Part of what makes Just to Feel Anything such a rewarding listen is its ability to quickly shift between aerial jams and understated lulls without abandoning Emeralds' unspoken ethos.

The EP is an exhausting listen, one that offers an experience of immersion, not itemization. Autechre hasn't lost a step, and this EP is certainly memorable.

Transistor Rhythm offers the proverbial mixed bag.

With this album, Slugabed firmly asserts himself as a first-rate producer, having turned in a debut LP that is short on subtleties, packed with triumphs, and hopefully telling of a career set to only continue impressing.

As with all of his records, Eight takes on a slightly different shape than anything before it, further solidifying the man's reputation as a producer capable of continuing to refine his techniques while landing on new and powerful ideas with each release.

It's lurid, it's fun, it's omnipresent across all cultures, and yet no one wants to talk about it. This is the vibe that holds Women's Studies together.

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.

For those who have never heard Whitman's music, Occlusions provides a fabulous representation of both his performance instincts and how engaging and fun his music can be.

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.

The pair has also hit on what makes the bass-music hybrid so alluring; by connecting the dots between various club-music genres, Nguzunguzu continues to invite more people of different tastes to share in the experience.

Whether or not one buys into Menzies' unrelentingly bleak vision, it's hard not to admire how well he captures the mood.

While other producers are content to experiment with tirelessly looped Amen breaks, dBridge continues to push within the tradition, often to dazzling effect.

Thankfully, most of Hauschildt's eight-track LP further explores the sounds and themes that made Tragedy & Geometry the brilliant record it is.

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.

On its own, Yoyogi Park is a highly engrossing record of dream-like dancefloor sounds, but when sat next to Until Then, Goodbye and A Day In The Life, it’s an intelligent melding of its predecessors and exemplary final chapter.

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.

The band now has the command of this organic/synthetic versatility in its toolbelt, often using it to find an ideal balance between highly finessed electronic soundscapes and bouts of raw, physical musicianship.

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

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.

Passion may be an ambitious record from beginning to end, but listening to it is a breeze.

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.

While its age can sometimes be a bit obvious, Yessir Whatever is well put together and organized; it feels less like a blatant retrospective (or worse, a "greatest hits") and more like a forgotten beat tape.

The production is immaculately pretty, but it also tends to swamp the music's thrust, and one ends the album unsure of exactly what Darkstar is anymore.

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.

With fingers in this many pies, Modeselektion Vol. 02 really shouldn't have come across as a cohesive statement, yet it does.

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.

What they discovered lies beyond DJ mixes and radio rotations; it's their magnum opus.

Tycho's new album only has eight songs on it, but each one is like its own laid-back journey through time, with probably the coolest dude ever as your spirit guide. That's like super classic album status right there.

Elemental Themes is a great movie soundtrack--the film just doesn't exist yet.

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.

Glow feels bloated from the start.

You'll Be Safe Forever proceeds in this indeterminate fashion, with Locust maintaining a razor's-edge balance between comforting and disruptive sounds.

It would appear that Justice's schtick on Audio, Video, Disco largely involved soullessly regurgitating the sounds of rock and roll's past into faux dance music.

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.

III is a pleasant--although occasionally forgettable--listen from a seasoned artist who is playing to his strengths.

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.

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.

In all honesty, New Chain isn't so very different from the rest of the Bushwick bulk. What is worth returning to, however, is the fact that the music offered is effortlessly lovely, memorable, well-transitioned, and oddly addicting.

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.

Although it may not represent a complete return to form, it's still a welcome stop on a production career that appears to have a lot of life left in it.

It's a solid effort, and one with some ace tunes that will certainly be snapped up by intrepid DJs, but as a full-length, it might be better with a reorganized tracklist in your iTunes music folder.

Overly cool and polished music for graphic designers this isn't--but its twisted art-school aesthetics might mean it's too out there for the candy kids as well.

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.

