It's one of the most engaging and gripping techno albums of the year anyway.

The gussied-up politeness that has followed Greene throughout his career is still an issue here, making the less adventurous material sound slightly anonymous. That's why the thick textures on "Folle" stand out so much, or why it's so exciting when Greene lets it all float away on "Lately." There are more than enough of these moments to make the record worthwhile.

Lone hasn't fully reinvented the narrative thread he started with "Pineapple Crush," but he's enriched it with a deeper exploration of his music's other referents, finding new dimensions to a sound that was beginning to feel awfully one-dimensional.

With enough listens, you'll even catch yourself humming its melodies, but the ideas come close to feeling generic.

If The Phoenix is that feature film we were waiting for, it could stand an edit or two.

Petrol finds the artist coming into his own, interpreting his life experience into sublime electro-acoustic music.

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.

These songs are whittled down, a rare moment where the overwhelming density of Arca's music falls away, raw and stripped of any protective coating. ... There's a newfound and striking intimacy—the last gasps of the KiCK series before the explosive climax "Crown," where kiCK iiiii's softness is ripped apart by cathartic blasts of noise. It's one final, triumphant punch that leaves everything on the table.

The instrumental and production prowess on display is fairly stunning.

Four hours of dense, bewildering and occasionally fun electronic music, elseq 1-5 is a logical next step into the unknown for two pioneers.

Each production here feels less like a 10-minute single than a condensed DJ set, and The Orb navigate these spaces with a fresh wind in their sails.

The second Floorplan album feels triumphant enough to bear the title Victorious. It's a stellar follow-up to Paradise.

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.

Huxley's pop forays might not be for everyone, but there's plenty on Blurred to appeal to both his underground acolytes and, perhaps, a new crop of fans as well.

Left bruised and raw from the previous entry, the soft pads and thick walls of synth noise on tracks like the Planningtorock-featuring "Queer" feel like weighted blankets. ... kick iiii plays like a surrealist diary of Ghersi's experiences as a queer person and transgender woman.

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

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.

Music For Installations doesn't offer a single listening experience: these tracks make far more sense looped, either alone or in small groups, to create a particular, sustained mood.

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.

There is a feeling of accomplishment throughout Invite The Light.

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

As a survey of Africa's influence on contemporary dance music, Basar is an inspiring document. As an album, it's every bit as good.

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.

On Tundra, the duo's debut long-player for R&S, Lakker seem fully in their element. The ideas have room to breathe and consolidate themselves.

But what comes off at first as blistering and self-deprecating actually reveals her deep reverence and respect for her own complexity.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me, ten songs under a half hour that move quickly but stay with you long after, is a full-fledged real-time resume that demonstrates how complex rhythms and careful arrangements can elevate the human voice to the ultimate instrument.

Wise's third album is striking not only because of his unparalleled voice or his candid verse, parts of his artistry that already caught our attention on the last two albums, but because of the way these elements come together in such an assured way, in a space that demands swagger bravado from its virtuosos delivered with a welcome vulnerability.

It's slightly ludicrous, highly theatrical and great fun.

As esoteric as the use of language translation software might seem, Doran and Carlile work their magic on these dialects and accents.

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.

For the most part, Mantasy is a serious record that confidently takes its own sweet time.

The sound of Pangaea doing his thang, then? Yep. Ahead of the game? On this evidence, most certainly.

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

Portraits resonates at a level of button-pushing sentimentality, but Maribou State are such deft directors of their sound, and so melodically gifted, that they still create moments of magic.

Unrestrained emotion is ultimately III's defining attribute, and that richness can be too much to bear.

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.

Modern Streets may lack ingenuity, but it works as a sincere and relatable portrayal of the artist's experience.

Something about its bleary-eyed shuffle, smooth jazz accents and chipmunk vocals is ineffably familiar and intimate. By drawing on memories and relationships for inspiration, Weatherall conveys emotion more convincingly than ever before.

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

Despite the occasionally fraught listening experience, Will Happiness Find Me? remains a record that is as fantastically compelling musically as it is thought-provoking.

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.

On his latest, the palpable, sometimes uneven spontaneity that defined the first few years of DJ Seinfeld is gone. In its place is the sound of a producer who's found a confident, definitive voice.

It's both humble and ambitious, wonderfully arranged in some places and slightly clumsy in others (the Popol Vuh-isms of "Start A New Life" kill the album's momentum just three tracks in, and I've yet to be convinced by Weber's humdrum vocals). But for an artist who has always been earnest and upfront about big melodies, Garden Gaia feels like the logical next step, freeing him from his techno past.

Death After Life is so seamless and consistent that it might grow tedious for less patient listeners.

In its best moments, Morning/Evening is perfectly paced. Less convincing is the Evening side's coda.... Even with these faults, though, Hebden has brought a refreshing addition to his discography.

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.

The way he calls back to nearly all of his past projects, one could make the mistake that Hebden's best years are behind him. That would be missing the point, though. Regardless of all the attention he's received from his massive performances, he's still looking for new ways to be Four Tet.

Sometimes it feels like one of the best records I've heard in recent memory, other times I wish it would just get to the point faster. But I think that's by design. ... To appreciate Escapology is to look at it as one piece in the puzzle, not an album so much as it is a single cog in Goodman's latest piece. It asks more questions than it answers, but poses them like few other artists could.

With In A Dream, Maclean and Whang have crafted some of most expertly tuneful music of their career.

Imperfect as it is, International is proof that the group's future is limited only by the force of its wanderlust.

While the record is a joyous, uplifting listen, there are not many surprises. After hearing Dijon in full effect on her previous LP, it left me with residual disappointment about the album's untapped potential. But there are still moments to be excited about on the album's B-side.

