Culture is, of course, in a constant state of churn, with artists revisiting, reinterpreting and sometimes rehabilitating moments from the past. From "Stranger Things" to, well, mashups, artistic meaning is forever in flux; even the very notions of what's good and what's bad seem to tip over each other endlessly, with new context or framing. There's a certain joy in the disorientation: I find my own cultural touchstones, long-disavowed favorites from childhood or awkward teens, baffled 20s or overworked 30s reappearing over and over in new and fascinating ways. Things I once liked, then decided were dumb, or just forgot, are picked up by adventurous, unashamed artists and given new life, new purpose. Nostalgia in the rediscovery is of course a core part of the enjoyment; and I'd hypothesize that the ethos of electronic music, maybe more than most genres, foregrounds with honesty these endless layers of quotation.

What a joy, then, to see Norwegian artist Jenny Hval, whose 2016 album Blood Bitch ended up in my top ten of that year, turn towards the guilty pleasure of, well, mid-'90s trance music. I know, I know. While I'd say that some have overstated the sonic contrast between Practice of Love and her previous work—"Conceptual Romance" has an clear element of major chord lightness—Hval made her intentions explicit in interviews, stating her goals were clarity, elevation, and transcendence. It also happens to result in an album which seems to balance pop and the avant garde effortlessly, both accessible and adventurous.

Part of that balance is of course its subject matter, an often heartwrenching and often delightful exploration of, well, love, and all that means, returning over and over to reproduction, intimacy, identity. The album's credits are all apparently female, and topics are sometimes female-centric in a way that still feels radical. The title track with its layers of spoken word hones in on the notion that a woman without a child has to accept that she's not the "main character" of the human story, and "Red Cannas" travels through history to evoke Georgia O'Keefe and Amelia Earheart. But the breadth of subject matter, from birth to death, evokes not so much a "feminist" work but more that of a bemused alien looking down to write an anthropology of our strange species. Track one, "Lions," even seems to make this explicit, opening the album with an invitation to study every detail of our planet; grass, clouds, raindrops on leaves, the existence of God.

More about the soaring "Accident" below, but the notions of identity and purpose explored on Practice are both female-centered and universal, making it feel like an absolutely essential statement in 2019. All of it, naturally, floats over a hyperspeed beat and flanged arpeggios, offering a joyous sense of wonder to permeate the album. The final track, "Ordinary," celebrates "giving in" to ordinariness, cliches of sunlight, marriage, the curves of a face. But of course there's nothing ordinary about each of our loves and sorrows, mothers and daughters, lives and deaths. For those of us who have felt excluded, marginalized, or unworthy, however, witnessing ourselves and our stories made ordinary, given the space to think of ourselves as protagonists of humanity, is both profoundly moving and necessary, and a joy to behold.

While some called ANIMA a tough album to consider as a whole due to "Dawn Chorus" at its center, a song which had reached near mythical status among Radiohead fans, I think the album's structure allows the it to be more like a solar system rotating around a dark star, each planet fascinating in its own right.

Yorke's third solo effort seems to benefit from fewer cooks in the kitchen, a collaboration mostly with longtime producer Nigel Godrich, inspired partially by Flying Lotus' use of loops and improvisation, and evoking contemporary cutting-edge electronica from James Holden to Floating Points. Of course, thematically, it's not going to land far from Radiohead, and the album is suffused with what we all know and love about those guys: darkness, longing, grief, cries of anguish at both macro and micro scale injustices. But the sonic focus means that ANIMA, for really the first time in Yorke's career, stands apart from Radiohead as a clear statement of purpose as a solo artist.

Like ANIMA, Magdalene has a masterpiece of a song in "Cellophane," whose devastating pleas evoke heartbreak both simply and profoundly. But its sonic palette is far more restrained than Yorke's adventurousness. While twigs' work has often confounded critics (and she herself has noted how her genre "assignment" seemed to change when her racial identity was revealed), Magdalene seems to have reached a kind of tipping point, where a crowd of electronic producers from Skrillex to Oneohtrix Point Never managed to combine forces under her leadership into something truly uncategorizable: a kind of cosmic future ambient opera. This starkness allows twigs' voice to take center stage, and she lays bare truly biblical trauma, both emotional and physical. While critics compare twigs' singular vision and expressive voice to Kate Bush and Bjork, her ability to operate authentically in the spaces of contemporary hip hop and R&B means the album never seems to lose focus and listenability, and makes Magdalene something wholly unique.

