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.