While, in a sense, Room(s) is by definition an amalgamation of most of the trends and ideas floating around in the electronic music sphere at the moment, it sounds like nothing else, and its execution is so cutthroat and streamlined that it's nearly flawless.

Food might sound pretty, but it's weaker than the sum of its parts.

If there's a new sense of release in Beacon's music, the same can't be said of their lyrics. A familiar atmosphere of heartbroken reflection and pent-up frustration prevails.

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's a much less linear journey than we would expect from Owens, but it's also a welcome shift, an intriguing pivot from the very human themes of Inner Song. This time around, she invites the listener to wade through the fascinating depths of her imagination. It's hard not to close your eyes and surrender to the figure-eight flow.

The results are unmistakably Mount Kimbie, showcasing their love for pop, R&B, electronica and Krautrock, while also forging a new identity for themselves within indie rock.

The mechanistic form and function can feel totally lifeless, but there's a layer of mourning beneath the gleaming metal.

This album can work when it's in service of something other than itself. Listened to in smaller stretches, it becomes a bit easier to digest, and opens up a bit.

[Blood Rain is] the track on Bodied that best reflects the influence of soundtrack work on Myson, music that feels powerful without being obvious or obtrusive. The rest of Bodied feels like a film score made for a blockbuster that isn't there. The LP's sculpted sound, dreamy sketches and haughty melodrama rarely feels like more than the sum of its often stunning parts.

There's a near-perfect EP buried in here somewhere, and an inventive musical personality waiting to burst out, but Moiré's debut album does a better job of showcasing his potential than realizing it.

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

SBTRKT isn't going to break down any barriers in the obsessively experimental world that it was birthed, but it's a thoroughly solid listen all the way through. Which is a lot more than his supposed peers could say about their debut albums.

Those of you disappointed in similar efforts this year by Hercules & Love Affair or, say, Jessica 6 will find many of their itches scratched here.

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

As a closer [song "Shuck"], it's an interesting moment and one particularly reflective of Shrines' strengths and its dualistic intrigues: the serenity of Roddick's buoyant, burbling synths amidst James's hallucinatory full-moon visions.

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.

What's most disheartening about 32 Levels is how it floats by anonymously for 37 wishy-washy minutes, which is especially hard to take from a producer whose tracks used to command your attention.

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.

Venetian Snares albums are usually tough and intense listens, but Traditional Synthesizer Music can be fuzzy to a fault. It lacks the internal turmoil that defines Funk's best music.

These short tracks hint at the more compact and engaging album #N/A could've been. But on "#2," the collaborators show they can also pull off long-form.

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

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.

An album that's alluring in passing, but might not have you doubling back for a closer inspection.

Here she pushes things in a more aggressive direction: on "Tiro," her vocals become increasingly scattered and dramatic, as the percussion warps into a mash of cracking whips, laser shots and grinding metal. On its back half, KICK ii dips into abstract territory, sounding more like a tangled web of overactive synapses than anything immediately recognizable as pop.

Gonzalez outdoes himself on Hurry Up, We're Dreaming: a double album in tribute to the hefty documents of pre-digital, pre-iTunes yesteryear.

Schofield often sounds downright uneasy, as if he's looking to cut the legs out from under his trademark style. When an artist slips into this mode, they rarely make perfect statements. What usually emerges instead are uneven collections full of experimental escape hatches that are engrossing for their very imperfections.

Sharp and fiery, Isoviha lacks any restraint, capturing the paradoxical multiplicity and singularity that makes all of Ripatti’s output so memorable.

This LP has the duo's best music; each track offers something to marvel at. But put them all together and it's like watching the world end 11 times in a row: what at first seems fearsome eventually turns mundane.

It's another sharp turn in the road on the winding journey of a creative nomad.

The Curved Line is a pretty harmless, quirky listen, and enjoyable enough if you've got a bit of a sweet tooth.

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.

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.

A testament to her versatility and willingness to experiment, Man Made entrenches Greentea Peng's position as one of the UK's most exciting young songwriters.

Ghost People is the sound of Martyn cozying up to house music and mastering it, as close to focused and standing still as a restless artist like him could ever get.

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

Liminal Soul doesn't have the pop-fueled rush of her last LP, nor the lo-fi chill of her debut album, Ariadna. It displays her vast set of influences, brilliant vocals and ultimately, the infinite potential of Russia's dance music scene.

See Birds, was a promising debut, but Wander / Wonder is the kind of record that can pull you into its emotional undertow from the minute those helium angels start singing.

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.

There's so much clarity and hope to be found in Jayda G's marriage of production with songwriting that any cloying moments are easily forgiven.

It's an album that sounds less extreme than it has any right to, inspiring a cold and technical appreciation for Lopatin's craftsmanship, but not necessarily excitement.

This album represents an intriguing compromise between Fell's distinctive language and the friendlier environs of the contemporary dance floor.

Power Of Anonymity merely repeats the ideas first laid out on Yours & Mine, sometimes improved yet other times untouched.

This is all standard Matmos; nothing here upsets their musical applecart. But the washing machine conceit gives their sample trickery a dramatic edge. It sometimes feels like we're descending deep into the innards of the machine.

Though it finds Smith at her most reserved, The Mosaic Of Transformation feels like a breakthrough, melting the pop-savvy hooks of her past records into one gorgeous, rarefied sound, as invigorating and smooth as electricity flowing through circuits.

Elasticity rewards repeat listens from start to finish.

Bring Me the Head Of... will not win Dunn an army of new fans, you are either on his wavelength or you're not. It is, however, among his finest work to date and shows an ever-growing refinement and understanding of his chosen medium.

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.