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

It takes a few notable risks in composition and rhythmic style, but as is evident from the title, this isn't the new Machinedrum album.

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.

What holds this album back is a lack of direction and the vision necessary to pull his intelligent, melodic techno into a new musical landscape.

Nearly all of the album's pieces feature a gorgeous accord of a large number of electric and acoustic guitars-call it folk maximalism, or perhaps Wall of Kieran.

Plaid's sixth proper studio album, Scintilli, is hard to place stylistically, but nonetheless offers plenty of enjoyable head-scratching moments, along with a straight-up tune or two.

For those on the outside of that process, fans who are frantically trying to connect the missing links of Iradelphic's lineage with its beloved forefathers, more apt descriptors might be "unexpected," "unfamiliar," and "unfulfilling."

Perhaps the album's only major drawback is its lack of jaw-dropping "wow" moments. It's as though 100% Publishing is almost a little too consistent.

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.

Track after track of nostalgia-inducing pastiche that, though a bit self-referential—they're almost dance tracks about dance tracks--somehow sound fresh. They’re effective both as exercises in the power of memory and as compelling club cuts in their own right.

Such uplift from dread makes Strange Weather a fitting party record for our age when so many American Dreams, lived and fantasized, are falling apart. Pass the bottle.

Despite clocking in at under 15 minutes, the plethora of ideas Teengirl Fantasy displays on Nun shows that the pair is unwilling to rest on its laurels and ultimately represents a bold step forward.

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.

This is functional, workmanlike music built out of sturdy analog technology. For home listening and for the club, this is useful music to have around.

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

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

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.

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.

Light Asylum is the product of two very talented purists whose focus on a particularly stylish bygone era has actually surpassed its roots to sound unexpectedly modern.

The obvious influences lend more to remembering old favorites than to finding new ones, yet Dinowalrus' album should appeal to fans of no-wave's vintage aesthetic.

The Rapture's latest is both a welcome and necessary addition to its relatively small discography, a record the band should be both proud of and content to leave as the final chapter of its existence. At least until they come back again.

Seams' sonic details are most potent when allowed to sink in undisturbed.

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.

When the strings rise into the mix as the song comes to a perfectly timed close, it's readily apparent that oOoOO's patience and time spent growing as a producer and a songwriter has paid off tremendously.

Considering Saul's reputation and pedigree, crafting a largely non-dancefloor album under a pseudonym is a brave move, but one that Getting Closer arguably vindicates.

While it's not an impeccable album, Ada's Meine Zarten Pfoten (German for "my tender paws") does offer some pretty exciting experimentation and a few really great pop songs.

Altogether, Gordian is a solid listen and another LP that upholds Cosmin TRG's deserved reputation as an inventive producer whose output continues to remain dependable.

Instead of straight hip-hop, The Colossus is an omnibus record, swallowing brass-wielding collaborators, live instruments, hand-aged beats, and its creator's voice—all in service of a mission to unify RJ's pet genres via horn-blasted statements of intent fit for rollicking arenas ("Let There Be Horns"), menacing synthesizer pit traps ("A Spaceship For Now"), and intricate instrumentals.

The resulting album is light and breezy.

Its blander additions aside, more often than not, Woolfy vs. Projection's latest proves to be a refreshing recess from the dancefloor, a lazy LP recorded in the Northern California woods that's as cozy as it is otherworldly.

LISm remains a particularly mesmerizing listen, traveling through an impressively wide range of sounds and seamlessly blending them into a unified compostion.

For those interested in zany experimentalism, Black Dice's latest is a welcome addition to a long line of solid releases, but for those who have never been awed by this brand of cacophony, Mr. Impossible offers little besides noise.

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

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.

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.

The duo has delivered something that is listenable and enjoyable while sustaining an overarching concept with great capability.

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.

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

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.

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.

In the end, Heliosphere is everything a techno LP should be, an effort that's not only a platform for delivering established sounds, but also an avenue for revealing new sides of the artist's production abilities and imagination.

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).