Drone lives and dies by its inviolability and rigidity, but Lopatin throws that away in favor of something madder, weirder and altogether more enticing.

Despite its shortcomings, Howl is a fine album for those interested in analog electronics and curious what can be done with them outside of a club environment.

For those of us undeterred by Halo's vocal approach, Quarantine is an often breathtaking piece of emotive reverie that stands sonically as one of the year's more consistently inviting ambient LPs.

New Path's final moments are fleetingly hopeful, conveyed through faintly chirping birdsong. But once that warmth fades, the album's unsettling mood is what lingers. It's one of Essaie Pas' finest efforts yet.

It's not often one comes across an album that is somehow both more evolved and primitive than its predecessor, yet it's a trick Container has pulled-off with LP.

rje had another ace up his sleeve: It's the Arps, a glistening modern disco EP that, at the risk of splitting hairs, is probably his finest yet.

Metal, techno and noise fans will all find solace here, as the band juggle sounds from all three to make something that sounds new, and almost natural.

An elegant and often bewitching entrant in the surfeit of night-weary synthscapes.

With KOCH, Gamble has found a canvas that's just the right size to fit everything on, to hold the whole beautiful thing up at once.

Without a doubt an early contender for electronic album of the year.

Smith never went away exactly, but Bleeds feels like as storming comeback.

It's an album that could have been a near-perfect EP--at its high points No Future presents the most inventive work of Moiré's career. As a whole package, though, it's a bit of a grind, as glum as it is propulsive.

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.

Rather than crystal-clear crooning, we get choirs of Tesfayes swirling and winding around elaborate, meandering songs.

Fool is the product of a powerful imagination, the kind of mind that's unburdened by assumptions and orthodoxies.

It's a record more about sound design and structure, an abstract deconstruction of Night Slugs' sleek chrome aesthetic.

She's become somewhat of an experimental music poster child by democratizing styles like field recordings and sound collages, which may seem daunting to new listeners. sentiment leans heavily into this, finding a middle ground between often structureless musique concrète and DIY pop tunes.

Some of the most affecting ambient music of the year, and perhaps even the very best in Halo's rich, unpredictable catalogue.

What Burton nails on Communion is how to fold in sounds from all over--electronic music and the real world--to make powerful and terrifying music in 2015. If the club is a shelter from an oppressive and dangerous society, then Communion is what waits outside.

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.

That feeling of organic growth and decay is, definitively, what makes Blondes unique--everything is in its right place, but instead of processed-to-death perfection, it just feels natural.

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.

It keeps intact what makes her one of the most exciting UK pop acts of the 2020s, gesturing towards the mainstream while still keeping one foot in her musical hometown. It's the kind of record a promising artist puts out before they release something truly next-level.

Morgan sings and raps on the LP, the first time they've used their voice on their records. That helps make Power their most accessible release. The singing is charmingly unpolished.

While McIlwain is operating within more rigid structures, another hangover from his ambient productions is that he can sometimes sound a bit directionless.

Magazine 13 doesn't feel like a coherent album so much as a more open-ended platform for the same thing we get on his 12-inches.

It was a chance encounter with Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics that helped Jain discover her knack for producing this kind of music. That kind of serendipitous experience illustrates what she's instilling here—following the seeds of your interest, however small, to blossom the singularity of your voice. For Arushi Jain, spring has sprung.

Casual and understated as ever, Greenspan and Didemus seemed to be making a point: Big Black Coat isn't the triumphant return of Junior Boys, it's just the next chapter in an ongoing story.

Gamble has said that Mnestic Pressure is a response to our turbulent times, and an attempt to confront the world rather than offer escape from it. That intention comes through, but the key to the album's brilliance lies elsewhere: in the way it balances fun, challenge and surprise more deftly than anything he's made before.

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.

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.

When Bruner's social conscience speaks up, the insights--spiced with slacker humour, free of sanctimony--are persuasive, even moreso when accompanied by an embrace of his flaws.

