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

Colleen's most immediate and affecting LP to date.

When relationship blindspots are exposed in "Always You," the untroubled lust of earlier tracks matures into some of the album's most introspective moments.

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.

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

Visions is marked by a number of characteristics that make up a broad swathe of forgettable, barely-there music-it sounds distant, cheaply produced, with songs that seem to flutter in and out of earshot rather than command attention-but it's executed with such personality, earnestness, and feeling that it feels so much louder and present than it really is.

Second Line offers an impressive level of immersion from an artist who's spent years inviting us into her own personal universe.

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

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.

Most of his LPs show his love of prog and fusion. In other words, they've been lengthy, ambitious full-lengths with an array of singles sprinkled throughout. Cerebral Hemispheres is exactly that. Whatever its flaws, it's a solid entry in a legendary discography.

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

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.

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

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.

Ψ cleverly returns to the skewed body music on patten's first album, which nearly offsets the tangle of blurred gestures and garbled theorizing.

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

Psychic doesn't quite burn itself into your memory.

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.

Other M.E.S.H. records--including his 2015 debut LP, Piteous Gate--were narrow beam; Hesaitix is the full spectrum.

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

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

Given the ubiquity of some of this material, It's Album Time is a little tricky to assess on its own merit. But with tracks like "Delorean Dynamite," "Johnny And Mary," and "Old Joy," there are certainly plenty of grandiose stretches to keep us satisfied.

With just a few more jolts, a few more unexpected twists and turns, Coolen and Scholte would have had something truly special on their hands. But even without them, Weval is a hushed delight.

The Ship, his sixth Warp record in seven years, entwines various threads from these albums [Small Craft On A Milk Sea, Lux, and Highlife] into a heady amalgam that stands as his best work for the label to date.

Mod Prog Sic is the latest stop on this journey, taking the band to an evolved new place for a deeply satisfying blend of primal expression and visceral pleasure.

House of Woo may be playful and irreverent, but that shouldn't disguise its status as a potent exploration of sound.

Blizzards highlights everything Fake is good at: the way his drums tend to dance in between established genres, melodies that sound like a warped Boards Of Canada record, the constant push-and-pull of dark and light. It's more of a reset than a reinvention, a return to the earnest simplicity that made him a wunderkind all those years ago.

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.

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.

On Here From Where We Are, Cayzer takes on multiple shades of ambient music and delivers each with an expert touch.

As gripping as the album is all the way through-it seems to chart an on/off relationship even more directly than their eponymous album did-its best moment is actually its first. Opener "Angels" is one of the meekest xx tracks, but it's easily among their most powerful.

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.

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

I AKA I moves from peak to peak, and you're never more than a couple of tracks away from open-mouthed awe.

His latest LP isn't nostalgic. If anything, Voids proves Deijkers is as comfortable in the here and now as he's ever been.

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.

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

Instead of attempting to reinvent the wheel, he refines and extends his legacy, preserving the familiar while hearkening back to the uncanny moods that shroud his best ambient-leaning works.

It's not long before Punk Authority ceases to feel abrasive and is instead perceived as soothing, continuous streams of sound.

A diverse, compelling tapestry of 2-step, house and broken beats.

This is a short album that toggles around pretty familiar sounds without doing anything new with them. But in this final salvo, Walls have proven that they are a force.

Whatever James puts his name to could and should never be expected to make conventional sense, so Orphaned Deejay Selek only falters when denying his own slippery logic.

The result is an album split between brilliant and head-scratching moments, and it's all a lot take in at once. Anxiety dressed up Ashin's neuroses in glossy textures, while Age Of Transparency lets them writhe all over the floor. Like his live show, it's thrilling, confusing and uncomfortable in equal measure.

2013's Half Of Where You Live was largely built around recordings made while traveling the world, including Japan, so what's unique about Good Luck is how it sounds less like a specific place than a flurry of memories made there.

As DNA Feelings dissolves to a close, a quiet kind of power lingers on.

This celebratory nihilism defines an album that's sometimes dark and moody, sometimes manic and fun. There are familiar moments of quirky guitar pop ("Delete Forever," "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around"). More exciting is when Grimes goes big on reverb and club-sized beats.

