While this is a challenging, compelling record from a singular producer, it is a less exploratory effort than we've come to expect from her.

Although his political ideas may be rough hewn, Doom's latest effort stands out from some of the major releases in his discography.

With Odd Blood, the Brooklyn trio has left behind its most obvious ethnic influences--and its environmental anxiety--for a tighter, more polished sound.

Although beatless, it is not altogether one of those ambient albums you could play in the background and ignore, nor necessarily fall asleep listening to. At times unsettling and industrial-sounding, this is far from forgettable music; it is engaging, futuristic, and trippy as hell.

Ultimately, Dutch is less vibrant and, well, relevant than dance deconstructions by Actress or Oneohtrix, but it's also a lot harder to pin down, and there's a rogue-ish appeal to that.

Carbonated may not be exactly what the legions of devoted Mount Kimbie fans have been pining for, but music with such intricately weaved details surely takes time, and this EP proves to be a welcome stopgap to help hold us over.

As a record, Con Todo El Mundo won’t change the world, but it will make your day brighter. Once you’ve maxed out playing records by The Budos Band and Bonobo, then Khruangbin should be next in your selection.

DNA Feelings has moments of brilliance, but its dark mood and single-minded vision become oppressive over the course of its runtime. Those fleeting rave touches combine so well with her extraordinary voice, you can only wish there were more of them.

If it all sounds just a bit too familiar and seems a tad forced, no one could really blame you for saying so.

Kings Ballad marks the natural progression of a remarkable artist-in-residency.

Bundick's Causers of This is also peaceful, but the album's tranquil tones sound a lot more like happy accidents than well-executed plans.

Smalhans, [is] a return to his old self that alternatively plays things a little too safe by offering six tracks of Lindstrøm-by-numbers.

Though his misses may make Ghettoville appear lopsided and drab, every on-point production buried in the heap makes mucking through Cunningham's warped ideas rewarding work.

Bass Clef may have created a solid album, but, in the end, this lovely exercise leaves a sense that it was all a bit too easy for him.

It gets tiresome to listen to 14 bangers in a row. Had the duo distilled the finest cuts from its massive tracklist into something a bit sleeker, Ghost Systems Rave could have been an absolutely smashing release.

Crafting spacious soundscapes, taking droney vision quests into '70s psychedelia, and offering pleasantly subdued vocals, the Oakland trio appears to have found solid footing as a band of new-school doom-rock warriors.

Apar is left to sound good but not great, worthwhile but not essential, Delorean but not quite.

The knotty lyricism and psychedelic rumble of 12 Reasons to Die II should be more than enough to keep Ghostface fans satisfied.

For Paris has an avant-gardist taste, and the homemade artwork and written statements ring sincere.

Upon first listen, this album will disappoint those searching for the clever and inventive dancefloor tracks for which Vynehall has become most loved. There isn’t actually anything here which could be recognized as house music. ... Once you do get over it--and it may take several listens--Nothing Is Still is an intriguing engagement with an ambitious artist clearly still in development.

At it best moments, Overgrown proves that the two sides of James Blake—the dancefloor oddball and the crossover songwriter—can exist side by side, but it also demonstrates that, at least right now, the balance between the two is totally off.

Listening to Wave 1, there appears to have been no grand overhaul during the time Haley has spent on semi-lockdown, but neither has there been total creative stasis.

Call it short and sweet. And the vibe is definitely sweet, all acoustic guitars, reverb synths, and Sly & Robbie-worthy bass and drum rhythms.

The album's dusty beats, pointed electronics, and cinematic feel are pleasantly familiar, at best they recall the band's past glory rather than pushing forward their legacy.

The kitsch value may warrant a spin or two for curiosity's sake, but few of the album's 10 productions have the staying power of the musical touchstones Com Truise is referencing.

Make no mistake, Our Inventions is a very nice album—"Rest Your Head" and "Everything is Always" are precious little slices of pop music—just don't expect kids who have been gorging on the psychedelic exploits of Animal Collective to flip out over this one.

Digital Native is missing a large amount of the substance and general cohesiveness that any artist's "first proper album" should rightly offer.

His Headcage EP, released yesterday via Ghostly, continues on that trajectory, moving toward music for a wider audience while maintaining much of the oddness that makes him popular in the world beyond the mainstream.

Transistor Rhythm offers the proverbial mixed bag.

Yes, it's ridiculous to expect everyone to make a grand statement with each release, but there's scarcely a trace of an evolving style or technique to be found on Down 2 Earth. Surely, we're entitled to expect more.

