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.