Even though Brighter falls short, in this context it does illustrates that the indie WhoMadeWho infuse their dance with has more funk and attitude than most.

There's no denying that Iradelphic is Clark's most accessible and friendly work in ages... Unfortunately, comfort is boring.

With nothing more at their disposal than techno's characteristically sparing palette, Dozzy and Neel have built something so rich that it has the feeling of a feature presentation.

Thirteen tracks of relatively barebones 808 funk can star to wear, and especially moving at such a (relatively) slow tempo Transistor feels a little bloated by its last third.

Ekstasis is brimming with them though [moments that are avant-gard yet instantly accessible] -an album so coherently constructed that it's perhaps more notable for its instants, its moments and sequences, than its full tracks.

The songs reunited on The Singles should be celebrated by anyone fascinated by the UK's long tradition of tuneful eccentrics.

For all its referential qualities, this is a record that is confident in its own distinct character.

It never fully sounds laid back, as if the producer is unwilling to let his sounds run as rampant or give into the funk quite like his Californian counterparts.

Van Hoen may be submerged in his own past, but the melancholic apprehension of the record is thoroughly universal.

Another excellent long player to savor from Monolake.

In the hands of artists as confident and unflinching as these three, the scope for discovery and growth becomes infinite. The darkest of gems.

Pretty Ugly takes the ugliest tropes of UK dance music and flips them inside out without losing what makes them so physically powerful in the first place.

It is the very overfamiliarity with those same [80's] tropes that makes TRST an ultimately unsurprising, par for the course listen.

Hive Mind, follows in the vein of "Ital's Theme" by focusing on warm, softly throbbing textural slides over insistent 4/4 rhythms to forge a kind of day-drifted vagabond music akin to the work of acts like Blondes or The Miracles Club.

Brimming with standalones ... but it sometimes feel[s] more like a collection of songs than a singularly-minded and cohesive album.

While Demdike fans will have heard a lot of this stuff by now, Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker are still better than just about anybody else in the way that they thread found sound, field recordings, library music and generated sounds and beats... one hell of a package.

The result is one of the most emotionally powerful synth albums in a time where they seem absolutely dime a dozen.

Hotel Amour doesn't cover new sonic ground.

Mouse On Mars now occasionally sounds like a hybrid of other artists rather than a unique entity.

It's not about to break any new ground, but her attractively elegant mixture of dream pop, post-punk and luxurious atmospherics are a hard combination to resist.

Pete Swanson isn't "going" anywhere but his own scorched-earth path. If you can withstand the heat, it's probably worth following him for a bit.

They! Live is a lovely, highly listenable release, flowing effortlessly in a way that most house music albums can only hope for.

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.

It's almost certainly the producer's most ambitious and most vital work since Untrue.

Patience is one of Kirby's most consistent and stylistically severe albums in recent memory, mostly solo piano with the occasional vocal thrown in.

It takes a lot of talent to make crate-digging sound so seamless, and even if the cracks show every once in a while, Planet High School is some of the best patchwork around.

A singularly impressive work.

Without a doubt an early contender for electronic album of the year.

Like the phantom motion you feel laying in bed after long hours in transit, Themes for an Imaginary Film is bound to stick with you, drawing you in deeper with each turn of the ignition.

This new U&I long player is a welcomed return to form and Leila's most gripping work to date.

FabricLive.61 showcases a producer similarly disinterested in genre orthodoxy. But he's doing it in a different way. The mix might have its roots in dubstep's swampier side but is now intertwined with gnarled techno and thorny breaks.

rje had another ace up his sleeve: It's the Arps, a glistening modern disco EP that, at the risk of splitting hairs, is probably his finest yet.

Equal parts rock, hip-hop and experimental, it's one of the most interesting records of the year thus far.

As strong as Dillon's songs are, the idea that there are some missed opportunities here can't help but nag at even its strongest moments.

For the most part, Vibert's approach to drum & bass still sounds unique, although there are some signs that this was produced in the '90s if you're looking for them.

Dear's latest, the four-track Headcage EP, finds the New Yorker continuing to explore what it might mean for him to be a pop star, even going so far as to bring in some outside help on the production end.

Magnificently re-mastered... an exemplary introduction to the duo.

Glimmer has enough to rope back in jilted Treny fans, but is steady-footed enough to find acolytes in drone and ambient communities as well.

An elegant and often bewitching entrant in the surfeit of night-weary synthscapes.

If there is one main flaw you could attach to Rapprocher, it's how Harper sticks so slavishly to the template laid out by her dance pop mentors.

It's a bit like an imagined hodgepodge view of the pristine tropics, like plastic palm trees, or drinking at a tiki bar in the middle of a snowstorm.

The reason that the DJ-Kicks series has remained relevant is that even at its so-called worst, it was still saying something about the overall state of electronic dance music. With Gold Panda's entry-despite its cleverness and state-of-the-art, diverse penchants-you're left with the impression the famous !K7 cycle has nothing more this time than a muted episode on its hands.

We Stay Together isn't a retread of Passed Me By, it's a continuation--but there are signs of life this time.

Tropics' debut album stands its ground as a promising start for an artist still figuring out exactly what he wants to say.

It is difficult to pick any more jewels off this dance floor diadem, making the most as it does of the long player context.

It's tricky to make music this mopey without sliding into shtick, but Holy Other pulls it off, balanced right on the brink of bathos.

