Some of the work Power did as one half of Fuck Buttons matched the grandiosity of this record's melodies, but did so with emotional resonance. But with the sense of plastic emptiness so ever-present, Animated Violence Mild too directly mirrors the very thing it's critiquing.

Piñeyro taps into the rarefied air of so many early IDM records, a mix of beauty, nostalgia and melancholy.

On its own terms, the Midsommar score is a sometimes brilliant but limited affair that showcases both Krlic's genius and how that genius suffers under the constraints of a film.

The album reflects a fascination with the act of creation through the exploration of other artistic mediums and the nature of the music itself. Atkinson is able to represent these complex webs of ideas in ways that feel infinitely deep by embracing the enigmatic nature of sound and art.

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

The brilliance in moments of these tracks doesn't add up to a fully engaging album experience, but Aguayo deserves plenty of credit for continuing to show the imagination he thought minimal lacked all those years ago.

This isn't exactly club music, but Yorke and Godrich write incisive beats and basslines, which they match with ever-interesting sound design.

Its tackiness has transformed over time into a thing of beauty. A perfect reflection of the flora in your life, Mother Earth's Plantasia is garish, green and hopelessly sincere. It never fails to put a smile on your face or pull the sunshine into every room.

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.

Gou's DJ-Kicks, though filled with some stretches of sleek club music, struggles to find an overall thread to hold it together. The personal angle is not enough. Each of these tunes may hold a special significance in Gou's life. But to the listener, they don't quite reveal the story.

As things stand, there's a sense that somewhere along the line Nordström lost the capacity to self-edit. ... Nordström is mad for attempting this project, but even in partial failure Dusk To Dawn is among the more ambitious dance albums ever dreamt up.

There's a nagging feeling that the project uses such a vast grab-bag of references to mask a lack of clear, foundational ideas. That could be slightly unfair though. Moffa and Troxler wouldn't be the first artists to take up residence in a maze of their influences, and as muddled as things appear at times, on Lost Souls Of Saturn they do some pretty striking work.

Pale Bloom, like all of Davachi's work, has a transportive, mystical quality. It could be so easy for the composer to recede into the endless abyss of staid ambient music, but this album proves that she has little interest in doing so. The more she continues to challenge herself and her audience, the more rewarding her work becomes.

Sirens' darkness is matched by its delicacy.

It's not a splashy supergroup album, nor is it perfect. It's the work of two experienced producers producing sharp songs. Like all of Edgar and Stewart's work as J-E-T-S, Zoospa is impressive but surprisingly low-key.

The album's mix of the everyday and the unfamiliar is deeply eerie, a world of sound in which it's possible to contemplate the disruptions of our own.

Going back to make a new album from sessions that had already been used could have ended up sounding overworked. Instead, Anoyo is the counterbalance to what has been done. These albums shouldn't be compared, but taken in together.

Ecstatic Computation is marked by sudden breaks from predictability. Stylistic influences and sonic textures are varied, yet they're cohesive. The result is an album that's both provocative and blissful.

Ellison remains keen on confronting and articulating his inner quarrels in the name of taking weirdness to the masses, and in doing so writing a new chapter in the pantheon of great Afrofuturist music.

Through throat singing, traditionally performed as a dialogue between two women, Tagaq tells ancient stories of the lives of her people from a modern perspective, preserving tradition while helping it evolve.

Seven Steps Behind is too unfocused to be a slam dunk, but there's potential for something truly new here. In an era where club classics in the concert hall have lost their novelty, it's thrilling to hear orchestral instruments twisted like this.

Rave 'Till You Cry shows that, in the right hands, braindance is flexible enough to create nuanced, multilayered portraits with the unfiltered intimacy of a diary.

Though Spawn only features on about a third of the album, the AI's conceptual impact is key to Proto. ... The compositions elsewhere are dense and overwhelming.

Fear In A Handful Of Dust is a very approachable Amon Tobin record. It is highly unconventional, full of alien timbres and strange logic. But, as was the case with much of his music in the past couple decades, you don't need to be in a specific kind of mood to enjoy it.

Unlike the space disco of his past, Thomas's music now hangs together not with laser bursts but with silken thread.

Edge Of Everything, a harsh, relentless and evocative techno album, is an impeccable showcase of Temple's artistic voice.

Sonically, Take Off Mode is not as ambitious as Da Trak Genious. ... But among these standouts, many of the other tracks lack the chaotic charisma key to the DJ Nate sound. His apparent abandonment of footwork in recent years could be at the heart of the LP's uneven quality. But changing one's style doesn't mean losing the soul of the sound.

Serenitatem, the latest volume in RVNG Intl.'s FRKWYS series, harks back to Ojima's environmental music of the period. The delicate synthwork across the LP is uncluttered and unobtrusive.

This album's been seven years in the making and it shows. Many of the songs, including most of the instrumentals, might've sounded fresh sometime back, but I find myself forgetting them as soon as they're played through.

No Geography pushes right up to the line but doesn't cross it.

Swinscoe has a knack for both producing lush orchestral movements and picking worthy collaborators. On To Believe, they are unfortunately not more than the sum of their parts.