With more misses than hits on Bibio's new LP, it's apparent that his array of influences are best served in separate portions rather than blended together.

Melidis has surely succeeded at creating a sunny, idea-rich patchwork. But listeners looking for some emotional nuance might find it a touch saccharine overall.

DVA is most successful when he edits out the excess and focuses his production on a handful of strong elements. As a producer, it's self-control, not talent, that he's lacking.

Despite appearances from the likes of Mala, dBridge, Flying Lotus, Gang Gang Dance, and Cooly G, King Midas Sound's collection of Waiting for You remixes largely feels uneven and half-baked.

All in all, too little of Mst lets us hear Gretschmann shine within this chosen framework.

In collecting the a-sides from both of his 2012 singles and propping them up with another half-hour's worth of songs, Airhead's debut full-length only makes that stylistic restlessness more frustrating.

Despite scattered flashes of brilliance, too often it's an album that feels unambitious, as though it's content to dwell in the middle ground where the two producers' back catalogs intersect rather than forge something new.

The Music Scene adds new knots to Blockhead's sly, ironic take on boom-bap, incorporating shifting structures that spiral into changing tempos, half-remembered snippets of soul horns and gnarly old guitars, and occasional drifts into hazy, shimmering psychedelia. Sadly, this fog thickly enshrouds the back half of the disc as the tempos stagnate, rendering it inert and crying out for a shot of adrenaline.

There are some songs which start off tepid, become lukewarm, and emit flickers of Blake’s usual brilliance. ... hile it's easy to criticise Blake’s chart-pandering forays into trap and pop, it is actually Assume Form’s most unashamed pop songs that rescue it from insufferable drabness.

What makes Magnifique work best as album experience, rather than a collection of individual songs; any shapeless moments are grafted onto the studier elements in the listener’s memory, leading to a rewarding overall experience in spite of the lulls in the action.

Ultimately, E-Funk proves to be an effort that finds its creators trying to pull in something that's just beyond their reach.

While The Devil's Walk may not be an absolute blemish on the Apparat discography, those who found his earlier works (such as Duplex, Walls, and the excellent remix collection, Things to be Frickled) so rewarding will find that this album unfortunately pales in comparison.

Raw Money Raps is fascinating and inventive, though not the game-changer many were hoping for.

It wanders more like a Hype Williams album would, and leaves that opening promise to dangle unfulfilled.

An LP that restlessly moves between ideas and struggles to find a solid footing, but not without touching on some real promise and originality along the way.

Tranklements is straining to belong somewhere; in the process, it ends up sounding more like it wants to be defiant instead of inspired.

It's a better idea to approach the album for what it is: a pretty, if somewhat slight take on sun-saturated psychedelia.

Dream pop is rarely celebrated for its attention to melody, as it usually places texture and atmosphere higher up on the totem poll, but At Home would have benefitted from a few more melodies that were capable of sticking with the listener past the album's running time.

Props to Britton for trying out new templates--but she’s on firmer ground when she’s in her 4/4 comfort zone, and Donna’s at its best when it plays to her emo-house strengths.

It points the way towards a possible new sound but lacks the polish, originality, and final touches that would make it stand out as a serious work of its own.

For an LP about the infinite unknown, it isn't that meditative or self-aware. Where Cosmogramma and Los Angeles made plot secondary, You're Dead! forces its cast to bend to an unwieldy storyline that ultimately only makes complete sense inside Ellison's head.

Salton Sea is good, but ultimately doesn't leave as strong an impression as it intends.

Truly, there's nothing outrightly offensive about There's More to Life Than This, but there's little to hold on to either.

The main problem is that the songs too often feel like sketches. The punchline is sold too quickly, the finish too abrupt.

Now and then, Wolf will offer thoughtful contemplations surrounded by muted chimes and generous xylophone twinkles, but if it's a matter of Wolf's work being particularly groundbreaking, then we'd urge him to think before taking the red-eye.

If the last four years were a journey through the night for these two, the dawn on the other side is all loose ends, with only a few engaging moments here and there.

All in all, most every cut on Sam Baker's Album is solid in its own right, but maybe 40 minutes is just too much, considering that the lines which box in the instrumental hip-hop genre become only more clear as the album pushes on.

Cooly G is still present here, but maybe she's a bit too present to fully elicit the kind of seduction she's singing about.

More often than not, those organic sounds [dusty record pops, nocturnal nature recordings, tape hiss, distant car radios, bleeping busy signals, and street noise] feel like the music's most relatable characteristics, providing moments of unpredictability and liveliness to an album which paints almost exclusively with monochrome hues.

