She's continuing the very tradition she's studying, ending her intimate and vulnerable album with a cover that finds new purpose by making someone else's words—and grief—all her own.

Moot! is an unpretentious and fun record peppered with quick gear changes, pitch shifts and soul-searching anecdotes about empty neighbourhoods and peering into dark waters at dusk. Everything is immediate and anchored by Magaletti's percussion, which is both raw and immaculate.

still slipping vol. 1 is an honest and humanizing document, giving us a deeper look into the musical styles and influence that drive Joy Orbison than anything else we've heard before.

The record holds up alongside standout moments from Dear's discography, but adopts an unexpectedly rugged disposition.

The LP's spirally nature is actually its biggest problem, as the duo choose to coil back into themselves again and again, creating a merely good album that’s on the cusp of greatness.

Reflection bangs, sounds enormous cranked up loud, but it's also dreamlike and soothing. There is plenty of pain and uncertainty in these tracks. But altogether, the album is a salve for the listener, and maybe for James herself.

None of these ventures feel forced, instead they flourish under the weight of some heavy emotional themes. After this versatile and unexpectedly wholesome depiction of a broken heart, Mykki Blanco has earned some deserved beauty sleep.

Cheek's vocals are versatile, often soaring into her upper register, then trickling into lower notes. Much of the lyrics across the album are a challenge to make out, but it's a delight to pull scattered meaning out of the obscurity.

A testament to her versatility and willingness to experiment, Man Made entrenches Greentea Peng's position as one of the UK's most exciting young songwriters.

Black Metal 2 has all the elements that made its predecessor a masterpiece, with sentimental instrumentals and yearning vocals all packaged in a crinkly lo-fi setting. But Blunt has opened up even more on Black Metal 2.

There's something truly extraordinary about Al Qadiri's constant balancing act of light and dark, and each passing moment brings with it a new thrill. The romance, despair and yearning of Middle Age verses comes through effortlessly in Medieval Femme, where Al Qadiri's own talent as a storyteller is magnificent.

Loscil's tenth album for Kranky sheds light on unexplored aspects of his well-established sound. That he makes subtle breakthroughs via the decay and manipulation of a single brief recording makes Clara a quietly impressive achievement.

Even with so few words uttered, it's a vital entry in a vast discography that constantly seeks answers, building spiritual strength along the way.

t's a work of clever, classy and timeless R&B that builds on some of the most enduring and ubiquitous music of the last 30 years.

Rochelle Jordan is staking her own claim to the dance floor without losing sight of her intimate, sometimes vulnerable songwriting.

An irresistibly fun listen, even at its simplest. DOOM's role is honestly more like a supporting cast member here, but when he shows up, his husky ramblings still have the same gravity they always did. The production plays to his strengths.

Rare, Forever has all the hallmarks of a big, crossover dance music record, but no one's doing it quite like this.

Second Line offers an impressive level of immersion from an artist who's spent years inviting us into her own personal universe.

In recent years, Stott has alternately spurned and embraced the nasty side of his sound, but on Never The Right Time, he nails a difficult balance between bass weight and pop vulnerability.

What is on display here is the potential of unbound artistic striving. I dare say this may not only be Shepherd's magnum opus, but one of Sanders' greatest works as well.

Harlecore is the souvenir, a collection of dance music so deliriously upbeat you can't help but surrender to it.

Motzfeldt and Stoltenberg's subtle R&B harmonies are understated and arresting, exposing the inner sanctum of a complex emotional relationship. Believer is an album about raw friendship, personal image and collective awareness.

Sound Ancestors is an ideal entry into the world of Madlib.

The end result is unified in its daydreamy mood. What we get from each track, and from all of them together, is a mellow sense of the sublime.

Not everything on Isles is a win—"Rever" and "Fir" dial the neon palette up a notch too high—but overall the album nails the tricky balance artists face when following a successful debut: similar enough to charm the old fans yet fresh enough to entice the new.

This collection gives a certain joy that a hyper-specific brand of record collector gets from the "not gonna make it easy on you" type of inspiration.

Dis Fig transcends In Blue's origins in genre exercise into an otherworldly fever dream, an album of tectonic bass and thundering drums that somehow feels intimate and sensual. It's as much her triumph as it is his.

Guerrilla's rough kuduro is an impressive leap for a mature style. But its most remarkable feature is the artist's unflinching embrace of a distressing legacy. As a memorial to his family's story and Angola's past, Guerrilla is more than a mark of respect. It's an act of love.

