These are synthetic sounds that have a sense of natural decay built into them, but Prudhomme unleashes them with such carefully built momentum, the music can't help but feel optimistic.

Sometimes it feels like one of the best records I've heard in recent memory, other times I wish it would just get to the point faster. But I think that's by design. ... To appreciate Escapology is to look at it as one piece in the puzzle, not an album so much as it is a single cog in Goodman's latest piece. It asks more questions than it answers, but poses them like few other artists could.

This music suits periods of poignant, existential anguish.

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.

Dreams Are Not Enough is a remarkable return that achieves things the first three Telefon Tel Aviv albums were never quite able to.

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

Salton Sea feels engineered for eminent listenability.

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 her past work could sound like it was written for a grandiose 18th-century opera house, Living Torch is closer to the long-lost sonic component of a modern art installation, endless in its possibilities and imagination.

Krell's still part of a pop vanguard, but his music is more than ever a welcoming gesture.

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

Schlungs does nothing to diminish Mungolian Jet Set's reputation as one of the most genuinely entertaining acts around.

Patten is clearly willing to toy with his numerous ideas in lieu of easy hooks, and he concedes remarkably little here.

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.

Lyrics like "I can't live in a world / that won't keep its shape," on "Through Your Atmosphere," sung by Faris Badwan of The Horrors, can be interpreted as a man taking a more clear-eyed view of everyday reality, rather than escaping into nightlife's transient peaks. Butler can still deliver those peaks.

GOD's interest in questionable styles and its elaborate backstory seem designed to keep things interesting after the giant step forward that was R Plus Seven.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The Last Panthers goes further, illustrating a picture of its own.

Each production here feels less like a 10-minute single than a condensed DJ set, and The Orb navigate these spaces with a fresh wind in their sails.

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.

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.

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.

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

Programmatic as it is, ATAXIA has style and personality.

Following shaky albums from both Yorke and Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool suggests that they were right to keep the faith.

Sirens' darkness is matched by its delicacy.

The mechanistic form and function can feel totally lifeless, but there's a layer of mourning beneath the gleaming metal.

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.

Trendy as Silver's interests may have become, On Vacation feels no less personal and awe-inspiring in its stillness.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As a survey of Africa's influence on contemporary dance music, Basar is an inspiring document. As an album, it's every bit as good.

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

On Tundra, the duo's debut long-player for R&S, Lakker seem fully in their element. The ideas have room to breathe and consolidate themselves.

For Those Of You stands apart as a significant step up in Leeds' journey to carve out and master his own musical form.

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.

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.

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

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.

On first pass, A Minor Thought might sound like another Smallville record with all the expected tropes; listen more carefully and you'll hear a world of subtle tweaks and improvements. It's a beautiful illustration of the label's sound, a warm and welcoming style of house where predictability is a strength instead of a weakness.

This series has always been Kompakt’s annual attempt to try to shape mainstream house and techno in its own idiosyncratic vision. Once again, it has done so in style.

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.

Petrol finds the artist coming into his own, interpreting his life experience into sublime electro-acoustic music.

Despite falling somewhere on the noise music spectrum, there is an odd sense of calm throughout Lack. Daijing presents a dream, the plot of which, after waking, you can't quite piece together. Its walls of sound become etched onto your mind's surface. It's a vision that lingers in your psyche.

Making good on Quattlebaum's professed interest in radical queer politics, the music on C-ORE feels suitably radical, queer and non-conformist.

Murmurations is as rewarding for the listener as it must've been for the artists.

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

As esoteric as the use of language translation software might seem, Doran and Carlile work their magic on these dialects and accents.

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

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.

There isn't a track on the record that isn't somehow scuffed, bruised or degraded. The recording fidelity is uniformly scruffy but not at the expense of dance floor efficacy—you'll have punchier music in your collection, but these tracks should still cut through.

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

A comparable transition on Singularity, between "Everything Connected" and "Feel First Life," is made to feel seamless, less like a change in circumstance than an ascent onto some higher plane. Some will feel completely immersed in that; others might simply admire it from a distance.

For all their strange angles and squeaky sonorities, these songs satisfy in the way that pop has always satisfied, no more and no less.

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

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.

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.

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

DJ-Kicks lays out each of his influences piece by piece, almost like listening to a deconstructed Lone album. For fans of Cutler's singular music, it's an essential entry in his discography.

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

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

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

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

What's remarkable about the LP is that most of its 11 artists--whether newcomers, collaborators or longtime fans--all make tracks that sound like natural extensions of the originals.

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

As Rausch shows, Voigt is still finding inspiration in his childhood memories and those old forests, subtly changing the way we see and hear them each time.

Defined by repetition and mesmerizing as ever, The Follower isn't a huge stretch for Willner. Its best moments are in the second half, when the music revels in ethereality.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

It's more about repetition than surprise, meditation than hyperactivity. Many tracks start slowly and quietly, and some hold entirely to that restraint.

Though his abilities with oddball party jams are unquestionable, Davis proves he can be equally compelling when he tones it down a notch.

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.

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.

Clarke sounds reinvigorated here. It's clear he feels he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself.

For a project of its size and vision, Vol. 1 is remarkably coherent. It's a testament to the label's endurance and vitality that they assembled so many top-notch exclusive tracks from friends both old and new.

The atmosphere is so consistent, the pacing so uniform, the sounds created with such a defined set of instrumental sources, that all the pieces blur into one.

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

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.

But even if it isn't brilliant all the way through, Belief System is still an achievement. 12 of its tracks are as electrifying and giddy as you'll hear all year.

As DNA Feelings dissolves to a close, a quiet kind of power lingers on.

His latest LP, Prins Thomas 5, is a less extravagant take on space disco. ... The LP's calmest moments are its standouts.

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