But even if it isn't brilliant all the way through, Belief System is still an achievement. 12 of its tracks are as electrifying and giddy as you'll hear all year.

If The Inheritors was the sound of the former trance artist undergoing a spiritual rebirth, The Animal Spirits is as close as he's come to transcendence.

As you would expect on a 17-track compilation, in places the experiment really works and elsewhere it probably could have been left alone, but there are enough killer moments here to make it all worthwhile.

DJ-Kicks lays out each of his influences piece by piece, almost like listening to a deconstructed Lone album. For fans of Cutler's singular music, it's an essential entry in his discography.

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.

The Centre Cannot Hold is about flux, about the flow of change through cycles of destruction and serenity. It's a more hopeful record than you might think.

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.

While it's called The Kid, the LP shows Smith has matured as an artist.

Colleen's most immediate and affecting LP to date.

At a little under 40 minutes, Screen Memories is a concise LP with few faults. Its sequencing brings out the variety on offer.

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.

Tenderness is exciting because of how simple and distilled it is, and how memorable its songs are even after just one or two listens.

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.

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

With each transition, you can tell Agius has taken the time to get the stitching just right, which allows him to cover a broad range of sounds and textures without derailing the flow.

On "Drop Down," Lunice's bass stabs align nicely with Le1f's vocal stabs. With a few more tracks like these, the LP would have made for an even more dramatic return to the spotlight.

Love What Survives won't make Mount Kimbie household names, but it finds them in a new creative space that suits them.

Lyrics like "I can't live in a world / that won't keep its shape," on "Through Your Atmosphere," sung by Faris Badwan of The Horrors, can be interpreted as a man taking a more clear-eyed view of everyday reality, rather than escaping into nightlife's transient peaks. Butler can still deliver those peaks.

Despite falling somewhere on the noise music spectrum, there is an odd sense of calm throughout Lack. Daijing presents a dream, the plot of which, after waking, you can't quite piece together. Its walls of sound become etched onto your mind's surface. It's a vision that lingers in your psyche.

Speeed finds transcendence in loudness and distortion, making noise not so much to express frustration as to heal.

Bicep have never been afraid to go for broke, and their debut album is all the better for it.

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

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.

The music on Warmth is among the duo's most powerful, and several tracks from the LP could come alive in the right kind of DJ set.

Aas Good Time shows, his skills have caught up with his ambition.

Rembo, a moreish and hedonistic album, shows an artist able to master many machines and styles.

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.

Years into his Daphni project, Snaith can still make familiar dance music sound fun all over again.

Without a straight house or techno beat to be heard, fabric 94 is a meditative set from a DJ with more sides than most.

Theory Of Colours works equally well as a collection of chill-out jams or club tracks for DJs. It's a dance floor album that isn't all that concerned with the dance floor, which makes it a pleasure to listen to from front to back.

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

What The Journey Man most clearly captures is that taste for excess and self-indulgence. It's the work of an elder statesman who still has a special touch, but who doesn't know when to stop himself.

As a soundtrack for a wide variety of scenes, Distractions enhances Chen's reputation as one of UK club music's most adaptable artists.

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.

Black Origami can be intimidating: it's dark, relentless, and makes substantial demands on the listener. But it's also powerful and distinctive. In the world of rhythmic electronic music, nobody else is doing it quite like this.

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

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

A large part of Death Peak--despite the morbid title--contains some of Clark's most accessible and melodic dance floor tracks.

Three short instrumentals fail to muster the same energy. Interesting sounds abound, but they don't always connect, sometimes feeling less like music than collections of sound effects. At their best, though, Wolf Eyes evoke soundtracks to a lost drama whose characters are always in peril, be it from physical violence or internal torment.

Whatever the differences on Narkopop, the album is remarkably true to the project's past: this is music that takes inspiration from childhood memories, bygone eras and the natural world. The results can feel like another dimension, but the album is also intensely personal.

Chardiet's presence on the album is so commanding, however, that you can almost feel her reaching out to you from beyond the recording. It'll shake you up, no matter what.

At its best moments, async combines Sakamoto's history in acoustic music with his legacy in electronic music.

Concrete Desert is a response to a real environment. But the album feels less specific to a given city. It seems instead like a parallel space, one that builds an impression of some future dystopia.

Where 2012's Tracer experimented with house and techno, 8AM recalls their debut, 7AM, but with a more refined approach.

Owens is an exciting new artist. Her voice is lovely. Her songwriting is accessible. Her arrangements feel smooth, and she moves with ease between styles. The only drawback to Kelly Lee Owens is an occasional tweeness that can come with such sweet, weightless music.

World Eater is Power's most eclectic record to date. Dumb Flesh, his second album as Blanck Mass, moved away from the wall of sound of his self-titled debut.

After the existential questions of Ghettoville, it feels unfussy and workmanlike. Which isn't to do it down: now that he's back to just getting on with it, Cunningham can once again produce mirage-like moments of beauty like nobody else.

Arca's most accomplished work to date.

Designed to be listened to as a continuous mix, From Deewee is as much about the flow between songs as the standout anthems.

Providence marks a muscular new path for Fake, but he sounds as singular as always.

The Night Land lands in beautiful and occasionally unexpected places.

Ultimately, Tears In The Club could have been a nearly flawless six-track EP--though the filler doesn't detract from the more noteworthy tunes on here, it doesn't really contribute either.

Hearing producers as accomplished as Ellis or Sherwood steal the spotlight from time to time makes Man Vs. Sofa all the more appealing.