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.

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.

The Last Panthers goes further, illustrating a picture of its own.

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

A beautiful collection of tunes as striking as they are subtle.

None of these ventures feel forced, instead they flourish under the weight of some heavy emotional themes. After this versatile and unexpectedly wholesome depiction of a broken heart, Mykki Blanco has earned some deserved beauty sleep.

Sometimes Walker can have his cake and eat it, too, and on the best moments of Knockin' Boots, he does.

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

Eyeroll is Ziúr's most punk record to date, planting her proudly on the fringes where she's happiest.

The result could have been an album so mournful as to lose itself in self-serious introspection, but Dedication's brief track lengths mean the album is breezy in a manner unbefitting of its ostensibly grave subject matter.

Where McRyhew's first full-length approached footwork with playful individualism, this record favours freeform acid and techno structures.

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.

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

This sounds like a coherent album rather than a string of collaborations, with his creamy tones-and occasionally clichéd lyrics-providing a common identity throughout.

As Rausch shows, Voigt is still finding inspiration in his childhood memories and those old forests, subtly changing the way we see and hear them each time.

Pink sits in between: not sonically and melodically rich enough to be digested with the bedroom fervour of, say, Rounds, but somehow not fully metamorphosed into whatever new form Hebden is pushing towards. Nobody's doubting the man's incredible skill as a producer, and the delicacy, intelligence and maturity of his ideas. But here, alchemy isn't quite achieved.

Phoenixxx is pure violence, with seemingly incidental moments of calm.

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.

In Dust seems solely an accompaniment for alps and plains. Some space for the bedroom and lounge would have been nice too.

Some of these tracks are simply mind-melting.

"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.

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.

The result is some of the most intimate and grandiose music he's ever produced.

Xen remains as singular--and often as brilliant--as the rest of the Arca catalogue.

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.

It's equal parts dark and light, these two elements intermingling to create an ambivalent set of emotions, from gnawing fear to brief tranquillity, as unnerving and uncertain as you imagine life in a war zone might be.

Captain Of None places Schott's voice front-and-centre and folds in her long-burning love for dub and reggae rhythms, making for her most approachable and otherworldly record yet.

Sirens is his best record because it's both his most straightforward and most experimental, his densest and lightest.

Conatus is Zola Jesus' most gratifying offering so far.

Even if Graef and Astro don't seem to be headed anywhere in particular, it's still fun to hitch a hot-boxed ride with them.

The producer's peacenik ambitions are never far away, though, and the more naked they become, the more his music loses its depth and subtlety.

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

"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.

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.

[A] formidable, baffling, often delightful behemoth of an album.

On Filo Loves The Acid, Dozzy has held back his more radical approach, as well as his typically subtle use of the 303, to deliver an exemplary acid toolkit.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, just slightly overcorrects with its mainstream-seeking direction, opting for more James Blake-esque electronic pop and reeling in the eccentricities.

With slightly more judicious editing, Let's Turn It Into Sound could have been a grand crossover statement, combining admittedly trendy synth experiments with freak-folk charisma. But that's not what Smith is going for here. Instead, the LP feels like listening to someone try out a new talent, learning as they go along, substituting practiced polish with a hunger for new ideas and self-expression.

Under The Sun isn't the major departure that it seems on the surface, but rather a pleasant detour through mythical, imagined landscapes.

The guest vocalists round out the album's satisfying balance of antiquated and futuristic.

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

Synthetic birdsong, rustling keys and a contemplative melody suggest someone pondering the world outside. The album, in turn, offers a glimpse into Kate NV's rich imagination.

GOD's interest in questionable styles and its elaborate backstory seem designed to keep things interesting after the giant step forward that was R Plus Seven.

Sure, the LP has its eccentric moments, and it takes a long time to really get to know. But, as The Redeemer hinted and Black Metal proves, beneath all the YouTube sampling, bizarre press and one-off Russian blog releases, Blunt is a talented singer-songwriter with a keen ear for odd sounds.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Its best moments draw you to the formative dance floors of Space's past, the parties where he watched dancers react to the thrilling amalgam of styles that would become footwork, and where he danced himself, absorbing the lessons that would feed into a genre based on movement.

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

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