Featuring production assistance from Alessandro Cortini and Ed Banger’s Vicarious Bliss, as well as contributions from musicians Somekong, Semay Wu, Justin Meldal-Johnson and percussionist Seba of Panico, these 13 new tracks result in spooked electropop quartet Ladytron sounding like…Ladytron. The Liverpool-formed co-ed group hit a career high with 2005′s Witching Hour, and has carried over its evolved range of pneumatic motion. ‘Ghosts’ recalls the arterial, oscillating Gary Glitterdoes-the-Dr. Who theme stomp. ‘I’m Not Scared’ and ‘Burning Up’ follow similarly on corrugated synths draped with frosty vocal filigree, while ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Predict the Day’ spew probing transients. Where this album differs is not in the aesthetics, but rather in the infrastructure. Smoggy guitar squalls on Witching Hour introduced a permanent new dialect to Ladytron’s lexicon, but the percussion hit with uniform force: with every track imbued with fibrous cadences, Velocifero unfolds with increased tympanic clout. Now far denser than disassociated, this is Ladytron at the group’s most masculine.

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