Ghil is an album that’s shaped by ideas, but driven by a sound that’s often disengaged.

It is one of the better EDM records in recent years due to its well-mired quality, and it feels neither trendy nor throwbacky nor settled.

II is, on the whole, worthy of the names and histories that have coalesced and been commingled in its making.

Even though A Constant Sea is arguably somewhat conservative in its regurgitation of established tropes and forms, the execution of its inherited framework predominantly unfurls with confidence and clout.

The Big Dream is but a pretty stone that withers the moment it is touched, lifted for further inspection.

Live, Hunx are utter trashy goodness, a trip to Dreamland, but recorded here, there’s a fine line they wobble back and forth on, like the tyres of a dodgy fixie, where the humor can wear thin and wear out its welcome.

AlunaGeorge have built a happy marriage out of the slick and the smart, and with Body Music, they just might manage the trick of making everyone else--from old fans to new ones; from critics to their record labels--happy too.

The Word As Power might only have one trick, but it’s one that resonates deeply.

Harry Fraud’s production ensures that the EP is still enjoyable in a purely instrumental, non-lyrical dimension; I just wish that Action had stepped up and delivered rhymes on a level that these beats deserve.

Fuck Buttons have created an aural ibuprofen, an auditory Novocaine.

“Harpies” is emblematic of the issue that prevents Glynnaestra from being an unblemished success, since despite its enveloping airs, the instrumental does often reverberate as a little undercooked and sketched out, as if it were the anticipatory intro to a more expansive and consequential piece. A significant minority of the album’s tracks could be charged with this offense, because for all their sheen and arch-modernism, they often don’t build upon their ostensibly innovative foundations.

Ciara is the singer’s most realized full-length to date and one of this year’s most thrilling pop moments.

Aesthetically, funk, soul, and gospel are part of the same tradition that runs from African polyrhythms, through house and classical minimalism, to minimal techno, and Hood’s faith enables him to embrace these influences as more than just empty signifiers. The result enriches all of these traditions, making for a thrilling and enlightening listen that forces a fresh look at Hood’s peers and back catalogue.

The songwriting is pretty much entirely solid, and there are brief flashes of idiosyncrasy, but this album boils down to being a product of the excitement of influence and just being young playing and writing music, without ever remotely threatening to stand up as something worthy of all the critical saliva that’s already dripped onto bedroom carpets worldwide.

It’s utterly consistent, simply arranged, and scrolls through the bad ideas fast enough to make them forgivable.

Gold Panda shows himself to be a more mature, more skilled architect of sound, creating vast textures that expertly render the materiality of his samples.

Where its siblings thrash and writhe and scream, No One Dances flows, undulates, sighs. The result is nothing short of pastoral.

There isn’t a moment when Charli XCX doesn’t display the kind of wild, brash confidence that other artists take years to arrive at.

Bitchitronics may not be bold or experimental, but that’s irrelevant to Bitchin Bajas’ concerns--that being the craft of pure sound, as Eno put it, “ignorable as it is interesting.”

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.

Unfortunately, Me Moan doesn’t really deepen Gibson’s exploration of this novel niche. Instead, it feels mostly like a country record that still has one foot in the sample-based electronic aesthetic that previously defined Gibson’s work.

Ostentatious as it is, there’s no denying that Magna Carta… Holy Grail is filled to the brim with satisfying, big-budget production.... It’s just a shame that Jay-Z doesn’t rap ‘em for all they’re worth.

They obliterate any subtle expression or connection to the listener beyond low-order thinking--the band just bludgeons the listener with generic narcissistic drivel.

For Years is at its best when Airhead is working in the first of these modes, the more melodic one.

What’s particularly exciting about this disc is the possibility that lies in Gunn’s interleaving of timeless songs and allover “time”--few of his influences and even fewer of his peers have searched in this direction.

This is an unfettered, deservedly ecstatic victory lap that’s riddled with in-jokes.

There are some solid points buried deep down in the wreckage of Cole’s seven-bar pileup, but you’ll have to sift through a great, big, ambivalent pile of solecisms in order to get to them. As it turns out, that holds true for the vast majority of Born Sinner.

L’Ami du Peuple is a predominantly rewarding album, despite the occasional misstep and despite its unambitious stylistic orthodoxy.