With nothing more at their disposal than techno's characteristically sparing palette, Dozzy and Neel have built something so rich that it has the feeling of a feature presentation.

Biokinetics has aged so well that it could easily pass for a new album. The production level is exceptional by today's standards, and it has more teeth than much of the music it inspired, especially contemporary dub techno, most of which sounds vanilla by comparison.

Gas is the sound of a man freeing his mind and allowing it to wander. To listen to Box is to seize that same opportunity.

While, in a sense, Room(s) is by definition an amalgamation of most of the trends and ideas floating around in the electronic music sphere at the moment, it sounds like nothing else, and its execution is so cutthroat and streamlined that it's nearly flawless.

Gamble has said that Mnestic Pressure is a response to our turbulent times, and an attempt to confront the world rather than offer escape from it. That intention comes through, but the key to the album's brilliance lies elsewhere: in the way it balances fun, challenge and surprise more deftly than anything he's made before.

Product is simply forward-thinking, flawlessly-produced electronic music that wants no more than to slap a grin on the dance floor.

It is the kind of music you could imagine spending the rest of your life listening to.

For all its mind-melting attention to detail, Hertz's music has rarely sounded so evocative.

After so many records, a debut novel and another book on the way, it's a privilege to be invited into Hval's private mental space. Like picking up a conversation with a much wiser friend, each new album compacts her advancing thought into a kind of guidebook for those who aren't quite so mentally together, all her latest learnings folded in. ... Obviously, Hval is anything but ordinary.

Though he's had plenty of strong releases in the past, this one has the inspired feeling of an artist truly finding his footing--a breakthrough, in other words.

The results are astoundingly beautiful, like a field recording taken from some uncharted corner of the earth. Elsewhere, the climax at the end of the ominous "Talking To The Whisper" beggars belief, it's a traffic jam of cascading keys, sporadic drumming, serpentine brass and more, an explosion of chaotic sound to conclude one of her best songs ever.

Not sequenced in simple chronological order, Livity Sound feels like a real album even when you know it's not. That's a testament to the unity of their aesthetic and the clarity of their vision, with three years' worth of tracks from three different producers all sounding like they could have been made in the same session.

With ideas that Froese wisely and generously left behind in this earthly realm, Froese has given us another Tangerine Dream near-masterpiece, created by the loyal pupils who grew up in his significant shadow.

As the dubstep/bass music continuum continues to splinter, recombine and reinvigorate itself ... Sepalcure seems to string all of these timbres and sub-sub-genres into a physically and emotionally bewitching take on post-everything dance music.

It's this combination of shadowy unknowability and full-hearted melody that makes Pull My Hair Back such an intriguing listen, and certainly one of the year's best debuts.

The result is bone-chillingly gorgeous, right down to the feverish burst of pop strings that accompanies the final choruses.

Even the most careful listener will be left wondering what it all means. Luckily, Boards Of Canada have laid out a riddle we won't tire of teasing out, embedded in a timeless sound unlike any other.

It's peaceful and distantly serene, but with flickers of dissonance rubbing away at the edges. Those contrasting textures are part of what makes The Inheritors perhaps the year's most revealing and intriguing album yet.

While GREY Area was a collection of great songs, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert feels like a therapeutic breakthrough. ... A body of work so rich with innovation, so broad in its influences and so powerful in its storytelling that we'll still be finding new things to love until the next one comes along.

Angels & Devils marks an evolution of the sound that made London Zoo a classic.

Another excellent long player to savor from Monolake.

Sirens is his best record because it's both his most straightforward and most experimental, his densest and lightest.

Black Metal 2 has all the elements that made its predecessor a masterpiece, with sentimental instrumentals and yearning vocals all packaged in a crinkly lo-fi setting. But Blunt has opened up even more on Black Metal 2.

Sure, the LP has its eccentric moments, and it takes a long time to really get to know. But, as The Redeemer hinted and Black Metal proves, beneath all the YouTube sampling, bizarre press and one-off Russian blog releases, Blunt is a talented singer-songwriter with a keen ear for odd sounds.

Magnificently re-mastered... an exemplary introduction to the duo.

As excerpts of poetry sound like heart-stricken dialogue and foggy soundscapes take the shape of a score, it often steps out of the confines of music and begins to approach theatre.

Bronsert and Szary rarely break the mould here but it's instead one of the most accessible and effortlessly enjoyable dance music albums of the year.

Modern Jester is one of the most accomplished noise albums of the last several years. Excellent are the chances that it will go down as one of his very finest works.

On Natural Brown Prom Queen, she proves she belongs to no mood, genre or period of time. Over a placeless mix of sounds and endlessly dynamic beats she comes of age, shaping Black histories into exciting futures, all while making it clear that her idea of home is wherever she decides it is at any given moment.

With its intrepid nonconformity, masterfully undercooked programming and swagger, it's hard not to view Transsektoral as anything other than a resounding success.

Reform Club is full of conventional beauty; protracted strings and pads which soar, pulse, float or shimmer on a dub-tinged substrate.

