It's slightly ludicrous, highly theatrical and great fun.

The Fabriclive mix was much more than the sum of its parts, but to have some of its best tracks available in this way makes for both a solid album and a chance to wonder what you could build with them yourself.

Honey lacks the coherence of her previous albums, but as a love letter to the rave it's eloquent and sincere.

Three bonus tracks included with the re-release are almost as good, though they stretch the album to a daunting 75 minutes. City Lake's main effect is to make you appreciate the charms of its successor all the more. Its main effect, but not its only one.

It's certainly still bleak as ever, but there's more hope than before.

For all the memories Stranger Things and its soundtrack evoke, they've also given us something new worth remembering.

For all the memories Stranger Things and its soundtrack evoke, they've also given us something new worth remembering.

Under The Same Sky might not be the most original or ambitious album you will hear this year, but it's arresting, it moves quickly and it never looks back.

At times this cute-and-cuddly record lacks a bit of dirt under its fingernails. But when the stars align, Lee hits on a pristine emotional pitch so honest and open it's impossible to resist.

The LP's initial tranquility gives way to a perkier second half, transitioning from sugar-dusted melodies to a fusion sound that feels more live.

Slow Knife's best moments might even trump Severant. But Teasdale's efforts to escape the shadow of his debut sometimes lead him astray.

For what is essentially a composite of three "live" performances (all produced on a deliberately limited set-up of two modular synths, two sequencers and a mixer), Whorl is surprisingly cohesive.

She's become somewhat of an experimental music poster child by democratizing styles like field recordings and sound collages, which may seem daunting to new listeners. sentiment leans heavily into this, finding a middle ground between often structureless musique concrète and DIY pop tunes.

"Closed Circuit" stands out on Sunergy for its restraint and musicality. Smith and Ciani riff around a melodic figure with a percussive edge, filling the space around the light-footed pattern with delicate, free-flowing harmonic color.

His third album is easily the tightest record yet. Jumping from sound to sound, Ital Tek has covered a startling amount of ground in a short time.

Most tracks have so much going on that it begins to feel like tectonic plates pulling in opposite directions, heaving two ways at once and leaving the listener dizzy and disoriented. It's Ryat's crystal clear, wriggling voice that's the glue just barely holding everything together.

It's an album that could have been a near-perfect EP--at its high points No Future presents the most inventive work of Moiré's career. As a whole package, though, it's a bit of a grind, as glum as it is propulsive.

While the record is a joyous, uplifting listen, there are not many surprises. After hearing Dijon in full effect on her previous LP, it left me with residual disappointment about the album's untapped potential. But there are still moments to be excited about on the album's B-side.

The LP's spirally nature is actually its biggest problem, as the duo choose to coil back into themselves again and again, creating a merely good album that’s on the cusp of greatness.

Despite the occasionally fraught listening experience, Will Happiness Find Me? remains a record that is as fantastically compelling musically as it is thought-provoking.

It's an album of contrasts that can prove difficult and overlong one listen and breathtaking and fascinatingly complex the next, not a masterpiece by any means but a unique kind of impressive nonetheless.

Mood-wise, the three tracks are more in line with his debut, Hazyville, than any of his more recent output via Honest Jon's, although the techno that pulsed and glimmered through his older material is largely absent here.

Asiatisch sounds better when heard as an experimental grime album and left at that. You certainly don't need to know anything about China to enjoy it.

The untreated vocals, the orchestration, the amount of space in the mix and loose-feeling drums give Significant Changes a retro flavour that echoes classic disco labels like West End Records and Salsoul.

It's not about to break any new ground, but her attractively elegant mixture of dream pop, post-punk and luxurious atmospherics are a hard combination to resist.

The album has a swampy, overheated feel, which takes some of the impact away from its sharper moments but enhances its more languid stretches.

SBTRKT isn't going to break down any barriers in the obsessively experimental world that it was birthed, but it's a thoroughly solid listen all the way through. Which is a lot more than his supposed peers could say about their debut albums.

Where a lot of modern Balearic music can sound cheesy and banal, Idjut Boys have a keen sense of melody and a fondness for unexpected left turns, which keeps their tracks tight and surprising.

This album can work when it's in service of something other than itself. Listened to in smaller stretches, it becomes a bit easier to digest, and opens up a bit.

An elegant, heartbroken album that wraps its dance floor influence in thick pop overtones.

While that pop sense is here yet again on THEE PHYSICAL, the difference on this album is that it feels written, large empty structures playing host to actual songs.

Dusk & Blackdown have an idiosyncratic grip on texture and structure, which Dasaflex wholeheartedly emphasizes.

If there's one major criticism of this record it's that its excessive length--13 tracks totalling 58 minutes--means that standout tracks can be missed through sheer volume of material.

