Despite its positives, the album falls far short of the impressive musical peaks of Kelly’s discography.

The alien, blank dead-eyedness of Britney Jean is frightening, because it feels like it’s all will.i.am trusts Britney with.

Its songs are well-constructed, well-paced, and all subtly different from each other.... [but] for the most part, it’s a little too “safe” and unadventurous.

Rival Dealer might be an intrepid leap for Burial, but the music is ultimately obscured by his intention to share a positive message through the most glaring of means.

Its framework and color scheme may possibly end up as just a passing diversion for Halo, but it will still remain a captious rendering of where her craft and human-craft could one day go.

While the (simulated) exploration of the innards of this destruction may not make for the most hospitable or easygoing electronic album of the year, it undoubtedly goes some way to achieving its stated aim, even if its ethics could conceivably be indicted from the above-mentioned angle.

Drawing from the rock pantheon as well as personal experience and fascination, Chris Forsyth presents a guitarist’s record that is decidedly group music, and Solar Motel should whet appetites and blow minds of shredders and weirdos alike.

Ed Askew will continue to write, observe, reflect, and create visions and words. This result is timeless enough to remain there if one wants it.

Completists will appreciate the ability to experience the Art Cologne installation in the convenience of their own home, but everyone else should have no trouble finding more compelling examples of this theme, from the most difficult noise music to the most pleasant synth-pop.

If there’s a problem, it’s that this batch of songs doesn’t quite show off Donovan’s gift for weirdness as much as previous Sic Alps outings.

After listening for a third or fourth time, I started thinking of these songs as snapshots, not stories. Just flashes of narrative. All feeling. I started to hear the heart of Kevin Morby’s New York, and it sounded familiar.

Magik Markers seemingly forget their own warnings and regain their former wily intransigence, ending the album with a threesome of songs that return them to sonically murky territory, as if suddenly realizing that in fact they’d been trying to uncover something in this murk rather than striving to bury themselves in it.

It’s precisely because of the transience and mutability of Open as a whole that its fleeting moments of splendor prove all the more affecting and beautiful, despite the possible contention that--because of the often contradictory accompaniment--these might not be moments of splendor at all.

Remember Your Black Day has some great moments--the eight-minute title track, with its hyper-pulse percussion and somber synth strains, is a solid incarnation of what made Vatican Shadow so compelling in the first place--but it’s surrounded by a mixed bag of tunes that either attempts some agoraphobic tightrope walk before falling flat or wrestles with contrasting ideas that weaken the project’s potency as opposed to crystallizing it.

Although Watching Dead Empires In Decay lacks content other than song titles, it evokes spaces that need no explanation.

Bone-dry sessionman rock that’s either fun or stultifying depending on your mood is a tricky proposition, but fans of the TEASGJ sensibility should enjoy it either way.

It doesn’t require the patience or emotional/intellectual involvement that albums I typically listen to require. The cool thing, though, is that it does have quite a bit of redeeming value.

ARTPOP wants to hide that it doesn’t have much to say.

Poppy but pugnacious, familiar and yet dizzyingly foreign, Matangi is a contrarian work from an artist who lavishes us with liminality, with contradictions.

Double Cup sounds like an album Rashad has been gearing up to make, but instead of abandoning the footwork style he has championed throughout his career, he’s scoping its potential on nonconformist terms. And from the perspective of the listener, it’s an absolute treat.

Autechre present a uniquely realistic vision of our present-future: always problematic, limited by human nature and other complications, yet driven forward by incredible optimism, perpetually fixing itself and, adapting to new contexts, engaged in a constant state of becoming.

Listen to NYC, HELL 3:00 AM close enough and you’ll hear them drumming at the windows of your mind’s storefront.

An astonishingly challenging album in every sense of the word; and for this, it is one of the most fascinating and beautiful things I have heard in years.

While the first disc winds its way sporadically through the humid alleys and hazy bars of a multi-dimensional shantytown, the second half explodes outward upon the magnificent vista of symphonic discotheque.

By rising to the high standards of recording and tonal detail set by “kraut” rock pioneers the first time around, and contextualizing the movement’s obsession with repetition within novel structures and rhythms, CAVE’s music sits on a decades-long continuum with the forebears that continue to inspire its members to pick up their instruments and write new music.

Stars Are Our Home is a passable enough album. It’s just a bit naggingly stale, even for a fan of this sort of thing.

Rapor doesn’t push any boundaries or break the speed of light, but it constructs its fragile, fervid, and elegant confections with laserlike precision.

This album has all the presence that you should expect it to have.