At times, it seems like his most interestingly textured and complicated release to date.

We can imagine these 32 tracks stretched out in three hours, and we can enjoy the way they squeeze into 76 minutes equally well.

Emerson's decision to duck out of dance music and resurface as an indie-electronica artist for her long-awaited debut album feels like a risk, but in its well-worn and world-weary approach to songwriting, it's also deeply familiar, almost comforting.

Baha's production skills are clear across Free For All. Fans of instrumental grime artists like Slackk will find much to admire in the austere yet precisely constructed "Aliens," whose sense of space is uncommonly sophisticated.

Across Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, she continues to craft poignant work that tints the atmosphere, transporting the listener to the remembrances and moments of imagination that float freely within the mind's eye.

Slow Knife's best moments might even trump Severant. But Teasdale's efforts to escape the shadow of his debut sometimes lead him astray.

Blondes' new arrangement seems to working fine so far, and suggests that subsequent live shows will be pretty special, too.

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.

Backed by a cast of co-producers like Pearson Sound, Tensnake and Paul White, she expands her sound to fit these more bracing topics, without losing the DIY charm that made her an instant star to begin with.

By injecting a self-serious genre with a sense of theatre, Bestial Burden makes Chardiet's music more engaging without dulling its edge.

This music suits periods of poignant, existential anguish.

As Wet Will Always Dry proves, Blawan has pushed things forward by showing that the traditional techno template can still be sculpted in surprising new forms.

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.

Aas Good Time shows, his skills have caught up with his ambition.

Eternal Home is by no means an easy listen, especially for people who aren't used to extreme metal vocals. But it's well worth the effort—the LP features some of the most beautiful music I've heard all year.

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.

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.

For those of us in between, it's like that aforementioned jigsaw puzzle: confounding, occasionally satisfying, and forever keeping you guessing as to what image its shapes are trying to form.

Like his last album, Leaning Over Backwards, A Series of Shocks is rich and spatially ambitious.

Mullinix's production chops have improved enormously in the 12 years since Two/Three—today, he sounds more like a proper hip-hop producer than a quirky crossover act. Listening to Three/Three, though, you might miss that crossover a bit.

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.

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.

The extended runtimes on Perpetual Now provide each of these pensive sound pieces enough room to tell their own meandering stories, with a dynamism that takes you out of time, placing you firmly within each boundless, everchanging meditation. At this music's core is an insight into the machinations of rRoxymore's mind.

Still Trippin''s sound design too often lacks textural depth, and it sometimes undermines otherwise good songs. The hip-hop tracks are a mixed bag as well.

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.

Instead of trying something new, he focuses on what he's good at, which makes Claustrophobia a lateral move rather than a step forward. It seems Rose is trying to recapture the brilliance of his peak-period work. In Claustrophobia's best moments, he does.


It once again proves Barbieri to be a singular talent in the realm of synthesizer music, creating enormous, intimidating, completely enveloping work.

Despite its burnt album art and sandy surfaces, it's an album not of barbecues but of bottles of wine and quiet fires.

Playing Robots Into Heaven pitches itself right in the middle, swallowing up Blake's wounded reveries in a tide of dance floor-friendly inspiration. It's the most vital he's sounded in years.

Years into his Daphni project, Snaith can still make familiar dance music sound fun all over again.

Colleen's most immediate and affecting LP to date.

When relationship blindspots are exposed in "Always You," the untroubled lust of earlier tracks matures into some of the album's most introspective moments.

Where a lot of modern Balearic music can sound cheesy and banal, Idjut Boys have a keen sense of melody and a fondness for unexpected left turns, which keeps their tracks tight and surprising.

Reassemblage is the finest LP yet to emerge from this diffuse scene, and it also brings a new set of ideas to the table.

