Absorbing a Squarepusher LP in one sitting has always been for more adventurous or diligent listeners, but the dank final section means that, outside of more hardcore fans, Be Up A Hello will probably need to be navigated in exactly the right sort of mood.

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

So we have an artist who's found a very comfortable groove, continues to produce from it, and plenty of people love him for it. It may be an enormous cop-out to say that if you like Recondite you'll probably like Dwell, and if you don't like Recondite (or you're a music writer) you probably won't. But, like Brunner's music, some things really are that simple.

From the way the melodies climb through the hanging atmosphere of "Ripples" to the Sasha-like glitter of "Cloud Refuge," Swirlings is full of lovely, considered music that sticks in your mind long after the synth fog dissipates.

Ghostly and grim, with the radiance of Stott's synths allowed only to penetrate the gloom in periodic bursts. It's telling that Stott somehow makes this aesthetic seem so compelling, a type of dark energy that makes you want to hit a punch bag or chair dance rather than wade in self-reflection.

Stern's use of repetition is powerful and carefully considered, making space for deep thought and reflection. Pockets of silence strengthen this concentrative quality.

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.

Like all of Lustwerk's music, it's moody, it's sensual, it's vaguely ridiculous. It's a total fantasy—which makes it all the easier to get swept away.

The album as a whole is accomplished, but it still hasn't entirely caught up with the precision of his visual multiverse. Still, I am glad that Labyrinth offers another glimpse of Kanda's alternate realities.

By carefully balancing these ideas with unambiguous dance floor moments, Tangerine hits the sweet spot that many of the best electronic albums occupy.

Without knowing it was made by a young Paul Woolfword, it might come off simply as passionate and touching hardware sketches with classic techno components. Nevertheless, these tapes show signs of promise in Woolford's ability to work within his limitations to create something powerful and personal.

The album has bags of character and is big on ideas. Unfortunately, not all of them work. ... Jarring sounds and heavy-handed ideas dominate the album's second half and ultimately spoil the record.

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.

Sonically and conceptually, Wrecked is a more mature work than Techno Animal's last LP, the rowdy, energetic The Brotherhood Of The Bomb. Most significantly, they have the monolithic voice of Moor Mother, AKA Camae Ayewa. Her cool-headed but threatening lower register delivery is a perfect match for the music.

In her latest album, Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes, she relies on a reconfiguration of negro spirituals, scattered jazz and roiling punk vocals to embark on an arresting travel through time with lucid narratives of black protest. ... While preserving the erratic nature of an arresting live set, her productions appear clearer and more controlled than on previous albums.

On Giant Swan, the duo display a fearsome mastery of techno dynamics, but it's their detachment from that world that makes their music so compelling.

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.

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.

If things occasionally become one-dimensional it's arguably the admission price for the many successes this album packs.

Their music is timeless but pulls on nostalgic heartstrings—it can be goth, earnest, sad, happy, distant and close all at once. It scratches a very specific itch for atmospheric pop and rock music that most of their imitators still can't touch.

The LP boils down a generation's worth of London music into a restlessly creative mix of dance music, infused with emotions both celebratory and mournful.

While her music is hyper-stylized, it never feels contrived. Look Up Sharp neither panders nor willfully obfuscates, residing in a dreamy space in between.

Dreams Are Not Enough is a remarkable return that achieves things the first three Telefon Tel Aviv albums were never quite able to.

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.

Without succumbing to simplicity, Klein's latest release delivers an intimate vision of the mayhem, loss and detachment that can ensue from a whirling cycle of panic and redemption.

Resonant Body is filled with joy and self-empowerment. Where the artist's past work felt delicate and introverted, this LP whips its untamed hair, gearing towards higher tempos, wilder breakbeats and more party-rocking vocal samples than before. Even with this more upbeat approach, the music still sounds distinctly like Bouldry-Morrison.

While this scrappier, DIY vibe feels like a natural fit for HTRK, Venus In Leo lacks some of the depth and mystery that makes their music so powerful. ... Still, HTRK create something their fans will never tire of: a dark, sensual, poetic languor that's theirs alone. Venus In Leo delivers a welcome fresh take on that sound.

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.

That Devour is such a tiring album is a testament to its cohesiveness. These tracks flow elegantly into one another, and the attention to dynamics and tension allows for seamless listening.

By simultaneously disavowing and embracing the church, Malone has crafted a record of rare heft. The plaintive melodies that sit at the core of The Sacrificial Code often feel like they're stretching into eternity.

There isn't a track on the record that isn't somehow scuffed, bruised or degraded. The recording fidelity is uniformly scruffy but not at the expense of dance floor efficacy—you'll have punchier music in your collection, but these tracks should still cut through.

Live At The Troxy shows how the highly personal world of that album [Plunge] develops further onstage.

Some of the work Power did as one half of Fuck Buttons matched the grandiosity of this record's melodies, but did so with emotional resonance. But with the sense of plastic emptiness so ever-present, Animated Violence Mild too directly mirrors the very thing it's critiquing.

