As a soundtrack for a wide variety of scenes, Distractions enhances Chen's reputation as one of UK club music's most adaptable artists.

Listening back now, it still pumps. But it's a palatable pump, with enough hooks and vocals to work as well over pasta as in a field at 4 AM. Funnily enough, the tracks that have aged best are the ones that pump least. ... Though other remixes in the middle section update the production techniques, they don't really advance on the festival-pleasing 4/4 or big beat predictability of the originals.

Black Origami can be intimidating: it's dark, relentless, and makes substantial demands on the listener. But it's also powerful and distinctive. In the world of rhythmic electronic music, nobody else is doing it quite like this.

The lyrics on Humanz might be Gorillaz's darkest, but the album has lots of bright music.

It is poignant and ragged with suffering, but it doesn't dwell there. It is also bright, optimistic and euphoric.

A large part of Death Peak--despite the morbid title--contains some of Clark's most accessible and melodic dance floor tracks.

Three short instrumentals fail to muster the same energy. Interesting sounds abound, but they don't always connect, sometimes feeling less like music than collections of sound effects. At their best, though, Wolf Eyes evoke soundtracks to a lost drama whose characters are always in peril, be it from physical violence or internal torment.

Whatever the differences on Narkopop, the album is remarkably true to the project's past: this is music that takes inspiration from childhood memories, bygone eras and the natural world. The results can feel like another dimension, but the album is also intensely personal.

Chardiet's presence on the album is so commanding, however, that you can almost feel her reaching out to you from beyond the recording. It'll shake you up, no matter what.

At its best moments, async combines Sakamoto's history in acoustic music with his legacy in electronic music.

Concrete Desert is a response to a real environment. But the album feels less specific to a given city. It seems instead like a parallel space, one that builds an impression of some future dystopia.

Where 2012's Tracer experimented with house and techno, 8AM recalls their debut, 7AM, but with a more refined approach.

Owens is an exciting new artist. Her voice is lovely. Her songwriting is accessible. Her arrangements feel smooth, and she moves with ease between styles. The only drawback to Kelly Lee Owens is an occasional tweeness that can come with such sweet, weightless music.

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.

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.

Arca's most accomplished work to date.

Designed to be listened to as a continuous mix, From Deewee is as much about the flow between songs as the standout anthems.

Providence marks a muscular new path for Fake, but he sounds as singular as always.

The Night Land lands in beautiful and occasionally unexpected places.

Ultimately, Tears In The Club could have been a nearly flawless six-track EP--though the filler doesn't detract from the more noteworthy tunes on here, it doesn't really contribute either.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Approach the album with the same unhurried attitude as its creators, though, and you'll find moments to savour.

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.

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.

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.

Like E+E's The Light That You Gave Me To See You, Egyptrixx's latest brings an element of the human and the mundane into his epic, depopulated landscapes. His harsher records were more impressive, but this one invites affection.

In the style of Arthur Russell, Tophat uses studio trickery to weave contrasting material into dreamlike narratives. Programmed drums morph fluidly into live ones, while samples and voices circle each other like planets in unpredictable orbit.

Kompakt's recent box set for Voigt's Gas project is arguably the ne plus ultra of emotionally resonant ambient music from the past two decades. Its influence looms over Pop Ambient 2017, but this music can nonetheless be its own soundtrack for daydreaming. On that level, the series continues to be worthwhile, but if its reach was just a little wider, it could be even more.

Lonely Planet rarely veers off the beaten path, but when it does, it's quite the voyage.

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.

As its title implies, Migration was meant to be about Green's experience moving to a new home and traveling around the world. But rather than taking his sound anywhere, Migration stays put.

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

In composing a piece so well-defined yet so adaptable, Eno adds yet another page to ambient music canon.

It's old, new and never boring.

Glass isn't a concept album, though, nor does it need to be. Music this impressive is a statement in and of itself.

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

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.

There are moments of hymnal beauty, but it's unmoored from the hardcore nostalgia of Bevan's most affecting music. The context for Young Death / Nightmarket is harder to grasp, and before you know it, it drifts away.

Gas is the sound of a man freeing his mind and allowing it to wander. To listen to Box is to seize that same opportunity.

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.

The jolt you get from Tiger & Wood's best work is missing. Perhaps the songs are too ornate, or maybe they're too similar to so much other retro-themed club fodder. Tiger & Woods haven't lost their spark, but their music shines less brightly than before.

All of the extra effort has paid off: fabric 90 is a killer dance mix first, a technical exercise second.

It's a rock-solid techno mix with few surprises or left turns. Avery can hold his own in this style, but a collection of tracks from artists like Planetary Assault Systems, Shlømo and Artefakt might not have the same crossover appeal he's used to. That said, the mix is still full of drama and striking moments.

Even as an experimental playground, Remain Calm is clearly the work of two people with a lot of ideas, versatility and musicianship. This first release hints at what's possible for this dream pairing.