If only Slava had focused on the highlights and cut the weaker numbers from his debut LP, he might have had a rather strong EP to share.

While there very well could be a single or two from this record that eventually does break through to join the current wave of club crossover hits, Glow, as an album, does not live up to its promise, regardless of whether it's evaluated in "mainstream" or "underground" terms.

Weighing of the Heart is, to me, an unripe album. The recording is slick and the mix is by the guy who mixed the last Gorillaz album, but I just don’t feel any outstanding music-making talent or skill. I see a marketable product.

The resulting album is light and breezy.

Something happened in the shift from Games' That People Play EP to Channel Pressure. That welcome looseness was lost in lieu of Ford & Lopatin's more focused and (dare we say) over-thought songwriting and production, and it's as if there are too many cultural cues being thrown our way this time around.

On the whole, Blurred is an uneven release. Huxley's ambition is laudable, but it's only his decision to hedge his bets a little that saves the album from being a completely subpar outing.

Zunkuft may be even more sleep-inducing than the average ambient album, but it's worth admiring for its robust, and not humorless, conceptual solidity.

While it's obvious that Hicks and Hall know their way around both sound- and songcraft, they rarely--if ever--use those skills to sound like anything but a band even the most casual synth-pop fan would be familiar with.

This is ripe, modern disco that's commercial enough to lure suburbanites into Target and skeezy enough to entertain smack addicts (as seen in the tune's music video).

The LP is merely a collection of somewhat compelling, hip-hop-leaning beats that largely go nowhere; it's more like a dressed-up beat tape, and not a particularly exciting one at that.

So many things have been synthesized into Chewed Corners from so many sources and ideas that any sense of direction, reaction, or engagement with the cutting edge is markedly less adventurous than most releases on his own label.

Bespoke features a wealth of sounds and guest singers, but Darlington often lacks the glue to hold them together.

Taken as a whole, Abaporu isn't a bad LP, and for fans of classic Kompakt records by the Modernist, SCSI-9, or even The Field, the album might be exactly what they're looking for. More adventurous listeners, however, are advised to look elsewhere.

For better or worse, TNGHT's objective for its debut EP is straightforward: to craft big beats. Sadly, this leaves Mohawke's noted penchant for sonic adventure really nowhere to be found.

Snow Ghosts has arrived with 10 songs straight out the gate, leaving us with a strong first impression and a lingering suspicion that there may not be much fertile ground for Augustus Ghost and Throwing Snow to find together.

Bjorke's ear candy is delightful when consumed, but rarely worth a repeat. Still, Bjorke has plenty of sonic reach, and his album is worth a spin to find the scattering of gems.

Knowing what he is capable of with his band, though, one can't help but feel a little unfulfilled by his solo effort. If anything, SUM/ONE's moments of constriction emphasize how vital the expansive jam aspect is to Gang Gang Dance.

It is what he decides to do with his production skills that is questionable, and although glimpses of solid tunes do show up every so often, Ask the Dust is nonetheless a disappointment.

Most tracks play like one elongated idea and only a few songs sound fully fleshed-out, giving Thing a half-baked, underwhelming vibe.

Somehow, when put together, the artists' individual strengths are watered down, resulting in a mixture of the benign and the over-the-top, depending on the particular song.

Glow feels bloated from the start.

The speedy segue between Jungle Buddha’s raucous DnB cut “Drug Me” and Black Acid’s eponymous 303 track is the pick of the early exchanges, but it feels rushed and airless--deeply contrasting with Burial’s trademark spacey sound-chasms. ... [OKZharp & Manthe Ribane’s “Treasure Erasure”] arrives during a decent section that also includes the more gentle timbres of Ben Frost (remixed by Jlin) and Proc Fiskal (also on Hyperdub); these are nice, but are separated by the squeaky rudeboy MCing of Dean Blunt’s Babyfather alter-ego, another bizarrely jarring selection. ... FabricLive 100 feels hurried, uncomfortable, and impossible to feel truly at peace in.

Purity Ring suffers from the all-too-popular idea that pitch-shifted vocal samples and well-calibrated washes of reverb are enough to create haunting, enigmatic music, as opposed to crafting singular worlds of sound that convey the soul of their creator and resonate within the listener.

The LP has a padded running time; 52 minutes is a long-ish album by any measure, but this one could have benefited from some serious editing.

The resulting album, which has been 18 months in the making, is certainly more complicated, although not more sophisticated than previous work.

Preset instrumentation and uninspired song structures notwithstanding, you could tack on just about any other blog-buzzing name--like, say, Washed Out, Blackbird Blackbird, or Houses--to these songs, and no one would second guess it.