Offerings of pure pop pleasure are offset with healthy doses of weirdness. It’s a sincere, exciting and excitable album that successfully adds by subtracting.

The most critical takeaway is how nuanced every single track is on behalf of Kaytranada’s unparalleled attention to and manipulation of detail.

Depth is a tough thing to accomplish. It can’t merely be present, it also has to be convincing that it’s there and worthwhile. Have You in My Wilderness’ best quality is that it won’t let you down if you get up close and sit with it for a while.

Bundick’s inspirations run rampant across the back half of Michael.

While B’lieve won’t always command attention, that’s part of what makes it such a pleasant experience--Vile freely expresses himself without demanding anything in return.

This is a vibrant, uneven, irresistibly likable, and occasionally transcendent release from an artist who shows no signs of falling off anytime soon.

It’s Crampton channeling her own history into 25 bracing, punk minutes of post-everything, out-there, futurist electronic madness. Drexciya would be proud.

Short Movie is an introspective journey crafted into a communal experience. It’s the product of a genuine artist losing faith in herself, hitting the reset button, and returning with an intensely personal work that manages to say something about us all.

He’s stripped his simultaneously fascinating and off-putting style down considerably without diluting its effect, jettisoning the loopy abstractions and lurid detail of Doris in favor of a commanding iciness.

Expanding their lineup with a second drummer, Thee Oh Sees are allowed to stretch their sound and release one of their most cosmic, trippiest records yet.

It really only hopes to make you smile with smart twin harmonies and silly lyrics. On those terms, Leave Me Alone is a unqualified success.

This onslaught of concepts and sonic rushes drives Redemption right along, carrying the listener through Richard’s vast and captivating imagination. Though she tends to repeat the styles of her earlier works, Richard still sounds like nobody else in the game, and for that Redemption stands apart.

Psychic’s gloriously protracted exhales leave you no choice but to slow down and move at its pace.

ingles is sometimes stark, and sometimes surprising – but its key constant is that it’s rarely short of spellbinding.

Ritual Spirit, apart from the rapping portions (which don’t detract from the experience), pores over a genre Massive Attack helped shape.

While this sort of economic chords and vocal/guitar/bass/drum hardcore punk rock record is easy to come by, what’s rarer is when its aggression--not necessarily just in the vocals and lyrics--comes from someplace genuine.

Mine a little deeper, and all of a sudden, Another One is the most technically refined album DeMarco has produced.

Making music this fuzzy and wonderful is a notable feat. Making tunes that make you want to jump into a time-travelling DeLorean and materialise in yester-year, desperate to reenact the same wanton mistakes that you made the first time round? That’s a real achievement.

On No Burden, Dacus follows up the stellar opening track with a wonderful debut album full of bigger, bolder slow-burn anthems and subtle epics.

Even if Colour doesn’t drastically alter Blake’s sound, it widens and refines it, keeping what made his first two records so memorable while hinting that there remains ever further room for growth.

As the trio continue to remould and refine their craft, Mess, an album fuelled by impulse, demonstrates their ideological core hasn’t moved an inch.

All told, Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest album is good, but it’s also his worst ‘proper’ album since his critical breakthrough. In attempting (but not fully committing to) his most accessible release, Age Of doesn’t feel like it’ll go down well with any particular audience.

It might be his best work to date. Just about everything here is good.

With II, UMO remains humble in composition and production, creating an honest album that comforts in the strangest ways.

Not dance music in any traditional sense of the world, Faith In Strangers has injected itself into a crowded conversation on originality alone.

There are no wasted notes, no wasted time, and nothing but the impulse to listen again.

While the album is beautiful both sonically and lyrically, in some of the tracks, Batmanglij falls into his older artistic patterns that feel played out. However, if you weren’t aware that he was in Vampire Weekend, this might not be as obvious.

Cheetah is still his best release since his return to the music scene. If you’re looking for something groundbreaking, you’re probably going to be disappointed, but this is still one of 2016’s best electronic releases, and a worthy addition to the Aphex Twin canon.