His record’s name is meant to suggest a certain sense of incompleteness, but it’s one of the most well-edited, coherent debuts to emerge in recent memory.

Whole New Mess has a singular power. The songs are spare but still feel electric, and despite their lower volume compared to All Mirrors, you couldn’t necessarily call them quiet. Their slow-strummed chords and finger-picked patterns are at times deliberately brittle and blown-out. Whole New Mess amplifies a different source of loudness.

What makes it work so well is that this anarchy is not an anything-goes anarchy: These songs are so carefully composed, so intentional, that every cyborgian burp and steel snare fits perfectly. Everything and nothing tramples each other.

On Queen of Golden Dogs, he slashes the ropes and soars into the stratosphere, pulling off an extraordinary fusion of chamber music, choral quintets, poetry, surrealism, mysticism, and, not least, rubble-making electronic epics.

The self-produced Teeth Marks is a sharp and thoughtful distillation of these modern American small-town complexities. Religious hypocrisy, financial ruin, systemic addiction, ruinous love, devotion so intense it begins to burn like hatred: Goodman finds space for it all in these 11 tracks, which glide between breathtaking a cappella eulogies and dive-bar R&B, between gnarled rock and plaintive ballads.

Its genesis, development, and creation are extensively chronicled in Who’s Next | Life House, an 11-CD box set that beautifully communicates the spirit of the original project by opening up the vaults and inviting everybody inside.

Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks gets a sparkling remaster and almost an album’s worth of okay-to-pretty-good new tracks.

Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.

When measured against Four Tet's prior output, this latest effort does come as something of a disappointment; but by most other yardsticks, it's downright brilliant.

Like John Coltrane, Freitas has learned how to approach his compositions with the same confident, wildly adventurous spirit he brings to his instrument. In doing so, he’s left behind some of the accessibility of his early records, but in its place, he’s forged something transcendent.

His vision of how to build bridges between his own music and the music others is already his own, and Mon Pays puts it on brilliant display.

At every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life.

The band has spun joy out of its frontman’s gnarliest experience, making metal that sounds sensuous, bellicose, and jubilant at once.

If it's been years since you've listened to these songs, as it had been for me when this reissue arrived, you might believe you're hearing them for the first time. And if you've never heard Earth this early, get ready to change your conceptions: The fountainheads of drone metal have been surprisingly versatile from the start.

Callahan has nothing to add to the general conversation about music in 2011 but is making the best albums of his career.

The most satisfying and sheerly transfixing work of the twosome's career.

Raised in a library of music and having already dissected his influences, Rollie takes confident first steps as Cadence Weapon.

All but one of the mesmerizing puzzles on Vol. II strut across the six-minute mark, and the songs never lose steam because they contain so many variations and plot twists.

The Stand Ins continues that ambitious musical development [in "The Stage Names"], further roughing up the group's sound while sharpening its attack to an even finer point, and refining some of their old tricks while introducing new ones.

Loud, mean, and complicated, this six-piece is an articulate goliath, capable of drowning out Gira in waves before disappearing into pools of silence without warning. Each piece of this unit deserves mention.

[The] more chaotic and caustic Sun Coming Down, but the album’s relentless drive and uncompromising attitude constitute their own special kind of thrill.

There's more to diskJokke than bulletproof connections; his spacey electro-disco is technically impressive and effortlessly appealing.

While Always Foreign is by no means a happy record, it’s still a joy to listen to, driven by the same belief in community, evolution, and possibility that earned their debut EP the title of Formlessness.

On South Bank--the most vital and essential document of Reid and Hebden's five-year partnership--it feels clear that, at least onstage, they were finally able to go the distance.

They're like a combination of Where the Wild Things Are, a fever dream, a pagan woodland ceremony, and a notebook doodle. The music is worth taking in, too, over and over again.

Hear most of these songs a few times and you'll feel like you've known them all your life.

Nothing sounds overworked. If anything, Burhenn and Swift present the songs in an understated manner, confident in the quality of the material and the strength of her voice.

Ism reflects its many homes and the many sounds that feed into the music of the Windy City. Which might sound restless, except Paul exudes such confidence that no matter the session, his bass makes it all hang together.