This is imaginative and complex dance music, with a level of detail that in the hands of a different artist could become overwhelming. Luckily, as brainy as it gets at points, Second Language is always exhilarating.

The progression in Atobe's work is incremental. Beyond the title-track, Yes mostly does away with the classy, tech house-style snap prevalent on 2018's Heat. For an artist that emerged as a model of consistency, Atobe takes a surprising amount of left turns.

Most of The Edge Of Everything is top-tier drum & bass with an experimental bent.

The covers are the stickiest aspect of 7G. Most of them are one-note, more of an "influences" playlist than a collection of worthy interpretations. They weigh down the already heavy album with dead weight, but the hit rate of 7G is remarkably high anyways, a testament to Cook's vision.

Lafawndah's stripped-down approach invites us to sit in these new environments, culminating in an album that feels as thoroughly absorbing as a good novel.

Shygirl remains tough and unforgiving across ALIAS, and her voice as an artist has never been stronger. She's a full-blown pop star driven by her luscious fantasies.

Because Of A Flower pieces together a similar set of songs to ~~~, but with a more open and assured mindset.

Overstuffed with ideas, some of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never's odd juxtapositions and clever references feel merely "neat." You don't get the sense Lopatin's deeply invested—more that he's throwing concepts at the wall and seeing what sticks. There are stunning moments on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never.

There's a palpable lust for life throughout the 20 tracks, but Edna is at its most arresting when Headie details his journey from custodial sentences to commercial success with unflinching candor.

As usual, Karma & Desire is a sprawling, unpredictable maze of an album, but Actress is no longer a solitary figure navigating rain-streaked streets alone. He's invited others along to zigzag with him.

It still sounds like music from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, but after three decades of getting to know Sean Booth and Rob Brown, the feelings wrought in their work have never been clearer or more heart-rending than on SIGN.

Shades feels like a group effort. Khan's deadpan but catchy vocals are a huge part of the appeal, and the whole band sounds locked in, especially Calderwood and his wild soloing. ... It's the kind of quietly brilliant record that makes you fall in love with a band all over again, sharpening their approach—and songwriting—without losing the shambolic charm that made them so loveable in the first place.

Phoenix fully establishes a distinct Eartheater style, building mountains underground and finding worlds of meaning in deep introspection.

Inner Song's highs are very high. Beyond the bang-on production, the LP feels like as much of a journey for the listener as it does the protagonist.

Roisin Machine captures the singer at her most triumphant, finally comfortable in her role as an alt-pop icon—there's something casual and more assured about this Roisin Murphy.

Pinned down somewhere between pared-down jazz and emotive R&B, Duval Timothy continues to find insightful ways to tell stories by way of repetition. When ideas are this robust, the extra stuff becomes less important.

This is not Jaar's best album, nor is it his strangest, but it's a wonderful listen that tempts you to get lost in its many layers. It is beautiful but confounding, an artwork whose "solid form" still passes through like water trickling down between your fingers.

A strange, deeply impressive pop album, and the overall mood reminds me of the mix of ennui and boundless imagination that define childhood, images flitting across the screen, a colourful window to a world that doesn't exist.

On ORCORARA 2010, Crampton fleshes out a unique sound world that's desolate but lush, harsh yet hopeful. It feels like one of her greatest, most permanent works.

Though it finds Smith at her most reserved, The Mosaic Of Transformation feels like a breakthrough, melting the pop-savvy hooks of her past records into one gorgeous, rarefied sound, as invigorating and smooth as electricity flowing through circuits.

Heaven To A Tortured Mind isn't necessarily the most dynamic release by the artist, but in its best moments, it's a heaping dose of musical ingenuity.

By stripping down his sound, making it more like punk, he ups the energy levels without crowding the sonic field. It proves Schofield is as much a master of subtlety and balance as he is of feral chaos.

Halo tackles these chunky themes and textual cacophony with a score that never sits still, folding synthetic sounds into acoustic recordings and darting across time and space with the efficiency of a jump cut.

Blizzards highlights everything Fake is good at: the way his drums tend to dance in between established genres, melodies that sound like a warped Boards Of Canada record, the constant push-and-pull of dark and light. It's more of a reset than a reinvention, a return to the earnest simplicity that made him a wunderkind all those years ago.

It may be dreamy and easygoing on the surface, a chill album to set the vibe of a room. But it's filled with deep moods, careful details and weird, intense rhythms. The best way to hear it is to slow down and appreciate each little thing passing by.

