Third Law trades emotion for physical power and presence. Porter has figured out how to channel the aggression of his early material into the maturity and otherworldliness of his solo work, and it's as breathtaking as it is bruising.

Love What Survives won't make Mount Kimbie household names, but it finds them in a new creative space that suits them.

This is their most focused mix yet, and even though they're ostensibly working with a finite number of resources, the well of obscure disco cuts seems far from dried up.

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

One of the album's key qualities is how Vynehall uses these musicians to enrich a sound that feels authentically his own. There are almost no dance beats on the record, but again, this feels like Vynehall moving farther down a path he'd already explored.

While it's called The Kid, the LP shows Smith has matured as an artist.

The result is bone-chillingly gorgeous, right down to the feverish burst of pop strings that accompanies the final choruses.

Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 2 might not be Traxman's most innovative album, but that's fine. It's still one of the genre's most singular records so far.

It's another triumph for Friends of Friends, and it's a breakthrough for a young producer finally emerging with an individual and inventive style previously only hinted at.

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.

While the record is certainly appreciable on purely musical terms--this is evocative, heart-tugging stuff--when knowledge of Kirby's intent lurks underneath the damaged acetate grooves, it becomes something else entirely: A poignant interrogation of memory loss and aging.

The final result is up there, but as it jumps frantically from idea to idea, it dulls the impact of its best ideas in favour of others that might have been best left in a folder along with hundreds of other loops on his laptop.

Lyrically, this may be the work of a 49 year-old woman, with its ruminations on family, married life and paying the bills, but, in terms of its energy and sheer lust for life, it could not sound fresher.

Where his best music was like reading pages from a diary, Rojus can feel like a passionate retelling of memories that were never his.

Programmatic as it is, ATAXIA has style and personality.

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.

Listening to WOW delivers genuine warmth, happiness and light. Within these settings, Shilonosova expands her ever-evolving and inquisitive personal soundworld of beautiful music for the body and the mind.

The Night Land lands in beautiful and occasionally unexpected places.

Like Dogsbody, Pirouette is a wildly feral album. This time, though, we're inclined to sway with the beat rather than thrash against it.

Her music can feel frustratingly fragmented one second and suddenly coalesce into something brilliant the next. IRISIRI is baffling and inspired in equal measure.

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.

Rhinestones is a skeletal, mostly acoustic continuation of this sound, gripping in its own mysterious, quiet way.

For a jingle writer whose album is almost relentlessly upbeat, his music can cut surprisingly close to the bone.

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.

R.I.P. is the most enveloping and fully developed of his cultivated soundworlds yet.

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.

Vibrant, dynamic displays that veer towards transcendence. Rife with the yearning for more prevalent love, Lovegaze is a bewitching offering of psychedelia and astral folk that goes beyond the mind, and peers into the soul of a distinct talent as she exalts beauty in its rawest forms.

A pop album brimming with imagination, vibrant melodies and, yes, a fair bit of formula.

Considering the breadth of the collection, there are bound to be some missteps—the rhythmic drive of "Wide Open" and "W" feel particularly out of place, while some of the pair's piano work blurs together. Nonetheless, it's hard to complain about a release that puts these talented composers' collaborations all in one place.

Rembo, a moreish and hedonistic album, shows an artist able to master many machines and styles.

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.

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.

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

Live At The Troxy shows how the highly personal world of that album [Plunge] develops further onstage.

While Shygirl clearly has a reverence for hip-hop's past, she never turns that admiration into staid nostalgia. Over early grime-type beats, we hear what might be otherwise well-worn clichés—sirens, flutes, drip drops and sped-up vocals—but under Shygirl's command, she manages to give them an international twist.

It's peaceful and distantly serene, but with flickers of dissonance rubbing away at the edges. Those contrasting textures are part of what makes The Inheritors perhaps the year's most revealing and intriguing album yet.

Midway through RR7349, "Wardenclyffe" cuts back and forth from cheeky synth pop to stratospheric synth vistas, revealing how much better S U R V I V E are with the latter approach. They finally concede to their strengths in the album's second half.

Some portions of Strands are so calming that it's hard to stay focused on Hauschildt's expertly woven details. But the album doesn't just seek to relax its listeners.

After the existential questions of Ghettoville, it feels unfussy and workmanlike. Which isn't to do it down: now that he's back to just getting on with it, Cunningham can once again produce mirage-like moments of beauty like nobody else.

So while Cold Spring is in many ways a massive leap forward for Mount Kimbie, it's also the sort of transitional album you might expect from a group with a knockout debut.

The impact of Written in Changes on its own terms may feel a little elusive, yet it's admirable to hear someone as musically omnivorous as Emerson continue to allow herself to change.

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.

This relationship between Anderson and her subject is what elevates Amelia from mere biography into an enormously moving, poignant creative triumph.

These are the few moments where she sounds wet behind the ears, but then she's still a relatively fresh face on the scene. And whenever she puts an awkward foot forward, she's immediately redeemed by a hint of pop brilliance.

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.

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

The album imagines pop as computer-generated architecture: vivid, plastic and physics-defying.

Platform is full of beautifully corrupted, synthesised signals.

Now, in 2014, Vessel has given us one of the year's best electronic music albums, and it's hardly electronic.

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.

These abrupt transitions are clearly of central concern for Lopatin, and it's these rapid shifts that make R Plus Seven unlike anything he's produced to date.