As the dubstep/bass music continuum continues to splinter, recombine and reinvigorate itself ... Sepalcure seems to string all of these timbres and sub-sub-genres into a physically and emotionally bewitching take on post-everything dance music.

Patten is clearly willing to toy with his numerous ideas in lieu of easy hooks, and he concedes remarkably little here.

Stately though Dedication was, its serious mien and careful composition made it an introduction to Zomby that made his work seem less appealingly messy than it oftentimes is. This seven-song, 23-minute EP remedies that.

Even though we get Cox at his most nakedly audible on Parallax, however, it still feels like he's putting on a show, or imitating someone else.

While the record is certainly appreciable on purely musical terms--this is evocative, heart-tugging stuff--when knowledge of Kirby's intent lurks underneath the damaged acetate grooves, it becomes something else entirely: A poignant interrogation of memory loss and aging.

Schlungs does nothing to diminish Mungolian Jet Set's reputation as one of the most genuinely entertaining acts around.

Drone lives and dies by its inviolability and rigidity, but Lopatin throws that away in favor of something madder, weirder and altogether more enticing.

Much like its musical parent, Without You effortlessly inhales and exhales strands of musical influence past, present and future.

We can imagine these 32 tracks stretched out in three hours, and we can enjoy the way they squeeze into 76 minutes equally well.

Sadly, tracks like "Years Ago, Days Pass" or "Wired"--even with their intricate array of digital ornaments--remain badly in need of a proper tune; album closer "Nights," on the other hand, simply comes across as an anemic piano-led ballad: clocking in at seven minutes, it easily outstays its welcome and ends the album on a lukewarm note.

Despite its burnt album art and sandy surfaces, it's an album not of barbecues but of bottles of wine and quiet fires.

It's just Jamie Teasdale, an already accomplished producer, freely chasing his inspiration and coming out the other end with near genius in the process.

It's an unadventurous but pleasant effort from a talented artist who used to make everyone else look boring.

Perhaps most frustratingly, Scintilli doesn't have as much of a sense of continuum as the aforementioned trilogy--which is something that any good album should have.

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.

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

Audio, Video, Disco may not be as clever and as original as Justice think it is, but it definitely isn't as terrible as everyone else would want you to believe.

Listen on a good system and you'll be entrapped and immersed.

ey clearly understand the value of the direct appeal, but on Coracle, the duo has rounded out the pre-manufactured pleasantries of their debut into headier, more substantive approaches to IDM, Chicago house, and nu-kosmische.

Glass Swords is a place where pleasure is the only constant: it doesn't matter that he's playing with self-consciously "cheesy" sounds or untouchable genres when the songs are this good.

The inherent structural flaws of any given remix album also plague TKOL RMX--a lack of consistency, flow or narrative.

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

Get Lost [is] McGuire's most accessible album to date.

As expected, the Norwich-based producer's first full-length culls together another mass of genres, this time with the fresh additions of footwork and UK funky flavours.

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.

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

The album is quite possibly his most stirring and accomplished work to date.

The album is incredibly rich from beginning to end, and totally unpredictable.

Not only is Looping State of Mind Willner's most diverse and satisfying statement to date, it's an album that establishes him as one of electronic music's more subtly lateral thinkers.

Bronsert and Szary rarely break the mould here but it's instead one of the most accessible and effortlessly enjoyable dance music albums of the year.

Conatus is Zola Jesus' most gratifying offering so far.

The result, for its few flaws and its exhilarations, at the very least, sounds fantastic, production-wise; Grace finds the band melding tooth-ground guitar assaults; '80s throwback candy pop; fluttery house templates; dusty, almost Stax-worthy soul getaways and sample-laced electro throbs into an album willing to sacrifice sonic exactitude for a mélange of sounds, tempos and genre exercises that still feels very much of a singular-albeit kaleidoscopic-piece.

There's nothing blank, or bland for that matter, about it.

Rapping with Paul White combines a series of moods and ideas and ties them together with quirky skits and a varied palate of samples, all with the charm we've grown to expect from White.

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.

Rather than crystal-clear crooning, we get choirs of Tesfayes swirling and winding around elaborate, meandering songs.

Aptly-titled, Fever Dream's gentle and imaginative hip-hop beats waft by leisurely, attractive on the surface but substantive and personal on the inside.

Sure, it's still quite messy, but in separating the vast array of influences and ideas present in Ras G's deceptively complex music, Earth lays it all out in a much more digestible manner.

It's another triumph for Friends of Friends, and it's a breakthrough for a young producer finally emerging with an individual and inventive style previously only hinted at.

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.

It's an album of gorgeous sounds and textures that prefer to lay in the dark and be discovered rather than assert themselves.

Ada's lengthy absence has allowed her the freedom to switch creative modes without any seemingly abrupt transitions. Meine Zarten Pfoten is bright and soft and tender, a kind of warm-bath comfort that should be perfect for those downy hours before you put the day behind you.

Feel It Break feels a bit front-loaded: its second half sags a bit with more ballad-oriented material, but closes on a strong note with "The Beast."

They'll be fully outted soon--with an album this good, the backstory can't help but see the light of day--but even without the anonymity, Tiger & Woods will be plenty spicy.

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.

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.

While that pop sense is here yet again on THEE PHYSICAL, the difference on this album is that it feels written, large empty structures playing host to actual songs.

It's hard to argue with the result anyway: Its slow build and aching vocals stand out as a purposeful moment of perfection on a record chock full of them.

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.

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.