While deeply impressionistic, Lamp Lit Prose inverts its predecessor’s emotional black hole, largely thanks to its revival of airy Bitte Orca-style compositions and a pick’n’mix guest list.

While there's nothing revelatory production-wise if you've heard Lootpack's Soundpieces: Da Antidote, there's a little workshopper's insight in these protoypes for The Unseen-caliber bluntedness.

Now a bandleader of a live ensemble rather than a solitary synth programmer, he has opened the door to an entirely different sort of career for himself, one where concerns for the dancefloor shrink away to nothing, and the possibilities of repetition are infinite.

Howard's Brainfeeder debut shatters expectations, offering an always shifting balance of alien and familiar. [But] It's not perfect.

In Camera is an impressive debut for both band and label.

They don't sound like a mélange of other bands anymore; they sound like Early Graves, and that's a damn good band to sound like in 2012.

Keeping solidly in line with the Brainfeeder tradition, Nostalchic is a forward-looking album, warm and comfortable but never obvious.

Like most of Kilgour's solo work, it has a relaxed and quietly accomplished air.

One of Speedy Ortiz’s strengths is that beneath all the instrumental layers, there’s a narrative puzzle to unpack. Sad13’s Slugger solves its puzzle for you, but in the hope that you will be able to go at it alone in the future.

Main Attrakionz, who are sharper and more consistent than ever here, even if the high points don’t quite match those of 808s II.

Streten explores his sonic palette with varying degrees of success on Flume.

I'd say Fading Trails is the best Magnolia's done, unless you count the nominally Songs:Ohia-made Magnolia Electric Co., which I do, and which is still the best Molina product out.

Represents two artists pulling each other closer to dangerous, interesting edges. Their brand of amelodic pandemonium has the same risky yet satisfying quality of watching acid burn through steel.

If the results aren't necessarily the kind of up-front and accessible electro that would appeal to their "Hustler"-adoring base, it's definitely an interesting shot at regrouping and concocting a few rapidly refined ideas.

Tragic Magic grows more involving with each track. When two artists this distinctive and identifiable come together, you want to hear them make a third thing that wouldn’t exist without the collaboration, and the progression of the record finds them steadily feeling out that place.

There’s a moment in virtually every song where a single loose strand seems to break free and float skyward and it’s there, in the languid sway, where Snow truly takes hold.

On tracks like “Olden Days” and “Rainbow of Colors,” Young’s basic folk melodies are rendered grittier and heavier by the band, if no less tender.

His new one, a solo rap record called FEVER, confirms he’s still a serviceable emcee prospering as a session leader with a sense of purpose.

It’s complicated. There are no punchlines. In these songs of existential despair, a change in perspective is its own kind of revelation, as is Barnett finding the few good words to describe it.

So naturally the big question now is if the rest of Get Color lives up to the promise of 'Die Slow.' The answer is that it does... kind of.

No knowledge of his long, shadowy history is needed for Dance of Love to work its charms: Its understated joy and gratitude are palpable.

While it's no Manifest Decimation, Retrash is still one of the year's most notable mutations of thrash, and Oozing Wound show a lot of promise to get even weirder.

Toying with sound and rhythm, noise and melody, Square is less minimalist than Hope, more fractured than Second.

Traditional Synthesizer Music feels not so much traditional as a refresh: a suite of music that is crafted and ferociously complex, but at its root a pure and primal thing, high on its own chaos.

Rough Carpenters sounds vibrant and enveloping, an old-time feat for these mercurial times.

The gifts of Precious Art are more apparent when comedy shades the melody instead of overshadowing it.

Even with the apparent shifts and changes, all four of Swedish's songs would have fit snugly on Heartland. But Pallett is hardly running in place, either. In fact, he's created such a comparison-resistant framework for his unique sensibilities that no matter where he takes his sound, he'll sound like no one other than himself.

A slippery, engrossingly genreless take on the old theme of desolation in the city.