Reassemblage is the finest LP yet to emerge from this diffuse scene, and it also brings a new set of ideas to the table.

The result is an album that feels personal but also universal.

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.

No Home Of The Mind strikes a chord without uttering a word.

It channels the feeling of dancing all night to your favourite DJ in your favourite club, with an evening's worth of twists, turns, surprises and delights, packed into an 80-minute set that is as much of an artistic statement as any of Seaton's excellent records.

Long's drum programming in general lacks finesse. It has neither the rhythmic spark to make bodies move, nor the sculpted precision for a mind-expanding armchair experience. Sometimes this isn't a problem.

Approach the album with the same unhurried attitude as its creators, though, and you'll find moments to savour.

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.

Even as a mix of two halves, Dear's assured pacing means his DJ-Kicks entry rarely sounds disjointed. Two new Audion tracks near the end of the mix stand out, in ways that are both positive and negative.

Once it pulls you into its core, its dissonant sound becomes comforting, and then cathartic. In evoking confusion as to where man ends and machine begins, Borders offers a musical interpretation of a very modern dilemma.

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.

In the style of Arthur Russell, Tophat uses studio trickery to weave contrasting material into dreamlike narratives. Programmed drums morph fluidly into live ones, while samples and voices circle each other like planets in unpredictable orbit.

Kompakt's recent box set for Voigt's Gas project is arguably the ne plus ultra of emotionally resonant ambient music from the past two decades. Its influence looms over Pop Ambient 2017, but this music can nonetheless be its own soundtrack for daydreaming. On that level, the series continues to be worthwhile, but if its reach was just a little wider, it could be even more.

Lonely Planet rarely veers off the beaten path, but when it does, it's quite the voyage.

Where Rashad's best work was light and agile like an expert dancer, some of Taso's tracks feel like they're dragging their feet.

As its title implies, Migration was meant to be about Green's experience moving to a new home and traveling around the world. But rather than taking his sound anywhere, Migration stays put.

It's an interesting diversion for Romans, and might just be the most admirable part of Valere Aude.

In composing a piece so well-defined yet so adaptable, Eno adds yet another page to ambient music canon.

It's old, new and never boring.

Glass isn't a concept album, though, nor does it need to be. Music this impressive is a statement in and of itself.

Expressive and loose as the album is, its track titles reveal more about Daniel's headspace.

Wonderland shies away from the textural depths the duo made their name on. But what the album lacks in psychedelic richness it makes up for with wild, off-the-cuff energy, and it sounds like Demdike Stare had a lot of fun making it.

There are moments of hymnal beauty, but it's unmoored from the hardcore nostalgia of Bevan's most affecting music. The context for Young Death / Nightmarket is harder to grasp, and before you know it, it drifts away.

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.

What's completely clear about All The Right Noises is that it's a highly personal album. In his exploration of them, Flügel makes these non-spaces his own.

The jolt you get from Tiger & Wood's best work is missing. Perhaps the songs are too ornate, or maybe they're too similar to so much other retro-themed club fodder. Tiger & Woods haven't lost their spark, but their music shines less brightly than before.

All of the extra effort has paid off: fabric 90 is a killer dance mix first, a technical exercise second.

It's a rock-solid techno mix with few surprises or left turns. Avery can hold his own in this style, but a collection of tracks from artists like Planetary Assault Systems, Shlømo and Artefakt might not have the same crossover appeal he's used to. That said, the mix is still full of drama and striking moments.

Even as an experimental playground, Remain Calm is clearly the work of two people with a lot of ideas, versatility and musicianship. This first release hints at what's possible for this dream pairing.

& is essentially a compilation of disparate tracks. There are a few good moments, enough decent efforts and some failures.

While it's not without flaws, Volume 2 isn't the sound of a label fizzling out. It's possible that they're just getting started.

There's an admirable level of refinement to Hubris, even as it also feels brilliantly alive and ever in the moment.

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.

"DB Rip" feels like a missed opportunity to bring techno into play, while the title track overdoes its gothic pomp. The rest are slight but elegant mood pieces. Dal Forno is good at these, but it's her pop songs that do more than just tick the BEB boxes.

Gately describes her method as a question: "How much can I add before it just sounds too crazy. What's the most obnoxious thing I can make the song do?" With Color, she's overshot.

Some portions of Strands are so calming that it's hard to stay focused on Hauschildt's expertly woven details. But the album doesn't just seek to relax its listeners.

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

Midway through RR7349, "Wardenclyffe" cuts back and forth from cheeky synth pop to stratospheric synth vistas, revealing how much better S U R V I V E are with the latter approach. They finally concede to their strengths in the album's second half.

They draw from the immigrant communities to make a sound that, to them, is completely at home.

Physicalist is another high-quality release from one of this decade's most inventive bands in synthesizer music.

Most tracks have a near-total lack of reverb that suffocates sentimentality without starving the record of atmosphere. As a listening experience, it's like pushing on a bleeding gum: knotty and perversely satisfying.

COW is the sound of The Orb stripped down its essence, revealing the splendor that's always been there.

It's pretty introspective in places, and the concept—something about a mega-corporation and virtual reality—might be Smart's way of leading his music off the dance floor and allowing it to take on fluid new forms.

The middle of the album explores a stranger kind of sample collage, stitching together unlikely sounds and moods. At first the shift seems odd, but after a few listens it becomes clear that this is where things really get interesting.