Thanks to its quieter passages, Alternate/Endings breathes in and out gradually, never lingering or sprinting for too long.

You'll have to cherry-pick the best moments from Wonderful Frequency Band, but that's Justus Köhncke. He may bemuse you, but you can never write him off.

For a techno mix, Fabriclive.73 is a surprisingly breezy affair.

Pangaea Ultima is equally rewarding to those who dive in and devour every minuscule detail as it is to those who listen more passively.

Caramel is a collection of half-finished songs that force you to fill in the blanks. It's just as frustrating and occasionally enlightening as that sounds.

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.

The title might tell you they're not too concerned with dance floors, but the music itself suggests otherwise.

It's a record more about sound design and structure, an abstract deconstruction of Night Slugs' sleek chrome aesthetic.

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.

Culled and then cultivated from her live set, these tracks have the dance floor in their sights, but with a skewed focus.

Debate will rage indefinitely on its merits, but to my ears Rival Dealer places Burial in a new creative sweet spot.

Even with an album's worth of new material, there's something missing here; the format might be Herculean in scale, but Craig's efforts don't match up.

Re-Engineering is very much an album designed to be played as a seamless whole. It's warm, fun, curious and deeply entertaining.

Eve sounds self-referential, dated and pretty low on ideas.

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.

They might be skeletal and drained of colour, but their tracks have an unpredictable, wandering spirit that makes them far more than listless jamming.

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

Remember... feels cohesive in a way that has eluded Fernow through the rest of his work as Vatican Shadow, and signals a new frontier for the producer that's as promising as it is grim.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As with Exai, no major new ground is broken here, but when the landscape is this vast, fascinating and intractably alien, there's no need.

It's a testament to his stature as a leading purveyor of experimental electronics that the results of those pursuits, as seen once again on Kilo, are reliably unpredictable.

Drown Out really lets his music breathe.

Beautiful Rewind is an extended tribute to pirate radio, connecting the dots between jungle, garage and minimalist house music.

A much more concise statement than last year's Welcome To The Chi, Double Cup is an exciting portrait of a maverick artist with complete creative freedom, and the skills to hold it all together.

On Restless Idylls, Lobo has cemented Tropic Of Cancer as her own, crafting a signature sound that is sleek and addictive.

These are the few moments where she sounds wet behind the ears, but then she's still a relatively fresh face on the scene. And whenever she puts an awkward foot forward, she's immediately redeemed by a hint of pop brilliance.

Soul Music feels a bit too modern to slot in perfectly with the music it's pining for, but that's part of what makes it a success.

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

There is a kind of pure, cathartic rage in Virgins and it leaves moments of intense peace in its wake.

What really marks Machinedrum's growth are the moments that subtly push Stewart's sound into small stylistic corners only hinted at before.

Youth Code isn't a perfect album, but it is one hell of a first stab.

Psychic doesn't quite burn itself into your memory.

A nicely well-rounded debut album from an artist who's only been releasing music for a couple of years.

At times, it seems like his most interestingly textured and complicated release to date.

Trumpets, drums, vocals, violins, flutes, saxophones and cellos make for a much fuller, richer and more authentic sound than ever before.

Colonial Patterns is not a flawless record, but it does open up a whole new world of possibilities for Leeds as a producer, and places him decisively outside any box people might wish to put him in.

It's a wild, theatrical and, at times, bloated ride.

A well-considered and promising debut album, one that knows just when to stop and breathe before breaking another sweat.

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.

For a jingle writer whose album is almost relentlessly upbeat, his music can cut surprisingly close to the bone.

Copeland is an accomplished collage artist adept at combining the highbrow and the trashy, but when the individual bits are laid out on their own they can seem a bit throwaway.

Loud City Song is her most broadly scoped and epic album to date.

Black Jazz Records is a label worth knowing. As far as introductions go, you could do worse than a tribute mix by Theo Parrish.

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.

Ikonika has delivered one of 2013's definitive summer albums. It's time to get happy.

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

Surely Saginaw's most confident work yet, No Better Time Than Now shows a young artist maturing with the grace of a seasoned musician.

Blue Gardens is another milestone in a banner year for one of the UK's most consistently exciting labels.

These might not be Martin's most envelope-pushing beats, but it's hard to think about that when the walls are violently shaking.