Okay, sure, to paraphrase the (lovingly?) mocking criticism of "Black Mirror," "what if phones but too much," this album can easily be caricatured as "what if progressive house but no beats." It's not a new idea, dropping the omnipresent kick drum from dance music to see what remains, but it's explored on Utility in a way that feels both new and richly rewarding. The Berlin producer and Leisure System resident doesn't let the lack of an insistent, body-moving thud let the music slither off into ambience or noodly chaos; on the contrary, there's a laser focus on uplift and movement, with gorgeous tones reverberating ecstatically amongst twinkling pads. The "utility" of the title seems to lay clear a goal as a piece of art to be used, not just appreciated; the album's staccato chords and spaciousness reminds me of one of my very first favorite albums, Individual Choice by French artist Jean-Luc Ponty, which had a similar effect. I brought a cassette of Choice along on a school trip when I was 14, and when a friend felt nauseous from the back-and-forth of the bus ride, I had the idea to offer her my Walkman with the Ponty cassette within. An hour later, she thanked me, as the album's hypnotic atmosphere helped calm her without being somnolescent, stimulating without being aggressive. While I haven't tested Utility in a similar fashion, it's a good bet it could bring a similar calm, despite any twists and turns.

Tapped to open for The xx on tour in 2017, the British musician (and neuroscientist!) stripped down his performance gear to just a drum machine and a Buchla synthesizer, playing mostly improvisational solo sets for the crowds. Returning to the studio, this setup remained the core of his production gear for Crush (although additional gear and a string section filled things out sonically). While I appreciated his 2015 album Elaenia, Crush is both more aggressive and, oddly, more lovely. Moments of Aphex Twin-esque intensity are balanced by interludes of serenity, and dark, stormy Burial-like moods give way to straight up bangers like "LesAlpx." It's the sound of a producer operating at the peak of his powers, confidently asserting a unique and compelling vision.

While the SoCal artist has long been associated with the winking antics of Odd Future, on the sprawling IGOR he successfully incorporates his prankster and emotional sides in an album that reorients contemporary genres around itself. Let's be clear, Tyler has never said words like "I'm gay," but there's an unmissable and honest queerness around the album's desperate heartbreak, the impact of which is somehow only enhanced by Jerrod Carmichael's intermittent narration. Sonically, the album is a raucous mishmash, with thrilling twists and turns, from the throwback hip hop of "EARFQUAKE" to the dirty vinyl disco of "I THINK" to the album's centerpiece, the wonky "GONE, GONE / THANK YOU," whose six minutes trip from "Hey Ya" doubletime to blippy future bass. It's all both surreal and eminently relateable, expressing how the pain of longing can make us feel deformed and monstrous.

Devastating grief can pick you up and drop you in a faraway land. You come to, alone, on a parched, windswept plain, dark mountains in the distance, and the only solution is to get up and start walking, to find your way back, carrying with you tales and myths to comfort and guide you on the way. Nick Cave's 18th album is his first fully written and recorded after the 2015 death of his 15-year-old son, and this unimaginable loss finds Cave in an entirely new place, a land of devastating pain and soaring beauty. Traditional instrumentation has been abandoned, and the ambient soundscapes give backdrop to varying fantasias of the afterlife, "madnesses," as he called them in an open letter to a fan, "that we in our anguish will into existence." As an open-eyed journey into grief, it's almost unbearably painful, but its sheer beauty, and even, at times, whimsy, helps show a path back from devastation, and in its uniqueness, it feels, strangely, like the purest distillation of Cave's work yet.

The British-African producer has produced two well-received albums before this one, but with its all-caps exclamation of his own Ugandan last name, his third is his most confident and purposeful. Incorporating classic soul, afrobeat and lush psychedelia, the sound feels timeless, of a piece with both Curtis Mayfield and Tame Implala. While the album lays bare his personal struggles (and recent uncertainty about even continuing with music), it's historically aware, with tracks like "Hero" and "Another Human Bring" nodding to ongoing civil rights struggles. Amazingly, what emerges is hopeful and energized, with album closer "Light" announcing "All of my fears are gone, baby, gone."

I was entranced by Muzi's single "Stimela SeGolide" when it came out in May (more about that track below), but it's a tribute to the South African artist's productivity that his subsequent album doesn't even need that track and it's still great. There are nods across Zeno (named after his first born son) to African genres like kwaito and maskandi, but whatever Muzi touches bubbles with brightness and wonder. Like an African Kaytranada, Muzi has an instinctive touch with hypnotic, beguiling chords, whether mellow ("Let Me Build") or funky ("A Day In Paris"). Album centerpiece "Mncane" ("Young") features a thrilling four chord pattern that sends shivers up the spine, under gentle exhortations to (according to Google Translate) "love the child/to grow up and become beautiful."

As I write this, news has just broken that Paul Woolford has just released his fourth album under the Special Request name this year, and I'd like to apologize for writing and posting this dumb list instead of listening to it. Woolford's prolific release schedule is extreme, but less unusual than it used to be: streaming's endless playlist churn (sorry!) has led some artists and labels (not naming names) to seemingly throw buckets of releases every week at the wall, in the hope that something sticks. However, a few artists like Woolford have flowered in this reality, allowing them to explore their multiple, varied creative impulses and take us along for the thrilling ride. Woolford himself has called Offworld "softer" than his sometimes blistering output, but there's still an exquisite tension across the album's mostly freestyle-esque, syncopated beats. It's all a bit like the chill of Gus Gus vs. T-World meets the outer space themes (and humor) of The Orb. More on album opener "237,000 Miles" below, but no track I heard out this year caused more crowd ecstasy.