On It Is What It Is, Bruner—unlike Pastorious—finds a way out, channeling his pain into great, uplifting art.

The mixtape moves through a few different sections, starting off slow and dreamy, taking in woozy hip-hop and twinkling dance pop and ending up in UK club territory. There's a wistful vibe throughout.

I wouldn't necessarily say Cenizas is challenging, but listeners accustomed to Jaar's more smooth and structured early work may need to persevere as he leads them through this freeform landscape

It's in this border between a club setting and the divine that Fountain comes alive. Using her voice as a modular system, Pramuk suggests a ritual that's both folkloric and futuristic.

There's still plenty of juice left in the ideas Four Tet favours. ... This club/non-club ratio is similar to that of New Energy, the last Four Tet album, but Sixteen Oceans surpasses that LP through the strength of its ambient and electronica.

Conference Of Trees provides plenty of evidence for Weber's continually developing ear for melodies and musically detailed arrangements, but there are other aspects of his past work that could have been left to one side. The Triad, his last full-length, at times felt twee and fussy, a problem that returns here in one section of the album in particular.

The complexities of romance, alcohol dependence, the fragility of life and untimely death weave in and out of intricate arrangements of manipulated vocals and bold melodies.

While a clearing of the cobwebs is liberating for the artist, the resulting record is a tough sell for its audience, even one as dedicated as Vladislav Delay's. Rakka could be a step towards something great. But too often, getting through it is like walking with a stone in your shoe.

MHYSA gets most expressive with her vocal processing, sometimes rapping in hot bursts, sometimes creating soft and surreal textures, other times using abrasive distortion and noise. When beats do appear, they're patient and sparse, highlighting the artist's contentment with silence.

The haunting chorus and zither strings of "Cry Winds Or Flames," the distorted, swampy drama of "Enter Venus" and the propulsive "The Water Sibyl" all offset the LP's drowsy qualities. Perhaps most crucially, Calypso also feels personal.

Suddenly is a frustrating listen. Snaith's talent for writing earworms, hooks and choruses has never been so apparent. But overall he sounds like he's trying too hard, taking influence from too many places.

On Loom, she takes her interest in found sound to a gloomy, thought-provoking new depth.

This celebratory nihilism defines an album that's sometimes dark and moody, sometimes manic and fun. There are familiar moments of quirky guitar pop ("Delete Forever," "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around"). More exciting is when Grimes goes big on reverb and club-sized beats.

This is straight-up fight music. 2017 - 2019 isn't quite this lairy elsewhere, but most of it is jagged, hard-hitting and seriously over-driven. The change has Jaar sounding artistically replenished.

When a record is so dazzlingly abstract (or abstractly dazzling), it seems harder to interpret in emotional terms, too. But like LeWitt and his primary-coloured paint brushes, or Dan Flavin and his store cupboard of strip lights, Dillon isn't offering us a feeling so much as giving us a space in which to feel.

Absorbing a Squarepusher LP in one sitting has always been for more adventurous or diligent listeners, but the dank final section means that, outside of more hardcore fans, Be Up A Hello will probably need to be navigated in exactly the right sort of mood.

With a couple of cuts hovering around ten minutes, the album requires patience but remains accessible.

So we have an artist who's found a very comfortable groove, continues to produce from it, and plenty of people love him for it. It may be an enormous cop-out to say that if you like Recondite you'll probably like Dwell, and if you don't like Recondite (or you're a music writer) you probably won't. But, like Brunner's music, some things really are that simple.

From the way the melodies climb through the hanging atmosphere of "Ripples" to the Sasha-like glitter of "Cloud Refuge," Swirlings is full of lovely, considered music that sticks in your mind long after the synth fog dissipates.

Ghostly and grim, with the radiance of Stott's synths allowed only to penetrate the gloom in periodic bursts. It's telling that Stott somehow makes this aesthetic seem so compelling, a type of dark energy that makes you want to hit a punch bag or chair dance rather than wade in self-reflection.

Stern's use of repetition is powerful and carefully considered, making space for deep thought and reflection. Pockets of silence strengthen this concentrative quality.

Tunes 2011 To 2019 frames the artistic development of someone whose older music sounds more inspired but is still capable of greatness. ... 12 years since his last album, we at least get a large chunk of his often incredible catalogue in one place.

Like all of Lustwerk's music, it's moody, it's sensual, it's vaguely ridiculous. It's a total fantasy—which makes it all the easier to get swept away.

