9 to 3005. NZCA/Lines, NZCA/Lines.

Michael Lovett – or at least his eponymous debut under the guise of the orthographically awkward NZCA/Lines – inhabits something of a zonal void as it lingers seductively somewhere between retrospective analog nostalgia and his own envisaging of a slipstreamed and shiny future that may or may never dawn. Whether or not it may be pinpointed, as Lovett suggests, between late R'n'B goddess Aaliyah and oft-canonised Italian journo-cum-romanziere Italo Calvino is a little less conclusive yet when it comes to the scribing of slinky pop songs the pen leaves a glistening snail-like trail worth getting stuck into.

Lovett's greatest strength, debatably born of his mildly nonchalant modus operandi, lies in his ability to imbue all manner of soul-shredding mundanity with an effortless effervescence: omnipresently blogged and quietly sensational single Okinawa Channels sees Lovett coo sensually of unhooking coat from hanger and leaving "the office to be home a little early for you" while he caws gawkily of formatting harddrives into 'Windows 95/98 partition' "FAAT 32" on Base64 Love, perhaps the quirkiest slither of electropop experienced this side of the ominous, infamous Millennium bug. Whilst Lovett's offer of a playful, if sexually tense rendezvous spent playing with cables may be something of a duff one, in transposing the monotony of computer technicalities onto wonky pitch-bent skronk he elucidates an audacious ingenuity that emphatically belies any previous involvement in indie-by-numbers outfit Your Twenties. Any faint recollections? NZCA/Lines will soon scribble out those remnants.

The flickering oscillations of Moonlit Car Chase accelerate and ease off nicely over four-plus that sound like the overwhelming wafting of gelid dry ice feels, accrediting a compelling theatricality to the silver screen stature of its washed-out funk whilst Atoms & Axes maintains a pace that's yet more pulsating still as synth throbs are fused sparkily with a maladroit chorus evocative of early Metronomy. That Ash Workman mixes the mélange (as he did with The English Riviera) would render such parallel self-explanatory and subsequently redundant were it not so prominent as falsettos flirt with particularly metronomic drum patterns on the sultry Patrol Late Back and beyond. With the grim monotony of many a life transformed into such simmering R'n'B erotica at every possible opportunity, Lovett's flagrant idée fixe with wage labour (and more specifically with the precise termination of each day) fascinates and, befitting such intrigue, the grandstand Human League-ish '80s swoop of Work provides the standout moment, the point to which the compass points. And having now put in the hard graft on a subtly glinting debut the moment has arisen for Lovett to play. Hard.