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.

Regional Surrealism [is] somewhere you'll want to lose yourself again and again.

If such moments [a typically slurring yet splenetic Prefuse 73 contribution or Siriusmo's "Modern Talk,"] constitute the highly enjoyable base level here, then the best moments are staggering.

The Killer seems to reveal a pattern on Pawlowitz's part, yet it somehow remains every bit as viscerally captivating as his best material, a formula still as cryptic as it ever was.

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.

Overall Passion is an angst-free experience, finely wrought with a view to banishing the black and the blues.

There's no doubt you'll hear a lot of records in 2012 that sound like Whispers in the Dark, but you'll rarely hear it done this well.

If you come to Foals from an exclusively indie rock perspective, this may blow your tiny mind. But if this is Foals' attempt to infiltrate clubland proper, it falls short.

Most tracks have so much going on that it begins to feel like tectonic plates pulling in opposite directions, heaving two ways at once and leaving the listener dizzy and disoriented. It's Ryat's crystal clear, wriggling voice that's the glue just barely holding everything together.

There isn't a bad track on Black Boulder and it is certainly an accessible crossover release that's suited to the long-player format. But it's not very original either.

[The album's] obfuscating mires of navel-gazing perhaps precludes it from attaining Ninja Tune classic status, but those of a darker disposition will likely be of the opinion this challenging opus collates Ortega's strongest work to date.

For those of us undeterred by Halo's vocal approach, Quarantine is an often breathtaking piece of emotive reverie that stands sonically as one of the year's more consistently inviting ambient LPs.

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

Salton Sea feels engineered for eminent listenability.

For many, it was going to be hard for Tellier to surpass Sexuality's sensuous odyssey. Thankfully, My God Is Blue does at least equal it.

Rinse Presents: Brackles is a cohesive, singular statement that finds his sound truly rising to the occasion.

Though the record at times leans toward Pantha du Prince's slowly evolving, dewy-eyed sense of melody, Urpsrung is without question Weber's most experimental and evasive work to date.

Unpatterns is very now, yet by employing key electronic music touchstones it sounds classic as well.

There's so much blood and soul poured into Music for the Quiet Hour that it almost feels effortless. Along with the fascinatingly fragmented Drawbar Organ EPs, the box set presents what's either a closing chapter or a new beginning in the career of one of electronic music's most luminous illuminati.

It could just be good timing, or that he remains the same ingeniously innovative songwriter, but Club Rez is yet another victory for the young producer.

Quite possibly represents Edgar's most full-blooded work yet.

Its banging moments are the best of Feldwick's career, but the album's dips into gentler territory are confusing drains on the momentum, lazy Sunday afternoon beat music for nerdy kids with oversized headphones.

In its studio form, though, II remains a lukewarm, ambivalent understatement.

Sleek, confident and totally captivating, New Epoch is bound to attract interest and even incite excitement in those who might have thought the 140 BPM form outmoded and uninteresting.

It's an album of contrasts that can prove difficult and overlong one listen and breathtaking and fascinatingly complex the next, not a masterpiece by any means but a unique kind of impressive nonetheless.

Biokinetics has aged so well that it could easily pass for a new album. The production level is exceptional by today's standards, and it has more teeth than much of the music it inspired, especially contemporary dub techno, most of which sounds vanilla by comparison.

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.