These tracks [with pop collaborations] amount to unremarkable radio fare and dilute the artistic voices of all involved. ... The instrumentals have more bite.

Agora is both a return to form and a leap into the abyss.

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

Ancestor Boy's world is one of filial love, of kinship through blood or spirit, of otherness and self-reliance.

The State Between Us does, at times, attain a depth of its own, particularly when it's dealing in the sadness of separation Brexit engenders in roughly half of the population. But at other points it just seems to be saying, "Ooh, aren't we quirky?!"

LateNightTales' 17 tracks are unsurprisingly tasteful, including many that are impossibly rare. But it's not an overly studied trainspotters' paradise. Many of the obscure songs should appeal to the fanbase drawn in by Shepherd's productions.

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 problem is the tone, which, from the album's first whimper to the comically bad poetry reading that closes it, is hackneyed and overwrought all the way through. These ten tracks are defined by somber pianos, bittersweet strings and quivering pads--like Sigur Rós, but drained of all mystery. Worst of all, though, is the singing, a half-coherent moan that falls somewhere between Thom Yorke and '90s radio balladeers like David Gray or Five For Fighting.

For all its appeal, DJ-Kicks isn't necessarily Halo's most striking mix. Her 2017 Boiler Room, which incorporated UK funky, grime-adjacent tracks, Príncipe anthems and Whitney Houston, felt slightly fresher, more expressive. But DJ-Kicks is still a success, a standout club mix that reflects the individual streak that runs through Halo's work.

Programmatic as it is, ATAXIA has style and personality.

Plastic Anniversary is just extraordinarily clever, something to be marveled at more than moved by.

Martin and Robinson cycle through stages of grief, derision, self-hatred and abject loneliness with an honesty that could make you flinch.

It's a surprisingly approachable piece with an appeal far outside the experimental music community, which speaks to Basinski's ear for melody and grasp of emotion. Not many artists could turn a source as abstract as black hole recordings into music this beautiful.

With vulnerability comes strength, and each Octo Octa record further builds a catalogue that serves as a rich, therapeutic memoir.

It's clear that Hello Happiness is not the full album experience. Still, a few easy summer hits from Khan are a treat.

Where the artist's past work used abstract sound as a conceptual approach to trans identity, the choice to embrace lyricism makes Death Becomes Her a more fun and digestible listen.

Vynehall's entry into the long-running series doesn't have quite the same crowd-pleasing quality, but like the Moodymann mix it's brilliantly executed.

It highlights the long-standing chemistry between a group of talented musicians, and, unsurprisingly given the setting and Murphy's skill in the studio, the recording and production sound exceptional.

It is the kind of music you could imagine spending the rest of your life listening to.

The result is a thrilling meditation on the weirdness of now.

Situated at the border of ambient, new age, techno and industrial music, the album could just as easily fit into a meditative practice as a gritty basement rave. It is also a testament to her technical prowess as an electronic composer. But perhaps more importantly, it lives and breathes her insistence on exploring new sounds and techniques.

The melodies have their usual childlike playfulness, but not the haunting quality that's lent them so much mystery and depth in the past.

At their best, Boy Harsher capture the bittersweet feeling of being young, in love and on the road, oblivious to the inevitable spin-out.

Its narratives bump up against moments of real beauty, casting a robotic detachment over even its warmest moments. But Rahbek does an admirable job of presenting visions that are hard to shake.

It sounds contemporary and creative, lush without being overproduced, but nowhere could you pick out the fingerprints of, say, Hudson Mohawke. It's all Richard, sounding tighter, stronger and more assured than ever.

The collaborators seem to have more influence than they did on Blake's previous albums. There's little here that could be anyone else, but the tone—less heavy, more hopeful, brighter colours—is different, even as he deals directly with despair. Overall, many more things are gained than lost in this development.

Taking inspiration from our deep-rooted human imperfections, Anne is at once intimate and universal, honest and hopeful.

What's most impressive, though, is Gainsborough's commitment to integrating classical music on Queen Of Golden Dogs. The results, far from being grandiose, are rough, eloquent and compassionate.

While Self's experimental productions showcase the versatility of the voice, his poppier songs luxuriate in its timbre.

Both tracks [Love In The Time Of Lexapro and Last Known Image Of A Song], though, are dreamscapes of ineffable yearning. The EP's other cuts feel almost like a letdown, though only by degrees.

As the white noise whooshes and the snares roll on Adrian Hour's "Make You Feel Good" (a track that was released on Toolroom four years ago), it's difficult not to sense an artist also drifting in the opposite direction, towards a sound that he'd struggle to call his own.

On Powerhouse, we learn many things about Rostron. Few artists can express their politics and personal life so directly.

Overload is suffused with love: love for self, love for community, and especially love for Muldrow's longtime creative and romantic partner, the rapper Dudley Perkins.

For all its mind-melting attention to detail, Hertz's music has rarely sounded so evocative.

