The balance of gold to dross still makes this album a keeper.

It’s a nebulous, dense, paranoid web of utterly unfiltered expression that’s utterly or negligibly fascinating depending on how much you care about Yeezy.

Eight of the twelve tracks here surpass a four-minute run time and few would sound as good on a dancefloor as they do on a laptop. So to ask the audience to remain patient for the record’s 55 minutes proves a tall order, especially for music as subdued as this. Still, Weatherall demonstrates an indisputable talent for compiling and arranging a diverse array of sounds into one cohesive song on Family Portrait.

The breadth of sounds covered will scan as inconsistency to all but the most pious Uzi devotees, but it’s hard to imagine anything else serving as a more comprehensive document of rap in 2017.

This, of course, can be a drag, but when said influences are as carefully picked, pristinely melded, and precisely replicated as they are in the case of Crystal Stilts, it can be a real blast.

What Batoh offers us here is a snapshot of a despondent, acousmatic psychogeography - a grief-stricken poetics wherein the blank nirvana-impulse of the Shinto rite of chinkonsai jars against the bleeding-edge caterwaul of his BPM machine.

The Rural Alberta Advantage's capital-E Emotions are rarely comforting, but they serve as a reminder that life, stark - and wintry - as it is, is worth feeling hurt over, that our petty, mortal passions are justified.

Per the majority of The Sea and Cake catalog, Butterfly is roundly solid: not great, but very good, with frequent moments of luminosity.

An interesting and extremely well-crafted moment of critical self-reflection early-ish in a talented producer's career rather than a worrying about-turn.

At its best, when Bozulich is not just casting the spells, but stirring herself into the brew, In Animal Tongue ranks among the most provocative work she's done in recent years.

Something in the air of the hoary label worked obscurely on his imagination.

While it’s certain that catastrophe is written all over Locrian’s high-concept Return to Annihilation, the experience is a step removed from the anxiety of early post-rock: here the listener trudges through the burnt-out husk of a world, its structures transfigured, estranged from their original forms.

Although Banhart might not be in the business of dancing around bonfires anymore, his music still feels like gazing into one, its nocturnal reverie calmly emanating a force both naturalistic and mystical.

It's like an audiobook with the best music ever featured in the medium.

As with most Adams records, the fact that some of the songs made the cut is perplexing.

He continues to chart new territory, using his latest album to highlight sonic textures and what they seem to suggest about a metaphorical city. Working within those constraints, he's captured the nuance of living in many real cities and, in so doing, has crafted one of the stronger releases you'll hear this year.

On The Odds, there is a sense in which The Evens are tensing the muscles of their quiet/loud rock within its short range.

Le Kov is not as cold as Y Dydd Olaf (which was based on a decades-old Welsh sci fi novel)--it’s less machinic and more organic, less 80s and more 70s. As such, it wavers a little, particularly in its second half, where the feel is a little too warmly indistinct, too hazy.

Death Lust expands post-hardcore and its asphyxiating spatializations, giving the genre and the sweaty people in it room to breathe. Reinvigorated by this pneumatic procedure, respiration transpires: Chastity’s pulmonary labor sets the stifling structures of headphone listening alight, giving us light and letting us (mired in the heavy) feel light.

Alien in a Garbage Dump sounds like the work of a noise veteran relaxing and trying out whatever comes to mind, tossing out ideas without worrying if every one of them sticks. And in this case, this approach yields considerable rewards, the noise equivalent of summertime jams.

They have laid down some astounding tracks here, but as a whole, the album is not on par with any full-length the band have released since Alligator.

For the most part, BSP is successful in their attempt to infuse a britpop sensibility into the otherwise insipid post-punk genre.

Terra clearly isn't meant for a sun-soaked day at the beach. It's meant for quiet evenings at home, for slow living, for monotonous days of insularity, idealized but never unrealistic.

Despite all its goodness and lunacy, Steal Your Face is not a record that is likely to find itself touching the needle very often. It doesn’t beg for repeat listens, simply because most normal human beings aren’t able to handle the speed and sonically-pulverizing vibe.

Lacking the hooks and spirit of subversion that framed most of their previous efforts, the songs of Shadows require patience and understanding to reveal oft-hidden strength of voice within.

There’s No 666 will challenge you as much as anything you’ve heard in the last year, in both good ways and bad.

These songs won’t necessarily get stuck in your head, but the swerving asymmetry to C’est ça has you clinging to these hooks like handles on a speeding train.

There are plenty of sticky hooks and hummable melodies to be found, and their existence inside the delicate, shifting tapestries are what makes Dreams Say so endearing.