& is essentially a compilation of disparate tracks. There are a few good moments, enough decent efforts and some failures.

While it's not without flaws, Volume 2 isn't the sound of a label fizzling out. It's possible that they're just getting started.

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

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

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

"DB Rip" feels like a missed opportunity to bring techno into play, while the title track overdoes its gothic pomp. The rest are slight but elegant mood pieces. Dal Forno is good at these, but it's her pop songs that do more than just tick the BEB boxes.

Gately describes her method as a question: "How much can I add before it just sounds too crazy. What's the most obnoxious thing I can make the song do?" With Color, she's overshot.

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.

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

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.

They draw from the immigrant communities to make a sound that, to them, is completely at home.

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

Most tracks have a near-total lack of reverb that suffocates sentimentality without starving the record of atmosphere. As a listening experience, it's like pushing on a bleeding gum: knotty and perversely satisfying.

COW is the sound of The Orb stripped down its essence, revealing the splendor that's always been there.

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.

The middle of the album explores a stranger kind of sample collage, stitching together unlikely sounds and moods. At first the shift seems odd, but after a few listens it becomes clear that this is where things really get interesting.

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

This is a record that Biosphere fans will enjoy losing themselves in. Like the Wolski forest and its ghosts, Departed Glories brings you far into its unknown expanse, never showing you a way out.

Whether he's rapping about stripping copper out of abandoned houses or addiction, Brown manages to wring humor and, somehow, relatability out of grim personal stories.

At 43 minutes long, Human Energy is so dizzy and quick that it's hard to find your bearings. It makes for a fun, if exhausting, ride.

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

Sirens is his best record because it's both his most straightforward and most experimental, his densest and lightest.

"Closed Circuit" stands out on Sunergy for its restraint and musicality. Smith and Ciani riff around a melodic figure with a percussive edge, filling the space around the light-footed pattern with delicate, free-flowing harmonic color.

Trim definitely isn't stuck on stupid, but a bit more self-awareness wouldn't go amiss.

There's a dreamlike logic to much of Care: it's atmospheric, but it doesn't make sense.

Open Your Eyes has a confidently evolved sound.

Phoenixxx is pure violence, with seemingly incidental moments of calm.

Repeat listens don't reveal any deeper logic to its tracklist, which remains a collection of intriguing ideas and not much more.

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

Callus is the sound of someone exorcising their demons with nothing but a few pieces of gear and his own snarling weapon of a voice--and growing stronger for it.

Factory Floor's aesthetic is rarely comforting, and yet their new music settles into itself as it revisits old habits.

Many of the tracks on Hangin' At The Beach, much like Pink's low-key classic "Life In LA," grapple with the paradox of feeling lonely and alienated in paradise. Perlman's able to evoke these ideas without lyrics, using a casual, collagist approach to create his most profound work to date.

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.

The mood of each piece sticks to a narrow range between quietly brooding and vaguely anthemic. But it's not only business as usual for Rival Consoles. In small pockets and slight gestures, distinctive traits emerge from West's symphonic electronics.

Whatever's at the heart of these sonic fictions, it drove Crampton to reach for new audio possibilities, not for the sake of novelty but to keep pace with the futurity of her visions. It sets the album apart from other pieces of audio collage because it's not sound design for sound design's sake: it's what's required to bring the drama to life.

Four hours of dense, bewildering and occasionally fun electronic music, elseq 1-5 is a logical next step into the unknown for two pioneers.

The second Floorplan album feels triumphant enough to bear the title Victorious. It's a stellar follow-up to Paradise.

When it comes to grime producers, there are two kinds: those who simply make music and those who act as creative directors, getting involved with collaborators, arrangements and often more. Judging from the unevenness of Disaster Piece, he needs both.

As with all of Copeland's records, surprising angles and intriguing touches are strewn throughout. But this is also an incredibly fun record, which is enough reason to play it over and over.

Pagan is a singular vision. There's plenty to enjoy--no individual track is a misstep. But consumed as whole, Pagan goes from sugary pop to sickly sweet, and is ultimately unsatisfying.

What's most disheartening about 32 Levels is how it floats by anonymously for 37 wishy-washy minutes, which is especially hard to take from a producer whose tracks used to command your attention.

DJ-Kicks isn't the best mix Jackmaster's ever done, largely because his taste in new house and techno is less convincing than what's in his record collection at home. There are, however, flashes of brilliance that confirm his status as one of the most skilful and thrilling DJs working today.

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

The record hews especially close to a strain of plush acid, albeit with Aphex Twin's inimitable charm. But a short change of pace arrives from the dissonant "CHEETA1b ms800" and "CHEETA2 ms800," which seem to be brief tests of rich, textured patches from the Cheetah. These tracks complete a record that finds inspiration and style from obstacles and restrictions.

Even if Graef and Astro don't seem to be headed anywhere in particular, it's still fun to hitch a hot-boxed ride with them.

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.

Where Mala In Cuba boiled, Mirrors barely gets to a simmer.