allmusic.com wrote:

Bakelite (aka producer Clint Hoagland) colors over the lines of numerous styles on A House Is a Machine for Living, from Aphex Twin's chattering percussion triggers ("Poster Photo #8: Counts Are Better") and Four Tet's fractured melodic pointillism ("Perfect Build Order") to the undeniable pop sway of opener "Everything Seems Perfect (To Me)." The result is a collage like its cover art, a recording that's as close to humanistic pop song melancholia as it is the point-and-click creative process. Like most of the Morr Music catalog, "An Ounce of Prevention" and the epic "(I Think She's) Speaking in Code" derive amazing warmth from the separation between lengthened synth tones, stippling beats, and well-placed vocal samples. Usually the latter element is a 1950s industrial film-type intoning phrases like "I wonder if we ever stop learning" on "Pleasure Inspector." Excluding "On the 401" (a collaboration with Hoagland's ex-Fullerenes pal Craig Peters), these hovering samples are the only voices on Machine for Living. That's why you wish for a real voice to match the throbbing bass and electric guitar backgrounds of "Perfect" or "Once and Future Shoreline"'s gentle unfurl -- both melodic and mechanistic, they fall well inside the indie electronic world, and a lovelorn or life-weary vocal wouldn't be out of place. But Bakelite keeps them appealing enough as instrumentals, too, as the dizzy beats of "Shoreline"'s finale prove.