If I had any advice to give about this EP, it would be the following: skip the first two tracks. Those reek of lame hand-claps and stale pacing. Retro is a big sound right now, but they aren’t retro, they just sound amateurish. Ping sounds on the second track confirm it isn’t used in a particularly novel way.
Skip immediately to “Ulterior Motives” which is very creative. Taking some heavy stabs and re-configuring them is extremely creative. After it has been rearranged, the customary beats come in. Sure, some of those feel a bit overused, but that’s alright. Arrangement-wise, it works perfectly and that’s why it is the highlight of the album.
The end “Ocean Sonata” doesn’t work as well. Essentially, it goes on too long, in some epic song form, but the quality of the tune doesn’t lend itself well. In other words, it gets boring eventually. But it is still better than the first two tracks.
Anders has an idea of what he is doing. But it seems like if he did better editing of his material, perhaps working on avoiding a lot of techno cliques, it would be infinitely better. “Ulterior Motives” and, to a lesser extent “Ocean Sonata” work specifically because of this.