Hardcourage is not necessarily his most exciting music--in fact it gets a little sleepy after a while. But once you're drifting away to the dreamy "Bells," as it saunters half-lidded to a close, you might wonder if that's actually the point.

Mouse On Mars now occasionally sounds like a hybrid of other artists rather than a unique entity.

Whether they're taking inspiration from '70s kosmische or more contemporary sounds, Vermont's debut album is continually intriguing and texturally rich.

As a closer [song "Shuck"], it's an interesting moment and one particularly reflective of Shrines' strengths and its dualistic intrigues: the serenity of Roddick's buoyant, burbling synths amidst James's hallucinatory full-moon visions.

Overall, like the California sunshine, it's an irrefutable tonic.

This album represents an intriguing compromise between Fell's distinctive language and the friendlier environs of the contemporary dance floor.

Mullinix's production chops have improved enormously in the 12 years since Two/Three—today, he sounds more like a proper hip-hop producer than a quirky crossover act. Listening to Three/Three, though, you might miss that crossover a bit.

Imperfect as it is, International is proof that the group's future is limited only by the force of its wanderlust.

Even the way it flows (abrupt and jerky) has the haphazard momentum of an unofficial mixtape. At the same time, Electronic Dream feels like a lovingly considered record, with the gaps between tracks blurred and bled like the fuzzy borders of a drug-induced dreamworld.

The covers are the stickiest aspect of 7G. Most of them are one-note, more of an "influences" playlist than a collection of worthy interpretations. They weigh down the already heavy album with dead weight, but the hit rate of 7G is remarkably high anyways, a testament to Cook's vision.

These short tracks hint at the more compact and engaging album #N/A could've been. But on "#2," the collaborators show they can also pull off long-form.

Van Hoen may be submerged in his own past, but the melancholic apprehension of the record is thoroughly universal.

Listening back now, it still pumps. But it's a palatable pump, with enough hooks and vocals to work as well over pasta as in a field at 4 AM. Funnily enough, the tracks that have aged best are the ones that pump least. ... Though other remixes in the middle section update the production techniques, they don't really advance on the festival-pleasing 4/4 or big beat predictability of the originals.

Photek's DJ-Kicks might sound like a long, dark night of the soul, but at least a soul is there.

Regional Surrealism [is] somewhere you'll want to lose yourself again and again.

A little less effects-led ebb and flow (and a touch more structure) might have made Square One more vibrant. The album's absorbing collection of mood pieces, though, are rewarding and evocative enough to make it worth your while.

Huxley's pop forays might not be for everyone, but there's plenty on Blurred to appeal to both his underground acolytes and, perhaps, a new crop of fans as well.

These abrupt transitions are clearly of central concern for Lopatin, and it's these rapid shifts that make R Plus Seven unlike anything he's produced to date.

Lyrically, 7 Days Of Funk offers little to muse on. Snoop's mainly concerned with discussing how funky he is and what a good time he's having. It's largely free of the misogyny and gangsterisms that have defined his past work.

Lazer Sword's somewhat gloomy sophomore album does still represent a largely enjoyable body of work that packs in plenty of well-executed ideas.

As expected, the Norwich-based producer's first full-length culls together another mass of genres, this time with the fresh additions of footwork and UK funky flavours.

With a couple of cuts hovering around ten minutes, the album requires patience but remains accessible.

Some of Orbiting still sounds a little sketchy, like a bunch of good ideas that have yet to coagulate into fully-rounded, purposeful bangers, but clearly Jeremy Guindo is a real maverick talent.

Though far from perfect, New Energy is one of Hebden's most intimate and personal albums, with all the idiosyncrasies that come with that.

So short and concentrated, the album feels like a style exercise rather than a major work, but it nonetheless finds Cutler refining his skills and presenting the best version of his 1992-via-2020 approach yet.

It takes a lot of talent to make crate-digging sound so seamless, and even if the cracks show every once in a while, Planet High School is some of the best patchwork around.

Instead of building on the momentum of her songwriting career, Still pulls her back into her comfort zone, with promising hints of something new waiting in the spaces between.

Like E+E's The Light That You Gave Me To See You, Egyptrixx's latest brings an element of the human and the mundane into his epic, depopulated landscapes. His harsher records were more impressive, but this one invites affection.

Miami still isn't their masterpiece, but it suggests they have one in them.

Brimming with standalones ... but it sometimes feel[s] more like a collection of songs than a singularly-minded and cohesive album.

Unrestrained emotion is ultimately III's defining attribute, and that richness can be too much to bear.

On Wenu Wenu, everything is present and correct, and that's part of the problem: it feels polished.

This is an experimental record culled from fully improvised sessions, so it follows that some zones feel more inspired than others. To these ears, some of the most inspired of Dissent's "Chapters" are more densely referential than previous MVOT music.