Music this haunting is more universal than local.

For an artist who has traditionally experimented with recording methods, Quixotism is another landmark, thanks largely to how natural it sounds in spite of its ambitious approach.

For a debut album from such a young artist, 99.9% is remarkably self-assured. It sets up Celestin as someone carving out his niche.

Movement, then, is more a proof of concept than a fully fleshed-out thought, though Herndon brings enough passion to her sound to suggest one is coming.

Potential is largely a wonderful collection of uplifting and humbling electronic pop.

The forms are extraordinary and the surfaces dazzling, but it's unclear how to navigate through them. You're impressed but also confused, and you keep an eye out for the exit. Several tracks shine regardless.

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.

If it was difficult to fathom what could surpass Forever, Ya Girl's genius, there are no signs of sophomore slump on hooke's law. Building on the modern R&B template of her debut, her second album accomplishes a Herculean task: being conceptual and moving as well as fun.

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.

World Eater is Power's most eclectic record to date. Dumb Flesh, his second album as Blanck Mass, moved away from the wall of sound of his self-titled debut.

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

If the album doesn't always hit the same highs as the excellent Mondo Beat or Trance LPs, there's still plenty to love: the bending techno synth waves on "Modularity," the slowed-down Nitzer Ebb flashbacks on "Post Industrial," and the krautrock computer glitches on "Noise Floor."

Open Your Eyes has a confidently evolved sound.

What's completely clear about All The Right Noises is that it's a highly personal album. In his exploration of them, Flügel makes these non-spaces his own.

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.

This album has an overall ephemeral quality. It's commanding when it's on, but aside from a few highlights, it feels like a minor work in both artists' discography. Time will tell.

Stylistically, it's more of a grab-bag than ever before, occasionally tipping the scales from charming to bombastic.

If The Inheritors was the sound of the former trance artist undergoing a spiritual rebirth, The Animal Spirits is as close as he's come to transcendence.

An entire album of the stuff would likely be twee overkill, but Gonno's endearing quirks and lighthearted sensibilities are charming in small doses.

He's essentially building sonic environments, the kind a listener can enter and explore. That experience is less about the details than the journey, which Gengras carves out with the skill of a seasoned designer.

It shows him settling into a state of deep contentment, evoking the same warm and fuzzy feeling you get from throwing on a record that you know inside and out.

Voigt's mix of art music, techno and classical, of fairy tales and field recordings, feels singular and timeless 25 years on. It's not Voigt's most beautiful or immersive record as GAS, but it remains a forest we can all get lost in.

FabricLive.61 showcases a producer similarly disinterested in genre orthodoxy. But he's doing it in a different way. The mix might have its roots in dubstep's swampier side but is now intertwined with gnarled techno and thorny breaks.

It never fully sounds laid back, as if the producer is unwilling to let his sounds run as rampant or give into the funk quite like his Californian counterparts.

It could just be good timing, or that he remains the same ingeniously innovative songwriter, but Club Rez is yet another victory for the young producer.

[The album's] obfuscating mires of navel-gazing perhaps precludes it from attaining Ninja Tune classic status, but those of a darker disposition will likely be of the opinion this challenging opus collates Ortega's strongest work to date.

It's bold, maybe even avant-garde, but from beginning to end it's raucous, barnstorming, chair-dancing fun.

Visa finds Ripatti attuned to a very specific, focused energy, and the result is some of his best work.

It's an interesting diversion for Romans, and might just be the most admirable part of Valere Aude.

Their tenth LP, For That Beautiful Feeling, returns to their well-established formula once again, at times surging with renewed ambition and other times falling curiously flat.

Since the beginning, DJ-Kicks has been about finding unique takes on this craft. Kozalla's 50th instalment more than lives up to this tradition.

Wonderland shies away from the textural depths the duo made their name on. But what the album lacks in psychedelic richness it makes up for with wild, off-the-cuff energy, and it sounds like Demdike Stare had a lot of fun making it.

Patience is one of Kirby's most consistent and stylistically severe albums in recent memory, mostly solo piano with the occasional vocal thrown in.

A solid diversion from two artists who we know can do better.

Once it pulls you into its core, its dissonant sound becomes comforting, and then cathartic. In evoking confusion as to where man ends and machine begins, Borders offers a musical interpretation of a very modern dilemma.

No Home Of The Mind strikes a chord without uttering a word.

Staring into a murky void, Thundercat has actually made his clearest music yet.

With each transition, you can tell Agius has taken the time to get the stitching just right, which allows him to cover a broad range of sounds and textures without derailing the flow.

Ghost Culture is a good record from an artist who is probably capable of a great one.

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.

What Barnes has done here is give us a full tour of a hidden place he only let us peek at before, a place that's even more breathtaking than Dagger Paths made it out to be.

In many ways Ghost Systems Rave is as bumpy and nerve-jangling as a joyride in a stolen Ford Fiesta. Whether that's your idea of fun or not, no one could ever claim it's clean and healthy.

It's old, new and never boring.

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.

Where Devotion was light and feathery, Colourgrade is haunting and visceral. She sounds wiser, more assured, laser-focused on what matters most.

The album is not only one that fans will cherish for years to come, but it will surely be the record that draws a whole new generation of fans into her deeply personal, and always captivating, world.

These songs are fast, coming at you from all angles, with little time to think twice. If anything, the record is a large, flashing stop light for anyone who dares to try her again.