Angels & Devils marks an evolution of the sound that made London Zoo a classic.

Holter has always taken pop and presented her own masterful version of it. But her desire to break through the distressing clatter of the present is what makes Aviary her most captivating album yet.

Despite the name, Crooked Man's greatest fault is ultimately how straight Barratt plays it.

Elysia Crampton isn't always an easy listen. In fact, it's a little bit ugly at times. That intentional clash is exactly what makes her sound so compelling. She cultivates a juicy, electric tension by combining pieces that aren't made to fit evenly together.

Even when Clark is firing sounds at bewildering speeds, it's never a chore--in other words, it's a lot more fun than Clark's reputation might suggest.

A series of instrumentals pivot and twist slyly, dropping hints of chord and lithe rhythm, but the bolder moments of the album's opening section aren't repeated. Instead it ends with a track called "Antiform," two minutes of hiss and vague metallic clanking. At first this is sort of a disappointment, but on repeat listens it deepens the album's appeal.

Not only is Looping State of Mind Willner's most diverse and satisfying statement to date, it's an album that establishes him as one of electronic music's more subtly lateral thinkers.

It's a confidently self-referential record that goes with her own flow, settling into a sensual downtempo sound as effortless as it is studied.

Konnichiwa isn't perfect, but it mostly accomplishes the goals Skepta set for himself, and is certainly one of the best grime has seen so far.

The most fully formed and wholly unique record in his discography.

Pleasant is the word. But not simple. Quiet has just as many corners worth peeking down.

It's infectious and almost a little too odd, yet it's totally at ease. In other words, it's DJ Koze doing what he's done for well over a decade.

For all the memories Stranger Things and its soundtrack evoke, they've also given us something new worth remembering.

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.

This album tells a deeper story that only grows more vibrant with every listen.

In the unhurried calm of Whatever The Weather, it's easy to envision the slow-moving shifts of the season. ... However one chooses to sit with the sounds in the album, personally, as an American, Celsius has never sounded so dreamy.

The 13-track record is anti-corporate music at its finest—this was not created for mere enjoyment, but as an outlet for the global psychic mood. Each track feels like 2020. ... The entire album is captivating, but the middle section is exceptional. ... In Ayewa's hands the heady concept [Afrofuturism] gets new life.

Debate will rage indefinitely on its merits, but to my ears Rival Dealer places Burial in a new creative sweet spot.

LP might be Ren Schofield's shortest album as Container, but it's also the one that best captures the full elemental force of his music.

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.

It's an album of unapologetic bangers, boasting some of the most enjoyable music Shepherd's ever released. But it also sacrifices some of what makes his best work so singular.

All Melody is remarkably well-rounded. It's not a techno album, it's not a classical album and it's not an ambient album, but it at times resembles all three.

The untreated vocals, the orchestration, the amount of space in the mix and loose-feeling drums give Significant Changes a retro flavour that echoes classic disco labels like West End Records and Salsoul.

The title might tell you they're not too concerned with dance floors, but the music itself suggests otherwise.

Like most of his records, his self-titled LP shows a talent that stretches well beyond house music, weaving together funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz and R&B into a rich and unpredictable bricolage.

With its unabashed focus on large, universal emotions softened by the weight of adult experience, softscars is a beautiful blast from the past, made brighter with its emotionally timeless themes and crunchy rock aesthetics.

Good pop is often pliable, its message broad or ambiguous enough for listeners to flex it to their taste. Political pop can be like this without compromising its message, but most of Hopelessness has no interest in pliability. It regards its audience as either fervent believers in Anohni's cause or a pop mass in need of blunt polemic.

For the most part, though, their method bears fruit, yielding an irresistibly catchy pop record that holds true to its humble Welsh roots.

Recorded in one take, fabric 87 captures the peak-time spirit of fabric's Room 2, and showcases exclusive edits from the DJ and remixes of currently boxfresh tracks like "Lolly Pop" by Reset Robot. So it's a shame that the mix runs out of energy before the end, pulling the knockout blow it should have had.

It channels the feeling of dancing all night to your favourite DJ in your favourite club, with an evening's worth of twists, turns, surprises and delights, packed into an 80-minute set that is as much of an artistic statement as any of Seaton's excellent records.

Where Providence showed that he can still make ambitious statements, this EP is a simpler pleasure.

