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

Beyoncé is clearly itching to experiment with her sound. This latest album may not be her most cohesive release, but it does come with a handful of well-executed surprises. ... The album falls flat when it tries too hard to immerse itself in a culture that does not belong to Beyoncé.

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

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.

The spirit of the concept is dazzlingly portrayed at times, but the LP also conveys the emptiness of these things, the true idea of a "new pleasure"—everything we want, though not always enough of what we need. But it's great while it lasts.

From start to finish, Nothing To Declare poses scintillating questions that have no answers, leaving genre tropes smoking on the electric chair. DJ Haram proves the perfect dance partner for Moor Mother.

It's her most capital-A ambient album, without the sometimes harsh interference of her favored found sounds and field recordings. Yet at the same time, it's so quiet that it slips into the edges of comprehension just when you've determined you're going to get to the bottom of it. All the better to listen to it again to see what you missed—and then again, and again and again.

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.

If Outrun was a fast-paced drive that made the city look like an endless stream of light-trails, Reborn is a beautiful retro pastiche that intentionally slows down to let you take in just how far you've come.

In the unhurried calm of Whatever The Weather, it's easy to envision the slow-moving shifts of the season. ... However one chooses to sit with the sounds in the album, personally, as an American, Celsius has never sounded so dreamy.

Though not without its charms, the floundering moments of Crash suggests that Charli XCX may be most comfortable making subversive music.

With ideas that Froese wisely and generously left behind in this earthly realm, Froese has given us another Tangerine Dream near-masterpiece, created by the loyal pupils who grew up in his significant shadow.

This is actually one of his more readily enjoyable albums, even if it's a little less adventurous most of the records from his long-running Pan•American project.

The album's wordless songs are almost as riveting as their counterparts.

There's a fine line drawn between pastiche and surefire songwriting, and the group straddle it deftly.

It's invigorating, vulnerable and, at times, uncomfortably raw.

The album is not only one that fans will cherish for years to come, but it will surely be the record that draws a whole new generation of fans into her deeply personal, and always captivating, world.

Quivering In Time is a kaleidoscopic sequence of house music tunes that tend to blend into one another, sounding more like a DJ mix than a typical electronic album.

Voigt's mix of art music, techno and classical, of fairy tales and field recordings, feels singular and timeless 25 years on. It's not Voigt's most beautiful or immersive record as GAS, but it remains a forest we can all get lost in.

Rhinestones is a skeletal, mostly acoustic continuation of this sound, gripping in its own mysterious, quiet way.

At its best, the LP touches on the dizzying maximalism that made past records so thrilling. But at other times it treads the same ground as the healing frequency meditation videos that proliferate on YouTube.

One of the most adventurous in recent memory.

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.

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.

Anyone who's seen her DJ could tell you about the confrontational aggression she hasn't yet captured on an official album. KicK iii tries, pushing the choppy, freeform and unrelenting part of Arca to the fore and pulverizing the listener over its brief, 36-minute runtime.

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.

By drawing energy from Garcia’s abundant source, these remixers try to answer those questions in their own respective sonic languages, offering intriguing answers and new ways to hear Garcia's potent energy.

Sinephro's spaces not only feel full of life, they're built with the very sounds of it, too, reminding us not to take it for granted.