Piñeyro taps into the rarefied air of so many early IDM records, a mix of beauty, nostalgia and melancholy.

On its own terms, the Midsommar score is a sometimes brilliant but limited affair that showcases both Krlic's genius and how that genius suffers under the constraints of a film.

The album reflects a fascination with the act of creation through the exploration of other artistic mediums and the nature of the music itself. Atkinson is able to represent these complex webs of ideas in ways that feel infinitely deep by embracing the enigmatic nature of sound and art.

Polymer's best parts show a keen balance of emotional and technical qualities. ... Still, Polymer gets soft roughly midway.

The brilliance in moments of these tracks doesn't add up to a fully engaging album experience, but Aguayo deserves plenty of credit for continuing to show the imagination he thought minimal lacked all those years ago.

This isn't exactly club music, but Yorke and Godrich write incisive beats and basslines, which they match with ever-interesting sound design.

Its tackiness has transformed over time into a thing of beauty. A perfect reflection of the flora in your life, Mother Earth's Plantasia is garish, green and hopelessly sincere. It never fails to put a smile on your face or pull the sunshine into every room.

Tracks like "Hungry Child" and "No God" are huge, highly focussed anthems that would boss a festival stage. For all of the album's welcome contradictions, however, this focus does hold it back a little. ... But at the right time, in the right company or on the right dance floor, it's a powerful high that also has a message.

Gou's DJ-Kicks, though filled with some stretches of sleek club music, struggles to find an overall thread to hold it together. The personal angle is not enough. Each of these tunes may hold a special significance in Gou's life. But to the listener, they don't quite reveal the story.

As things stand, there's a sense that somewhere along the line Nordström lost the capacity to self-edit. ... Nordström is mad for attempting this project, but even in partial failure Dusk To Dawn is among the more ambitious dance albums ever dreamt up.

There's a nagging feeling that the project uses such a vast grab-bag of references to mask a lack of clear, foundational ideas. That could be slightly unfair though. Moffa and Troxler wouldn't be the first artists to take up residence in a maze of their influences, and as muddled as things appear at times, on Lost Souls Of Saturn they do some pretty striking work.

Pale Bloom, like all of Davachi's work, has a transportive, mystical quality. It could be so easy for the composer to recede into the endless abyss of staid ambient music, but this album proves that she has little interest in doing so. The more she continues to challenge herself and her audience, the more rewarding her work becomes.

Sirens' darkness is matched by its delicacy.

It's not a splashy supergroup album, nor is it perfect. It's the work of two experienced producers producing sharp songs. Like all of Edgar and Stewart's work as J-E-T-S, Zoospa is impressive but surprisingly low-key.

The album's mix of the everyday and the unfamiliar is deeply eerie, a world of sound in which it's possible to contemplate the disruptions of our own.

Going back to make a new album from sessions that had already been used could have ended up sounding overworked. Instead, Anoyo is the counterbalance to what has been done. These albums shouldn't be compared, but taken in together.

Ecstatic Computation is marked by sudden breaks from predictability. Stylistic influences and sonic textures are varied, yet they're cohesive. The result is an album that's both provocative and blissful.

Ellison remains keen on confronting and articulating his inner quarrels in the name of taking weirdness to the masses, and in doing so writing a new chapter in the pantheon of great Afrofuturist music.

Through throat singing, traditionally performed as a dialogue between two women, Tagaq tells ancient stories of the lives of her people from a modern perspective, preserving tradition while helping it evolve.

Seven Steps Behind is too unfocused to be a slam dunk, but there's potential for something truly new here. In an era where club classics in the concert hall have lost their novelty, it's thrilling to hear orchestral instruments twisted like this.

Rave 'Till You Cry shows that, in the right hands, braindance is flexible enough to create nuanced, multilayered portraits with the unfiltered intimacy of a diary.

Though Spawn only features on about a third of the album, the AI's conceptual impact is key to Proto. ... The compositions elsewhere are dense and overwhelming.

Fear In A Handful Of Dust is a very approachable Amon Tobin record. It is highly unconventional, full of alien timbres and strange logic. But, as was the case with much of his music in the past couple decades, you don't need to be in a specific kind of mood to enjoy it.

Unlike the space disco of his past, Thomas's music now hangs together not with laser bursts but with silken thread.

Edge Of Everything, a harsh, relentless and evocative techno album, is an impeccable showcase of Temple's artistic voice.

Sonically, Take Off Mode is not as ambitious as Da Trak Genious. ... But among these standouts, many of the other tracks lack the chaotic charisma key to the DJ Nate sound. His apparent abandonment of footwork in recent years could be at the heart of the LP's uneven quality. But changing one's style doesn't mean losing the soul of the sound.

Serenitatem, the latest volume in RVNG Intl.'s FRKWYS series, harks back to Ojima's environmental music of the period. The delicate synthwork across the LP is uncluttered and unobtrusive.

This album's been seven years in the making and it shows. Many of the songs, including most of the instrumentals, might've sounded fresh sometime back, but I find myself forgetting them as soon as they're played through.

No Geography pushes right up to the line but doesn't cross it.