Tracks like "Hungry Child" and "No God" are huge, highly focussed anthems that would boss a festival stage. For all of the album's welcome contradictions, however, this focus does hold it back a little. ... But at the right time, in the right company or on the right dance floor, it's a powerful high that also has a message.

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.

Everything Squared is both a closed loop back to the fundamentals of the band's sound and a new tributary opening up, once again confusing any attempts to accurately place Seefeel anywhere but in their own time and space.

At its best, Black Star shows an artist amplifying Afrodiasporic club music with modern verve, unlocking a new wave of Black pop stardom all the while.

Though Arpo draws from Seaton's private life, its heady daydream vibe is open and accessible.

The combination of these two forces is both inspired and insane.

Machine is as visceral as anything he's ever put out, but the album's use of negative space—a cornerstone of what, in that Electronic Beats interview, he identified as dub's "alien unknown quality"—creates a sense of heightened focus you don't get from his vocal albums. These tracks are certainly "floor weapons," as Martin has billed them in liner notes. But they'll work just as well for those looking to quietly meditate on bassweight at home.

Age Of is the sound of an internet addict sifting through the digital ruins, part of a culture jamming legacy for future generations, should they exist.

The results are astoundingly beautiful, like a field recording taken from some uncharted corner of the earth. Elsewhere, the climax at the end of the ominous "Talking To The Whisper" beggars belief, it's a traffic jam of cascading keys, sporadic drumming, serpentine brass and more, an explosion of chaotic sound to conclude one of her best songs ever.

Safe is an incongruous blend of calm and anxiety. It's also full of raw human emotion.

It's just Jamie Teasdale, an already accomplished producer, freely chasing his inspiration and coming out the other end with near genius in the process.

Klein's work exists entirely on its own terms. It's a vocalist and her piano presenting a form of singer-songwriter music that doesn't need words to get its feelings across.

A nicely well-rounded debut album from an artist who's only been releasing music for a couple of years.

There's an admirable level of refinement to Hubris, even as it also feels brilliantly alive and ever in the moment.

The album bops and bangs as he explores throbbing Detroit techno and bouncy Kraftwerkian synth pop, overlaying those genres with recordings of his time in Hong Kong to create a deeply spiritual album that fuses traditions, lineages and memories.

While some of Black Up isn't a million miles from his former group's darker corners, it's not particularly like much else. It's all present tense, in a way too little is, and brash, bold, and weird about it. Per one of his more baffling lines: "up, or don't toss it at all."

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

Sebenza sounds like nothing else out there and yet LV's knack for genre-mincing produces an album that sounds both timeless and completely of its time, crossing musical and political borders with confident finesse.

The striking concept alone is enough to make this album worth a listen. That it turned out to be so inspiring is a happy byproduct of the whole experiment.

It feels like a miniaturized epic, and it sees Mendez touch on all the established hallmarks of his already renowned sound, embellishing it here and there with grandiose flourishes.

An infinite number of sounds are now at his disposal, opening up vast new landscapes to be harnessed.

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

Although Spirit Exit, both more expansive and more restrained, doesn't oscillate as wildly as her previous expeditions, the heart strings remain plucked in gorgeous loops and motifs that spiral out into infinity.

A work with a fighting spirit so potent that tipping the world over begins to feel like a genuine possibility.

The dark liquid that once represented Björk's emptiness becomes a source of love that gushes and flows through her. Where once it felt suffocating, here it feels open and endless.

The mixtape jumps from acid basslines to Daft Punk-style chops in the time it takes to draw a breath. Just take "Stateside," which layers a goody bag of textures (scratchy percussion loops, vinyl scratches, stratospheric leads, and no fewer than three different bass tones) that whirl away from a breathless hook like petals. With her third full-length project, PinkPantheress refurbishes the refurbishers for yet another new generation

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.

It's a testament to Lennox's dexterity that these brief detours into soft introspection only enhance the wondrous breadth and vision of Panda Bear Versus The Grim Reaper.

Even as a mix of two halves, Dear's assured pacing means his DJ-Kicks entry rarely sounds disjointed. Two new Audion tracks near the end of the mix stand out, in ways that are both positive and negative.

As the dubstep/bass music continuum continues to splinter, recombine and reinvigorate itself ... Sepalcure seems to string all of these timbres and sub-sub-genres into a physically and emotionally bewitching take on post-everything dance music.

