Ellen Allien gives everything from tech to synth-pop a go on her latest artist album and the result is a curious collage of musical vignettes that never fully grab your attention.

There are bright moments. Allien scores easy wins with four-four tech, but quickly sets off for other territories, and some of the forays into vocal, poppy stuff is gorgeous. Sun the Rain could be the soundtrack for backpackers speeding across the German countryside, Eurail pass in hand. The most overt pop number, You, is pleasant, but short-lived – like so many of the moments on this album, it’s quickly dispensed with and replaced by the spacey electro of Dream.

This isn’t peak-time at a pulsating minimal-tech club in Berlin, it’s Germanic postcards from the after-hours, the journey home, the fidgety weekdays spent anticipating the next bender. Allien drafts herself for vocal duties as well, and the result is sometimes cute, sometimes indecipherable. It’s like a demure post-electroclash, like The Knife or Fever Ray without the polished, considered, terrifying aggression.

So it’s the sum of all of Allien’s parts, but a truly successful execution of none. It’s a pleasant enough background album, like chucking your iPod on Shuffle, but when you sit down and listen to the album – like get out your best chinstroking finger and really give it a go – you’re bounced around a multi-genre pinball machine without ever landing the big score. Try not to think too hard about it.

This is not Allien’s best work, but perhaps a sampler, a catalyst for new ears to seek out her back-catalogue – which are more focussed on one style or another. Dust is also an indicator that Ellen is not done with us yet, nor is she done experimenting with the art-form she’s been exploring for so long.

Dust is out now on Bpitch Control through Stomp.