Issue 106

It's surprising that it's taken this many years for HNNY to release a feature-length album, but it was worth the wait. With Sunday, he continues his experimentation with gospel music and traditional soul remixes, but places them beside his more traditional house music tracks. At his best, HNNY seems to mould old music to an electronic soundscape that's just as challenging and emotionally challenging as the soul and gospel music he samples. Read more.

Majical Cloudz' Are You Alone? is a contemplative, introspective record that sounds like approaching autumn. It's quiet and calm, almost at peace with its sadness, but it is sad and lonely. It's not a danceable electronic record, but it's a record of electronic textures. And it's beautiful. Read more.

Although the album's title would indicate otherwise, Deerhunter find a lot of new spaces to explore on Fading Frontier, finally creating an album worthy of all the acclaim they've been receiving. Read more.

Ludovico Einaudi's Elements is a modern classic of a classical record, which reveals his depth at a composer and his ability to give sonic texture to "the edges of things," as he described it. It's rare that a classical composer can make a record this utterly compelling, and rarer still that it feels so human in its attempt to describe the indescribable. Read more.

JJ Grey & Mofro have put out the very definition of a southern-rock record. There's a bit of country twang in their blues rock sound that makes this sound more experienced and authentic than many of today's modern southern-rock imitators, but ultimately, what they've done is made a great party rock record. Country Ghetto would sound amazing live. Read more.