Swinscoe has a knack for both producing lush orchestral movements and picking worthy collaborators. On To Believe, they are unfortunately not more than the sum of their parts.

These tracks [with pop collaborations] amount to unremarkable radio fare and dilute the artistic voices of all involved. ... The instrumentals have more bite.

Agora is both a return to form and a leap into the abyss.

An infinite number of sounds are now at his disposal, opening up vast new landscapes to be harnessed.

Ancestor Boy's world is one of filial love, of kinship through blood or spirit, of otherness and self-reliance.

The State Between Us does, at times, attain a depth of its own, particularly when it's dealing in the sadness of separation Brexit engenders in roughly half of the population. But at other points it just seems to be saying, "Ooh, aren't we quirky?!"

LateNightTales' 17 tracks are unsurprisingly tasteful, including many that are impossibly rare. But it's not an overly studied trainspotters' paradise. Many of the obscure songs should appeal to the fanbase drawn in by Shepherd's productions.

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.

The problem is the tone, which, from the album's first whimper to the comically bad poetry reading that closes it, is hackneyed and overwrought all the way through. These ten tracks are defined by somber pianos, bittersweet strings and quivering pads--like Sigur Rós, but drained of all mystery. Worst of all, though, is the singing, a half-coherent moan that falls somewhere between Thom Yorke and '90s radio balladeers like David Gray or Five For Fighting.

For all its appeal, DJ-Kicks isn't necessarily Halo's most striking mix. Her 2017 Boiler Room, which incorporated UK funky, grime-adjacent tracks, Príncipe anthems and Whitney Houston, felt slightly fresher, more expressive. But DJ-Kicks is still a success, a standout club mix that reflects the individual streak that runs through Halo's work.

Programmatic as it is, ATAXIA has style and personality.

Plastic Anniversary is just extraordinarily clever, something to be marveled at more than moved by.

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

It's a surprisingly approachable piece with an appeal far outside the experimental music community, which speaks to Basinski's ear for melody and grasp of emotion. Not many artists could turn a source as abstract as black hole recordings into music this beautiful.

With vulnerability comes strength, and each Octo Octa record further builds a catalogue that serves as a rich, therapeutic memoir.

It's clear that Hello Happiness is not the full album experience. Still, a few easy summer hits from Khan are a treat.

Where the artist's past work used abstract sound as a conceptual approach to trans identity, the choice to embrace lyricism makes Death Becomes Her a more fun and digestible listen.

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 highlights the long-standing chemistry between a group of talented musicians, and, unsurprisingly given the setting and Murphy's skill in the studio, the recording and production sound exceptional.

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

The result is a thrilling meditation on the weirdness of now.

Situated at the border of ambient, new age, techno and industrial music, the album could just as easily fit into a meditative practice as a gritty basement rave. It is also a testament to her technical prowess as an electronic composer. But perhaps more importantly, it lives and breathes her insistence on exploring new sounds and techniques.

The melodies have their usual childlike playfulness, but not the haunting quality that's lent them so much mystery and depth in the past.

At their best, Boy Harsher capture the bittersweet feeling of being young, in love and on the road, oblivious to the inevitable spin-out.

Its narratives bump up against moments of real beauty, casting a robotic detachment over even its warmest moments. But Rahbek does an admirable job of presenting visions that are hard to shake.

It sounds contemporary and creative, lush without being overproduced, but nowhere could you pick out the fingerprints of, say, Hudson Mohawke. It's all Richard, sounding tighter, stronger and more assured than ever.

The collaborators seem to have more influence than they did on Blake's previous albums. There's little here that could be anyone else, but the tone—less heavy, more hopeful, brighter colours—is different, even as he deals directly with despair. Overall, many more things are gained than lost in this development.

Taking inspiration from our deep-rooted human imperfections, Anne is at once intimate and universal, honest and hopeful.

What's most impressive, though, is Gainsborough's commitment to integrating classical music on Queen Of Golden Dogs. The results, far from being grandiose, are rough, eloquent and compassionate.

While Self's experimental productions showcase the versatility of the voice, his poppier songs luxuriate in its timbre.

Both tracks [Love In The Time Of Lexapro and Last Known Image Of A Song], though, are dreamscapes of ineffable yearning. The EP's other cuts feel almost like a letdown, though only by degrees.

As the white noise whooshes and the snares roll on Adrian Hour's "Make You Feel Good" (a track that was released on Toolroom four years ago), it's difficult not to sense an artist also drifting in the opposite direction, towards a sound that he'd struggle to call his own.

On Powerhouse, we learn many things about Rostron. Few artists can express their politics and personal life so directly.

Overload is suffused with love: love for self, love for community, and especially love for Muldrow's longtime creative and romantic partner, the rapper Dudley Perkins.

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

Cherry's latest references the refugee crisis, gun violence, fascism, racism and a collective sense of despair. But Cherry knows how to wrap these subjects in something sweeter. The scope of Broken Politics takes in both our outward political moment as well as its effects on our interior life. The music that accompanies her has an equally wide scope.