It is difficult to pick any more jewels off this dance floor diadem, making the most as it does of the long player context.

Their first record done entirely as a duo, and their most mature piece of music yet.

Where 2009's By The Throat was ruthless but exacting, this one feels genuinely unhinged--and that unpredictability makes it far more thrilling than any engineered suspense could have been.

Vibrant, dynamic displays that veer towards transcendence. Rife with the yearning for more prevalent love, Lovegaze is a bewitching offering of psychedelia and astral folk that goes beyond the mind, and peers into the soul of a distinct talent as she exalts beauty in its rawest forms.

Where Moderat sounded at times tentative and disjointed, II is in every regard a better and more well-rounded record. If there were no third Moderat album, this would stand as a definitive statement.

Tunes 2011 To 2019 frames the artistic development of someone whose older music sounds more inspired but is still capable of greatness. ... 12 years since his last album, we at least get a large chunk of his often incredible catalogue in one place.

The 13-track record is anti-corporate music at its finest—this was not created for mere enjoyment, but as an outlet for the global psychic mood. Each track feels like 2020. ... The entire album is captivating, but the middle section is exceptional. ... In Ayewa's hands the heady concept [Afrofuturism] gets new life.

It's bold, maybe even avant-garde, but from beginning to end it's raucous, barnstorming, chair-dancing fun.

In some ways it's arguably dubstep's first concept album, an expansive and visionary "what if," a dreamscape of a post-globalization, collapsed multicultural society where cultures collide uncontrollably.

The music on µ20 is equally a view into that mind and its peculiar tastes. Though he rarely gets the level of recognition and respect as his good friend and one-time collaborator Aphex Twin, Paradinas is a visionary, an incredibly talented producer and a savvy curator.

It is poignant and ragged with suffering, but it doesn't dwell there. It is also bright, optimistic and euphoric.

Immunity is a journey to be savoured, revisited regularly in the knowledge that some new landmark will emerge each and every time.

In bold terms, this is quite possibly the commercial mix of the year.

Whatever you want and could ever require from the progressive soul textbook is up in here. Darts, slaps, bops and most definitely thumpers. ... Renders a greater reward than we could ever envision. Voice Notes gives us just that.

Sakamoto has made a workaday logbook into something transcendent, partly because of its intimacy. Whether it's one of his major works is a question for future historians, but coming amidst an ongoing struggle with cancer, its bravery is defiant and splendid, the sound of an artist's soul laid bare.

Without a doubt an early contender for electronic album of the year.

It's almost certainly the producer's most ambitious and most vital work since Untrue.

Where Devotion was light and feathery, Colourgrade is haunting and visceral. She sounds wiser, more assured, laser-focused on what matters most.

There's something truly extraordinary about Al Qadiri's constant balancing act of light and dark, and each passing moment brings with it a new thrill. The romance, despair and yearning of Middle Age verses comes through effortlessly in Medieval Femme, where Al Qadiri's own talent as a storyteller is magnificent.

Some of the most affecting ambient music of the year, and perhaps even the very best in Halo's rich, unpredictable catalogue.

Guerrilla's rough kuduro is an impressive leap for a mature style. But its most remarkable feature is the artist's unflinching embrace of a distressing legacy. As a memorial to his family's story and Angola's past, Guerrilla is more than a mark of respect. It's an act of love.

From start to finish, Nothing To Declare poses scintillating questions that have no answers, leaving genre tropes smoking on the electric chair. DJ Haram proves the perfect dance partner for Moor Mother.

Now, in 2014, Vessel has given us one of the year's best electronic music albums, and it's hardly electronic.

Given the ubiquity of some of this material, It's Album Time is a little tricky to assess on its own merit. But with tracks like "Delorean Dynamite," "Johnny And Mary," and "Old Joy," there are certainly plenty of grandiose stretches to keep us satisfied.

rje had another ace up his sleeve: It's the Arps, a glistening modern disco EP that, at the risk of splitting hairs, is probably his finest yet.

Taking touchstones from familiar genres and refiguring them into something completely new, it's like a microcosm of the label as a whole.

This more mature approach to storytelling is what makes MAGDALENE a raw and outstanding album about love. The lyrics have more depth than LP1, bearing a universality that perhaps one can only write after an especially honest heartbreak.

The album is quite possibly his most stirring and accomplished work to date.

What Barnes has done here is give us a full tour of a hidden place he only let us peek at before, a place that's even more breathtaking than Dagger Paths made it out to be.

It's another triumph for Friends of Friends, and it's a breakthrough for a young producer finally emerging with an individual and inventive style previously only hinted at.

It's her strongest project to date, a thrilling fusion of classical and electronic music delivered in astounding clarity.

The real freaks can nerd out on the harmonic theory that will wash right over most ears on this divinely sequenced record. You don't need to be educated to enjoy Malone's music: it's emotive, world-building and all-encompassing. The beauty lies within that.