MHYSA gets most expressive with her vocal processing, sometimes rapping in hot bursts, sometimes creating soft and surreal textures, other times using abrasive distortion and noise. When beats do appear, they're patient and sparse, highlighting the artist's contentment with silence.

Ambitious and homespun all at once, Welcome to Mikrosector-50 is like diving into the overgrown imagination of a young child.

Ada's lengthy absence has allowed her the freedom to switch creative modes without any seemingly abrupt transitions. Meine Zarten Pfoten is bright and soft and tender, a kind of warm-bath comfort that should be perfect for those downy hours before you put the day behind you.

Walk Dance Talk Sing shows you can't have too much of a good thing.

Standing alongside DeGraw's contribution as an EP standout, Teengirl Fantasy offer an all too brief remix of "Monkey Riches" that takes in analogue house, indie thrash and dreamy Machinedrum-style juke.

The lyrics on Humanz might be Gorillaz's darkest, but the album has lots of bright music.

The set stumbles, though, when it's at its most raucous.... When Green trusts his own downbeat instincts, though, LateNightTales feels comforting in a way few mixes do.

Dear's latest, the four-track Headcage EP, finds the New Yorker continuing to explore what it might mean for him to be a pop star, even going so far as to bring in some outside help on the production end.

Butler's troupe have always been unique--a dance floor-friendly manifestation of the dissenting, politicised queer underground--but now they're making transcendent music again, too.

Many of the songs feel like they're improvised by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of vocal pop music.

Schofield often sounds downright uneasy, as if he's looking to cut the legs out from under his trademark style. When an artist slips into this mode, they rarely make perfect statements. What usually emerges instead are uneven collections full of experimental escape hatches that are engrossing for their very imperfections.

Overwhelming as Delphi's mood swings can be, they're worth putting up with. Douglas's production is full of elaborate ideas and strange tricks, even if it sometimes feels cheesy or overwrought.

Naturally, the good tracks are sublime... [yet] familiar overreaching, archness even, creeps in elsewhere.

Adult Contemporary might not break any new ground or present any radical ideas, but as the familiar saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

It lacks the depth, intrigue and smirking beauty of the group's best work—a product, presumably, of Blunt and Copeland's peculiar chemistry—but doesn't replace it with anything fresh. For all that, it's not bad.

By most measures, Crush is an excellent record. But its aggression and obtuseness, for me at least, is relative—once the shock wears off, there remains a slight reserve, a sense that Shepherd's innermost rage has only fitfully overpowered competing aspects of his psyche.

It's quintessentially him, stuck in the little world he's created. And there are worse places to be than his realm of video games, rap music and pop so sweet it tickles the back of your throat.

Endgame excels when its structures are more orthodox.

Thirteen tracks of relatively barebones 808 funk can star to wear, and especially moving at such a (relatively) slow tempo Transistor feels a little bloated by its last third.

ey clearly understand the value of the direct appeal, but on Coracle, the duo has rounded out the pre-manufactured pleasantries of their debut into headier, more substantive approaches to IDM, Chicago house, and nu-kosmische.

It's a boisterously enjoyable and skilfully compressed journey, and a further evolution in an already promising mix series.

For a debut album from such a young artist, 99.9% is remarkably self-assured. It sets up Celestin as someone carving out his niche.

Volume Massimo embodies Cortini's deep connection with the Buchla. His commitment to melody, though it makes the album approachable, often detracts from the music's noisy (and more interesting) imperfections. Even if you follow Cortini's instructions to play the LP at "a very loud volume," the full heft of his sound fails to translate outside of its onstage setting.

Sure, it's still quite messy, but in separating the vast array of influences and ideas present in Ras G's deceptively complex music, Earth lays it all out in a much more digestible manner.

Psychic doesn't quite burn itself into your memory.

The best moments here are almost indistinguishable from Grouper's best work.

It's both humble and ambitious, wonderfully arranged in some places and slightly clumsy in others (the Popol Vuh-isms of "Start A New Life" kill the album's momentum just three tracks in, and I've yet to be convinced by Weber's humdrum vocals). But for an artist who has always been earnest and upfront about big melodies, Garden Gaia feels like the logical next step, freeing him from his techno past.

Death After Life is so seamless and consistent that it might grow tedious for less patient listeners.

This is a perfectly fine debut, but probably nothing compared to seeing them live.

Tightening up the chaos that blighted his sophomore record, The Rat Road doubles down on SBTRKT's multi-genre vision and pulls it off slightly better. His cocktail of pop and underground influences sounds more decisive and refined, though there are still moments that fizzle rather than ignite.

Most of these tracks feel like they would evaporate instantaneously if they tried to leave the house, let alone take their place in any public space. As a debut collection of electronic oddities, it works just fine, though.

Ultimately, in the cold light of day, it all begins to sound unrelentingly grey and one-paced.