That feeling of organic growth and decay is, definitively, what makes Blondes unique--everything is in its right place, but instead of processed-to-death perfection, it just feels natural.

Slow Focus is more often than not an Olympic-standard piece of work.

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.

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.

Serious and focused but also enormously fun, it represents the late flowering of a distinctive, accomplished talent.

You're drawn in by a minimalist master at work.

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.

His fans might find this fascinating. For anyone else, there are better entry points into Jonson's catalogue.

You may not always know what's going on or why, but that hardly matters when it's such a joyous whirl.

In many ways Ghost Systems Rave is as bumpy and nerve-jangling as a joyride in a stolen Ford Fiesta. Whether that's your idea of fun or not, no one could ever claim it's clean and healthy.

Coles has a way of making her tracks sound massive and intimate at the same time, using reverb in a way that evokes both the expanse of an arena and the introspection of a bedroom.... Comfort has enough of these moments to remind us of her casual brilliance, but not enough to make it the complete knockout it could be.

For Years feels like the natural conclusion to the quest he quietly started back in 2010.

Waverly is constant and consistent in its crossing between a less exotic Dead Can Dance and a more lo-fi Fever Ray, which is certainly a captivating enough blend for a debut album.

The end result sounds like a shameful karaoke. Nonetheless, fans of Miss Kittin should still give Calling From The Stars a go, as it remains her most accomplished solo release to date.

For an artist so intent on self-mythologizing--with his grand pronouncements, rare interviews and mask-wearing anonymity--With Love feels like a surprisingly comprehensive piece of work. But it's still a rambling outpouring of quick-fire songs.

As nice and welcoming as Getting Closer is, it'll never challenge you.

So while Cold Spring is in many ways a massive leap forward for Mount Kimbie, it's also the sort of transitional album you might expect from a group with a knockout debut.

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.

There are many occasions on Modern Worship when the surging synths sweep you along with the force of a dopamine rush, but there are a few others when you're left with a nagging sense that Hyetal could take things that little bit further.

Though it's often lost in the overwrought emotions of Dva, her gift for sound remains even when she overshoots the mark.

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

A pop album brimming with imagination, vibrant melodies and, yes, a fair bit of formula.

Tranklements recalls Robert Hood's Motor: Nighttime World 3: both exhibit a confidence and composure perhaps unique to veteran producers.

once Random Access Memories unravels, it is, at its best, pretty magnificent.

Homogenous and slightly predictable, Panorama Bar 05 is not Steffi at her most adventurous.

Too much of the album feels restrained, unable to truly revel in the bliss of melody.

Where many similar hybrids are too cerebral or schizophrenic, his album is impressively tactile, and laced with a genuinely passionate pulse.

His music appears to be the stuff of mid-morning TV interludes and inconsequential memories, yet it ends up plumbing great depths.

Though it's way too long to listen to in one sitting, Grime 2.0 is catnip for the grime fan, and good bait for those new to or curious about the genre.

Such interventions, like the coughing fit that concludes "Brutal," are vital in the fabric of The Redeemer, which feels part art installation, part cri de coeur, but all true--further reason to believe the Hype.

Gordian is a delightful listen, packed with plenty of rewarding oddities if you care to sit down and really take your time with it.

If you're a Sandwell District fan, fabric 69 isn't going to blow your head off. You've heard these guys mix these kind of tunes together before. But you've never heard them do a mix as careful or considered as this one.

Too often, Letherette is synthetic and manufactured, but in those slower, stranger moments it feels like the real deal.

FM Sushi is straighter, painstaking in its own low-budget way and--bathed as it is in a potent fug of despairing melancholy--far more emotionally resonant.

He might have translated his sound into electronics with Excavation, but here Krlic's music feels more wrenchingly human than it ever has been.

Considering the odds, it shows an animated and still vigorous trio worthy of its semi-legendary status.

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.

It might be dismissed as dinner party music by those with a hunger for more experimental fare, but The North Borders is charming, fascinating and a touch mysterious.

You Are Eternity is like a long and endless tunnel: for all its twists and turns, you're always in the same sensory deprivation chamber.

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

While it might be beautiful to gaze at momentarily, by the end of the record it's treading water.

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

It's infectious and almost a little too odd, yet it's totally at ease. In other words, it's DJ Koze doing what he's done for well over a decade.

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