What is on display here is the potential of unbound artistic striving. I dare say this may not only be Shepherd's magnum opus, but one of Sanders' greatest works as well.

It's not often one comes across an album that is somehow both more evolved and primitive than its predecessor, yet it's a trick Container has pulled-off with LP.

It's a fascinating mosaic in which every tiny detail lends colour and depth to a work of real, high-minded seriousness.

Huge credit is due to Audika: while Picture Of Bunny Rabbit is an archival compilation built from disparate sources, it feels like the kind of asymmetrical, twisty little solo album Russell would have made himself, not just a bonus disc.

The result is a record that's sensually stark, with not one extraneous moment marking its naked contours.

R.I.P. is the most enveloping and fully developed of his cultivated soundworlds yet.

It feels like a miniaturized epic, and it sees Mendez touch on all the established hallmarks of his already renowned sound, embellishing it here and there with grandiose flourishes.

Like the phantom motion you feel laying in bed after long hours in transit, Themes for an Imaginary Film is bound to stick with you, drawing you in deeper with each turn of the ignition.

The image has no direct connection to the music (it was drawn in the '70s, before Halo was born) but it's intricate, strange and beautiful--much like the album itself.

Raven's underwater mood is all-consuming and meditative, so much so that it takes several listens to fully comprehend all the infinitesimal details that contribute to its brilliance—the sound of water bubbling, a flourishing synth or Kelela's pristine, whispered harmonies.

The appeal of this LP lies in the adroit splicing of this aesthetic with that of dance floor techno, a combination which has the potential to be horrifically stale, sterile, smug—but ends up being anything but.

It's one of the most engaging and gripping techno albums of the year anyway.

A Carrollian multiverse of shapes, sounds and ideas that only becomes richer the longer you spend there. It might take some time, but it's endlessly rewarding.

These very much sound like live performances, and they're all the better for it. Short of seeing him in concert, Spaces is as close as you'll get to hearing Frahm at his best.

They massage the album's plentiful organic charges into a sonic puzzle with an almost symphonic reach, one that's as challenging, bounteous, and ultimately unknowable as anything you'll hear this year.

The album nostalgically embraces all corners of rock music past with post-punk, heavy metal glossy shoegaze and more, while still pushing the boundaries a good distance forward. ... If The Asymptotical World was the sunset preceding the meteor, then Praise A Lord is the big hunk of rock itself. The resulting explosion—in all of its chaotic, god-defying beauty—leaves a fully formed rock superstar emerging from its ashes.

The album is incredibly rich from beginning to end, and totally unpredictable.

Like most of his records, his self-titled LP shows a talent that stretches well beyond house music, weaving together funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz and R&B into a rich and unpredictable bricolage.

The most fully formed and wholly unique record in his discography.

With KOCH, Gamble has found a canvas that's just the right size to fit everything on, to hold the whole beautiful thing up at once.

There's so much blood and soul poured into Music for the Quiet Hour that it almost feels effortless. Along with the fascinatingly fragmented Drawbar Organ EPs, the box set presents what's either a closing chapter or a new beginning in the career of one of electronic music's most luminous illuminati.

trip9love...??? is easily one of the greatest accomplishments in the small but impressive Tirzah catalogue.

The album is not only one that fans will cherish for years to come, but it will surely be the record that draws a whole new generation of fans into her deeply personal, and always captivating, world.

When a record is so dazzlingly abstract (or abstractly dazzling), it seems harder to interpret in emotional terms, too. But like LeWitt and his primary-coloured paint brushes, or Dan Flavin and his store cupboard of strip lights, Dillon isn't offering us a feeling so much as giving us a space in which to feel.

Patience for Take Me Apart validates her audience who saw her as the future from the start. You won't soon break free of it.

Vynehall's entry into the long-running series doesn't have quite the same crowd-pleasing quality, but like the Moodymann mix it's brilliantly executed.

It probably wasn't hard for Koze to look beyond house, because it never completely won him over. Knock Knock makes a case for others to do it as well.

LCD Soundsystem have made a better album than they've ever done.

One of the album's key qualities is how Vynehall uses these musicians to enrich a sound that feels authentically his own. There are almost no dance beats on the record, but again, this feels like Vynehall moving farther down a path he'd already explored.

When Bruner's social conscience speaks up, the insights--spiced with slacker humour, free of sanctimony--are persuasive, even moreso when accompanied by an embrace of his flaws.

The LP hops between ideas and experiments in the tradition of the rock music double-album, and even within individual songs things are rarely straightforward.

Halo's records have always posed tricky questions, and Dust features her most complex and engrossing yet.

Martin and Robinson cycle through stages of grief, derision, self-hatred and abject loneliness with an honesty that could make you flinch.

It never feels like Dreijer is playing catch-up. Plunge is the natural next step, a realization of impulses that have long lain dormant, or at least unrecognized.

Holter has always taken pop and presented her own masterful version of it. But her desire to break through the distressing clatter of the present is what makes Aviary her most captivating album yet.