The album as a whole is accomplished, but it still hasn't entirely caught up with the precision of his visual multiverse. Still, I am glad that Labyrinth offers another glimpse of Kanda's alternate realities.

By carefully balancing these ideas with unambiguous dance floor moments, Tangerine hits the sweet spot that many of the best electronic albums occupy.

Without knowing it was made by a young Paul Woolfword, it might come off simply as passionate and touching hardware sketches with classic techno components. Nevertheless, these tapes show signs of promise in Woolford's ability to work within his limitations to create something powerful and personal.

The album has bags of character and is big on ideas. Unfortunately, not all of them work. ... Jarring sounds and heavy-handed ideas dominate the album's second half and ultimately spoil the record.

Volume Massimo embodies Cortini's deep connection with the Buchla. His commitment to melody, though it makes the album approachable, often detracts from the music's noisy (and more interesting) imperfections. Even if you follow Cortini's instructions to play the LP at "a very loud volume," the full heft of his sound fails to translate outside of its onstage setting.

Sonically and conceptually, Wrecked is a more mature work than Techno Animal's last LP, the rowdy, energetic The Brotherhood Of The Bomb. Most significantly, they have the monolithic voice of Moor Mother, AKA Camae Ayewa. Her cool-headed but threatening lower register delivery is a perfect match for the music.

In her latest album, Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes, she relies on a reconfiguration of negro spirituals, scattered jazz and roiling punk vocals to embark on an arresting travel through time with lucid narratives of black protest. ... While preserving the erratic nature of an arresting live set, her productions appear clearer and more controlled than on previous albums.

On Giant Swan, the duo display a fearsome mastery of techno dynamics, but it's their detachment from that world that makes their music so compelling.

This more mature approach to storytelling is what makes MAGDALENE a raw and outstanding album about love. The lyrics have more depth than LP1, bearing a universality that perhaps one can only write after an especially honest heartbreak.

By most measures, Crush is an excellent record. But its aggression and obtuseness, for me at least, is relative—once the shock wears off, there remains a slight reserve, a sense that Shepherd's innermost rage has only fitfully overpowered competing aspects of his psyche.

If things occasionally become one-dimensional it's arguably the admission price for the many successes this album packs.

Their music is timeless but pulls on nostalgic heartstrings—it can be goth, earnest, sad, happy, distant and close all at once. It scratches a very specific itch for atmospheric pop and rock music that most of their imitators still can't touch.

The LP boils down a generation's worth of London music into a restlessly creative mix of dance music, infused with emotions both celebratory and mournful.

While her music is hyper-stylized, it never feels contrived. Look Up Sharp neither panders nor willfully obfuscates, residing in a dreamy space in between.

Dreams Are Not Enough is a remarkable return that achieves things the first three Telefon Tel Aviv albums were never quite able to.

After so many records, a debut novel and another book on the way, it's a privilege to be invited into Hval's private mental space. Like picking up a conversation with a much wiser friend, each new album compacts her advancing thought into a kind of guidebook for those who aren't quite so mentally together, all her latest learnings folded in. ... Obviously, Hval is anything but ordinary.

Without succumbing to simplicity, Klein's latest release delivers an intimate vision of the mayhem, loss and detachment that can ensue from a whirling cycle of panic and redemption.

Resonant Body is filled with joy and self-empowerment. Where the artist's past work felt delicate and introverted, this LP whips its untamed hair, gearing towards higher tempos, wilder breakbeats and more party-rocking vocal samples than before. Even with this more upbeat approach, the music still sounds distinctly like Bouldry-Morrison.

While this scrappier, DIY vibe feels like a natural fit for HTRK, Venus In Leo lacks some of the depth and mystery that makes their music so powerful. ... Still, HTRK create something their fans will never tire of: a dark, sensual, poetic languor that's theirs alone. Venus In Leo delivers a welcome fresh take on that sound.

Overwhelming as Delphi's mood swings can be, they're worth putting up with. Douglas's production is full of elaborate ideas and strange tricks, even if it sometimes feels cheesy or overwrought.

That Devour is such a tiring album is a testament to its cohesiveness. These tracks flow elegantly into one another, and the attention to dynamics and tension allows for seamless listening.

By simultaneously disavowing and embracing the church, Malone has crafted a record of rare heft. The plaintive melodies that sit at the core of The Sacrificial Code often feel like they're stretching into eternity.