Alphanaut makes some interesting electronic music, but unfortunately much of their new album Out of Orbit wastes too much time wandering through forgettable songs all too familiar to the genre.

It starts off decent enough, with “Timid Creature” and “Safe and White” incorporating just enough real guitar and percussion to wander close to some early Talking Heads comparisons. From there it devolves into typical poor-man’s Depeche Mode or sterile dance music that doesn’t much make you feel like dancing.

“Without You” borderlines on the boring while “Don’t Hide Away From The Sun” just sounds directionless and then bizarre toward the end.

I thought “Happily Sedated” and a few other songs actually sounded like they could be parodies by made famous by The Lonely Island in one of Andy Samberg’s SNL Digital Shorts, but it turns out “Satellites Crashing” takes the cake in that category with the hushed spoken vocals at the beginning.

Perhaps the strangest track is “AL 424-15.” Oftentimes weirdness and outside-the-box tracks can be great. This isn’t one of those times. There are so many effects and noises that toward the end you start wondering “what the hell am I listening too?” Thankfully it’s followed by “Night Blind,” which proves to be a much more soothing approach to abstract electronic music making.

Alphanaut has plenty of ideas and interesting approaches, perhaps too many, and the production is for the most part top notch. Once they can keep some of those guitars and percussion accents in the mix and trim out some of the bizarre filler, then they’ll be on to something.