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.