds of his godson’s heartbeat, while Plastic People features a child playing a toy piano. None of this feels superfluous or gimmicky; instead, the personal touches make the album feel like a collection of memories. It’s like stumbling on someone’s diary, only without the bad poetry and mortifying self-analysis.

Opener Angel Echoes is strangely affecting, with its ethereal female voice struggling through a backdrop of chopped-up stop/start electronica. It segues into future dancefloor filler Love Cry, an epic nine minutes of pulsing beats with a surging vocal growing in confidence as the track builds. Circling calms things down, all pizzicato strings and looping keyboards, lulling us back down from those dizzy heights.

After the opening trilogy, however, there's nothing else that stops you in your tracks. Admittedly, the first three songs are so captivating that anything that came afterwards would be a let-down, but those absorbing layers of sound are lost. That’s not to say it’s without its moments; how could it be with Hebden at the helm, injecting warmth and lightness into what could be a clinical experiment in electronic sound in less talented hands. This Unfolds does just that, drawing us in with bubbling melodies, while Reversing is strikingly, refreshingly sparse.

But on the whole the rest of the album meanders where it should take off, with fresh ideas petering out without making an impact. It’s a shame when it starts so brilliantly, mixing familiar Four Tet themes with original rhythms and sounds, that it should leave us wandering off to put the kettle on when we should still be rooted to the spot.