For a techno mix, Fabriclive.73 is a surprisingly breezy affair.

Pangaea Ultima is equally rewarding to those who dive in and devour every minuscule detail as it is to those who listen more passively.

Caramel is a collection of half-finished songs that force you to fill in the blanks. It's just as frustrating and occasionally enlightening as that sounds.

Lyrically, 7 Days Of Funk offers little to muse on. Snoop's mainly concerned with discussing how funky he is and what a good time he's having. It's largely free of the misogyny and gangsterisms that have defined his past work.

The title might tell you they're not too concerned with dance floors, but the music itself suggests otherwise.

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

Hardcourage is not necessarily his most exciting music--in fact it gets a little sleepy after a while. But once you're drifting away to the dreamy "Bells," as it saunters half-lidded to a close, you might wonder if that's actually the point.

Culled and then cultivated from her live set, these tracks have the dance floor in their sights, but with a skewed focus.

Debate will rage indefinitely on its merits, but to my ears Rival Dealer places Burial in a new creative sweet spot.

Even with an album's worth of new material, there's something missing here; the format might be Herculean in scale, but Craig's efforts don't match up.

Re-Engineering is very much an album designed to be played as a seamless whole. It's warm, fun, curious and deeply entertaining.

Eve sounds self-referential, dated and pretty low on ideas.

The set stumbles, though, when it's at its most raucous.... When Green trusts his own downbeat instincts, though, LateNightTales feels comforting in a way few mixes do.

They might be skeletal and drained of colour, but their tracks have an unpredictable, wandering spirit that makes them far more than listless jamming.

Ultimately, in the cold light of day, it all begins to sound unrelentingly grey and one-paced.

Remember... feels cohesive in a way that has eluded Fernow through the rest of his work as Vatican Shadow, and signals a new frontier for the producer that's as promising as it is grim.

These very much sound like live performances, and they're all the better for it. Short of seeing him in concert, Spaces is as close as you'll get to hearing Frahm at his best.

Not sequenced in simple chronological order, Livity Sound feels like a real album even when you know it's not. That's a testament to the unity of their aesthetic and the clarity of their vision, with three years' worth of tracks from three different producers all sounding like they could have been made in the same session.

In bold terms, this is quite possibly the commercial mix of the year.

It's quintessentially him, stuck in the little world he's created. And there are worse places to be than his realm of video games, rap music and pop so sweet it tickles the back of your throat.

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.

The image has no direct connection to the music (it was drawn in the '70s, before Halo was born) but it's intricate, strange and beautiful--much like the album itself.

As with Exai, no major new ground is broken here, but when the landscape is this vast, fascinating and intractably alien, there's no need.

It's a testament to his stature as a leading purveyor of experimental electronics that the results of those pursuits, as seen once again on Kilo, are reliably unpredictable.

Drown Out really lets his music breathe.

Beautiful Rewind is an extended tribute to pirate radio, connecting the dots between jungle, garage and minimalist house music.

A much more concise statement than last year's Welcome To The Chi, Double Cup is an exciting portrait of a maverick artist with complete creative freedom, and the skills to hold it all together.

On Restless Idylls, Lobo has cemented Tropic Of Cancer as her own, crafting a signature sound that is sleek and addictive.