Visions is marked by a number of characteristics that make up a broad swathe of forgettable, barely-there music-it sounds distant, cheaply produced, with songs that seem to flutter in and out of earshot rather than command attention-but it's executed with such personality, earnestness, and feeling that it feels so much louder and present than it really is.

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

This is a perfectly fine debut, but probably nothing compared to seeing them live.

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.

Most of his LPs show his love of prog and fusion. In other words, they've been lengthy, ambitious full-lengths with an array of singles sprinkled throughout. Cerebral Hemispheres is exactly that. Whatever its flaws, it's a solid entry in a legendary discography.

Slow Focus is more often than not an Olympic-standard piece of work.

Colonial Patterns is not a flawless record, but it does open up a whole new world of possibilities for Leeds as a producer, and places him decisively outside any box people might wish to put him in.

Expressive and loose as the album is, its track titles reveal more about Daniel's headspace.

Even the way it flows (abrupt and jerky) has the haphazard momentum of an unofficial mixtape. At the same time, Electronic Dream feels like a lovingly considered record, with the gaps between tracks blurred and bled like the fuzzy borders of a drug-induced dreamworld.

Ψ cleverly returns to the skewed body music on patten's first album, which nearly offsets the tangle of blurred gestures and garbled theorizing.

Physicalist is another high-quality release from one of this decade's most inventive bands in synthesizer music.

Psychic doesn't quite burn itself into your memory.

Three bonus tracks included with the re-release are almost as good, though they stretch the album to a daunting 75 minutes. City Lake's main effect is to make you appreciate the charms of its successor all the more. Its main effect, but not its only one.

Other M.E.S.H. records--including his 2015 debut LP, Piteous Gate--were narrow beam; Hesaitix is the full spectrum.

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

On Wenu Wenu, everything is present and correct, and that's part of the problem: it feels polished.

Given the ubiquity of some of this material, It's Album Time is a little tricky to assess on its own merit. But with tracks like "Delorean Dynamite," "Johnny And Mary," and "Old Joy," there are certainly plenty of grandiose stretches to keep us satisfied.

With just a few more jolts, a few more unexpected twists and turns, Coolen and Scholte would have had something truly special on their hands. But even without them, Weval is a hushed delight.

The Ship, his sixth Warp record in seven years, entwines various threads from these albums [Small Craft On A Milk Sea, Lux, and Highlife] into a heady amalgam that stands as his best work for the label to date.

Mod Prog Sic is the latest stop on this journey, taking the band to an evolved new place for a deeply satisfying blend of primal expression and visceral pleasure.

House of Woo may be playful and irreverent, but that shouldn't disguise its status as a potent exploration of sound.

The sheer density of his music is its most interesting quality, but also a weakness. Like the panicked crowds filling the streets in your favourite disaster movie, Stringer's tracks run in a hundred directions at once and ultimately get nowhere.

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.

While Active Agents And House Boys slows the aerodynamic rush of the duo's live sets, it reveals a new dimension to their work: something you could almost call songwriting.

Long's drum programming in general lacks finesse. It has neither the rhythmic spark to make bodies move, nor the sculpted precision for a mind-expanding armchair experience. Sometimes this isn't a problem.

Mood-wise, the three tracks are more in line with his debut, Hazyville, than any of his more recent output via Honest Jon's, although the techno that pulsed and glimmered through his older material is largely absent here.

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

As gripping as the album is all the way through-it seems to chart an on/off relationship even more directly than their eponymous album did-its best moment is actually its first. Opener "Angels" is one of the meekest xx tracks, but it's easily among their most powerful.

Soul Music feels a bit too modern to slot in perfectly with the music it's pining for, but that's part of what makes it a success.

Hearing producers as accomplished as Ellis or Sherwood steal the spotlight from time to time makes Man Vs. Sofa all the more appealing.

Where Rashad's best work was light and agile like an expert dancer, some of Taso's tracks feel like they're dragging their feet.

I AKA I moves from peak to peak, and you're never more than a couple of tracks away from open-mouthed awe.