Like the phantom motion you feel laying in bed after long hours in transit, Themes for an Imaginary Film is bound to stick with you, drawing you in deeper with each turn of the ignition.

Sometimes producers catch a wave, sometimes they wipe out. But this theory is quickly rubbished by Hauff's own back catalogue. She's released consistent albums and EPs that said a lot with a little. Qualm achieves the same, but only in moments.

It's tricky to make music this mopey without sliding into shtick, but Holy Other pulls it off, balanced right on the brink of bathos.

Without a straight house or techno beat to be heard, fabric 94 is a meditative set from a DJ with more sides than most.

Keszler has been able to turn the overwhelming nature of urban life into something beautiful, and it's one of his best records as a result.

In Hecker's uncanny knack for blending noise and ineffable sound together, he makes for a turbulent sonic trip that ultimately feels redemptive.

Polymer's best parts show a keen balance of emotional and technical qualities. ... Still, Polymer gets soft roughly midway.

Glass Swords is a place where pleasure is the only constant: it doesn't matter that he's playing with self-consciously "cheesy" sounds or untouchable genres when the songs are this good.

It's a more expansive, more ambitious and more accomplished Raime than we've heard before.

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

By faithfully spotlighting the range and craftsmanship of Japanese computer game music, Diggin In The Carts pays effective tribute to the place from which that pride stems.

On Restless Idylls, Lobo has cemented Tropic Of Cancer as her own, crafting a signature sound that is sleek and addictive.

With Signals, Wen has nearly perfected the claustrophobic grime sound he started sketching in 2012.

Though Malone's music can often feel still, one thing's for certain about Does Spring Hide Its Joy: it'll move you.

Oh No is an inventive and enjoyable pop record that only falls short of Lanza's own standards.

Immunity is a journey to be savoured, revisited regularly in the knowledge that some new landmark will emerge each and every time.

On the most fully realized vision of the Fever Ray project yet, Dreijer unspools some of their best lyrics and pop songs since The Knife's 2007 smash "Heartbeats.

Part of the reason why LXXXVIII is so enjoyable is all these callbacks—it's catnip to a diehard Actress fan. There's a few new wrinkles on there, sure—the jazzy chord changes, the piano, the almost formless ambient sections—but mostly it's what he does best.

From its rumbling lows to its ethereal, resonant highs, Tomorrow Was The Golden Age is one of the simplest and most beguiling albums of its kind since Stars Of The Lid's landmark run on Kranky in the '00s.

The LP hops between ideas and experiments in the tradition of the rock music double-album, and even within individual songs things are rarely straightforward.

Free from spatial or historical associations, these songs now feel modern and ancient at once. The album's undulating textures can distort familiar surroundings and plunge the listener into heady contemplation. It's a defining work for Davachi that once again demonstrates her uncanny ability to draw new and arresting shapes and feelings from familiar materials.

Sirens' darkness is matched by its delicacy.

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.

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.

Stott's latest marks a new stage on this journey into the pop unknown, but it feels like he's not quite there yet.

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.

It's pretty introspective in places, and the concept—something about a mega-corporation and virtual reality—might be Smart's way of leading his music off the dance floor and allowing it to take on fluid new forms.

On EARS, Smith emerges as a novel, naturalistic and, yes, pop-savvy voice wielding an instrument known for esoteric experimentalism.

The album's wordless songs are almost as riveting as their counterparts.

Jaar's samples might not seem obvious, but 2012-2017 can feel generic. Most tracks are just looped soul samples fastened to heavy kicks. They might be uplifting if they didn't feel so utilitarian.

Even though we get Cox at his most nakedly audible on Parallax, however, it still feels like he's putting on a show, or imitating someone else.

The result is an album that feels personal but also universal.

Tranklements recalls Robert Hood's Motor: Nighttime World 3: both exhibit a confidence and composure perhaps unique to veteran producers.

He may be trading more in the glow of nostalgia than the shock of the new, but he can still deliver the goods.

It's her most capital-A ambient album, without the sometimes harsh interference of her favored found sounds and field recordings. Yet at the same time, it's so quiet that it slips into the edges of comprehension just when you've determined you're going to get to the bottom of it. All the better to listen to it again to see what you missed—and then again, and again and again.

In some ways, Euphoria Bound is the most Shackleton-sounding Shackleton record in some time, but there are still new references and sonic detours on display.