Louise Rhodes has a sweet, earthy voice and a musical background that includes growing bored with pretty folk and harboring an affinity for hiphop and soul. Andrew Barlow is a DJ and rhythm-meister with sterling credentials (Manchester and Philadelphia) who never lost his taste for the military-style drumming of his grade-school marching band. As Lamb, they make spare, undancey techno out of Barlow’s cold-steel beats and Rhodes’ lovely, insinuating vocals. They’re like a parallel-universe Cocteau Twins, or Curve stripped down and grown up. It’s not all click tracks and keyboards—”Cotton Wool” is punctuated with a fast rattle that shivers under Rhodes’ expansive lines, and on “Zero” she has bad-tempered violin riffs and gentle plucking for support. The instrumental “Merge” even has horns, as well as the usual assemblage of disconcerting space-age sound effects. At first glance, the gorgeous “Gorecki” seems closest to following song convention, with lyrics of all-consuming love and deep-dish accompaniment—tablas and low, sustained piano notes—but it bursts into a dance-floor whirligig as joyous as it is unexpected.—Arion Berger