Cherry's latest references the refugee crisis, gun violence, fascism, racism and a collective sense of despair. But Cherry knows how to wrap these subjects in something sweeter. The scope of Broken Politics takes in both our outward political moment as well as its effects on our interior life. The music that accompanies her has an equally wide scope.

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.

Throughout Honey, the pure, raw emotion that has always defined Robyn's music is still there. Now, she's just dancing to a different beat.

Like Seeds Of Destiny, Life After Death is an unsettling work with glimmers of positivity.

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.

The Drought is compelling because Hoffmeier is so clearly in charge.

Working Class Woman is special because it looks beyond the personal highs and lows of touring to the cracks in the foundation of a lucrative club culture that requires constant, exhausting effort to achieve some semblance of stability.

Throughout the record, there are gestures toward what has already passed and what will eventually come. With its constant shifts in energy, Ecce Homo succeeds in opening up new temporal and textural dimensions.

Though Autobiography may seem like a departure from Jlin's past work, many of its themes have been present throughout her catalogue. The LP succeeds in challenging expectations for a ballet score while expanding the possibilities for the artist's post-footwork sound.

With Born Again In The Voltage, Barbieri goes deeper into undressing familiar timbres, this time with human voice and string instruments. With them, she's able to guide us on an introspective trek through the expanse of our own brains and the cosmos alike.

Fabriclive 100 is without a doubt an inspired effort, an ambitious and highly creative attempt at capturing its selectors' musical lineage. But it's also a bit of a mess. It feels like the wild second-to-last draft of a creative project.

[Blood Rain is] the track on Bodied that best reflects the influence of soundtrack work on Myson, music that feels powerful without being obvious or obtrusive. The rest of Bodied feels like a film score made for a blockbuster that isn't there. The LP's sculpted sound, dreamy sketches and haughty melodrama rarely feels like more than the sum of its often stunning parts.

Burn Slow isn't the most original or exciting work. But it's a thoughtful and personal album that allows Liebing to move beyond his techno reputation with grace.

Like staring at a laptop screen for so long the glut of information makes you feel sick, Another Life is a complete sensory overload you can't turn away from. It's the duo's most triumphant release yet.

You might also hear the elegiac rise and fall of Stars Of The Lid, an emotional Hollywood score or William Basinski's sound of decay. However, as Konoyo unspools, you may look back and realize that this all combines to sound like no one other than Hecker.

In losing sight of the dance floor, Battle Lines does away with Bob Moses' greatest strength, and the quality that made them stand out from countless other pop and rock acts.

The slow-motion throbs of Davachi's warm, uncluttered electronic pieces achieve something intensely serene. On her new album, Gave In Rest, the music occupies the peaceful spaces she found lying between religious and secular realms.

Scattered brilliance makes Shelly's On Zenn-La a compelling listen. At its best, the LP showcases a composer with an uncompromising will to experiment, even if it yields mixed results.

On his Warp Records debut, Safe In The Hands Of Love, Yves Tumor joins the ranks of Arca and SOPHIE at the millennial generation's pop vanguard, a group whose fluid approach to music and imagery is eradicating the gap between underground and mainstream.

The endorphin-rush techno of "Forgive Me," meanwhile, is sure to ignite one of his main stage festival sets. That's the setting in which Boratto shows his energy and confidence as an artist. Too much of Pentagram, by contrast, feels tired or confused.

Overall, little of This Behavior has the mystery or subtlety of touch suggested by the gloved magician's hands on the cover. Rather, this is ADULT. showing their iron fist, and not every punch lands.

Darby has always had a good grasp on what makes this music so addictive. EPHEM:ERA just looks at it from a different perspective, highlighting the curvatures of grime's fundamentals.

F for all its lofty intentions and complex construction, it is a remarkably easy listen.

Hauschildt's minimal electronica here works its way into those ambient soundscapes and offers a singularly calm fusion of both genres. No longer caught between oppositional impulses, Hauschildt seamlessly channels freeform ambient and regimented synth tones into the same space, and produces some of his most cohesive, conceptually sound work to date.

hej! is one of PC Music's most well-rounded records yet.

It's striking how simple and affecting Devotion is as a whole. At a time when so much music is political and intellectualized, Tirzah's sincerity and candor is a breath of fresh air.

Something about its bleary-eyed shuffle, smooth jazz accents and chipmunk vocals is ineffably familiar and intimate. By drawing on memories and relationships for inspiration, Weatherall conveys emotion more convincingly than ever before.

On Filo Loves The Acid, Dozzy has held back his more radical approach, as well as his typically subtle use of the 303, to deliver an exemplary acid toolkit.

The sheer number of different tools and skills they bring to the job is staggering. That's a big reason why, nearly a decade after the scene's initial explosion, they're still propelling the sound forward.

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.

On Here From Where We Are, Cayzer takes on multiple shades of ambient music and delivers each with an expert touch.

Jakobsson's DJ-Kicks is a smooth and enjoyable hour, and a reminder that, whatever name he's releasing under, he's worth taking seriously.

Synthetic birdsong, rustling keys and a contemplative melody suggest someone pondering the world outside. The album, in turn, offers a glimpse into Kate NV's rich imagination.