After a five year silence, Matthew Arnold returns and thrusts it right in our $%@#ing faces. The last time I marveled at Arnold was with his 2004 album Sinking. After Merck shut down, I mourned the loss of artists left stranded amidst the disintegrating landscape of dying labels. Now, out of nowhere, Arnold drops another bomb for us. The album plays like a trip through a slinky, wobbling down the psychedelic stairs. Using some familiar sounds from Sinking, Arnold teases us with a few intelligent progressions and then slams a dark electro beat, full of 303-esque acid bass and dazzling arpeggios. Experts will pick up on the analog sounds of Nord Modular and the unmistakable flavor of x0xb0x. The percussion is solid, tight, and very satisfying, ranging from electro patterns to the unrestricted domains of IDM and beatless ambient. "Leaving Burning Man" uses an accented bass line to set the progressing melody beneath the swirling ambient sweeps. And the mind bending twists of glitching and stuttering rhythms of "Information Doubling" nod to the sound of Autechre. Even my nostalgic love for all the scents of 303 gets satisfied with an occasional prairie dogging of sound hiding just beneath the surface. And while the beat carries the movement forward, hazy melodies break through electrified cobwebs of sound to leave their unforgettable imprint.

Beach House return with their third album, and it's their best yet. Beach House received a lot of hype with their self-titled debut, and it didn't quite deliver on the promise I felt. 2008's Devotion certainly had some highs, but failed to hold me as an album. With Teen Dream, there are none of these problems. The album is consistently high quality, never drowning or boring, and finds ways to be interesting at just about every second. Once you finish the album, it's surprising how remarkable it is. I know a lot of people are going to say I've already tried that band, but Teen Dream is the time to try again.

There's a new genre in town! And as is always the case, online music journalists and bloggers immediately came up with an assortment of completely ridiculous names for it (chill-wave, glo-fi); roughly, detuned-'80s-cassette-esque music created by solitary bedroom producers, which is invariably warm, relaxed, playful, electronically manipulated, and contains some combination of beats, vocals, and guitar. Most of these guys (Neon Indian, Memory Cassette, Washed Out, Toro y Moi, etc.) know each other, remix each other, and tour together, and each covers a different angle with the same set of tools. Anyway, this is all just a long way of saying that "Life of Leisure" is far and away the best release in the genre thus far; Washed Out is more on the shoegaze-ish/pop side of glo-fi, and the quality here is just astounding. The limited vinyl run of 2000 copies sold out very quickly, and I can see why.

I hadn't really heard of Oneohtrix Point Never before Wire magazine named 'Rifts' the #1 album of 2009, so I gave him a shot - it turns out that I'm at least familiar with the subgenre (he's loosely a part of the whole Keith Fullerton Whitman / Room40 ambient/musique concrete crowd), but certainly hadn't ever encountered anything quite like this material. The best way to describe 'Rifts' (a massive compilation of choice tracks drawn from all previous OPN output) is "new age ambient," but without any cheesiness; equal parts drone, dissonance, and breathtaking beauty.

Do Make Say Think return with another album, this time going back to their roots. Four long, instrumental tracks. Less vocals to divert your attention from their attention to detail on their own instruments, though some are present at the beginning of "Make". In the opener "Do", What starts off pretty unmenacing becomes full on shred halfway, with guitars being joined by horns before the denouement slows things down. "Make" has a very gardual build-up, where again the horns usher in the climax with guitars. To those who loved the new direction on "You, You're A History in Rust", this may not be exciting and "old hat", but it's refreshing hearing Do Make Say Think just do their thing instead of worrying about appeal or innovation. "Say" has an extremely cool groove, with jazzy drums and light guitar that blooms into something more at times then retreats back. "Think" is very serene, but has something strangely captivating with its occasional guitar flairs. It's a song I could easily have seen being on Squarepusher's Ultravisitor.

At last a second installment to 2007’s famed Beat Dimensions compilation, presented and compiled by Cinnaman and Jay Scarlett. Beat Dimensions Vol. 1 is considered a landmark compilation in the future beats movement among many producers worldwide. Acts such as Hudson Mohawke, Mweslee and Onra were present for the initial installment. Beat Dimensions Vol. 2 has finally arrived in full length format picking up where Vol. 1 left off. Initially, I wasn’t too impressed with the 12” singles preceding the full length release. Now that I’ve been able to sit down with Vol. 2, the compilation as a whole holds up real well when comparing to Vol. 1, especially if you are familiar with the various styles of the future beats movement. Representatives of the movement such as Mike Slott with his cruising, space-age theme “Cadeting” or Devon’s experimental library music sounding “Welts” push the boundaries of the genre to new dimensions and ideas. Overall the tone of Vol. 2 is much like Vol. 1—spacey, futuristic, synth-heavy, off-kilter beats. Some of the most interesting tracks come from relatively unknowns: Zo aka La Chauve-Souris, Kenlo Craqnuques and Busy. Other notables and established names include: Dorian Concept, Nosaj Thing, Mono/Poly, Samiyam, Low Limit, Ras G, Fulgeance, Exile among others. Highly recommended.

Kel McKeown returns with his third album after last year's Ex-Aquarium. I first became aware of Kelpe with his debut album Sea Inside Body. His aquatic themes and pure electronic sound were very captivating. When he returned four years later with Ex-Aquarium, the aquatic obsession was still there, but an influence by actual instruments totally transformed his sound (in a good way) in that it almost sounded like two different artists. Cambio Wechsel seems to have merged the sounds of those two albums. He also pulls some retro funk samples into the mix in a very compelling way. It seems to blend perfectly into his sound's aesthetic. Squelchy bass is the backbone of Cambio Wechsel, which gives the album a much more hip-hop vibe than Ex-Aquarium, which came across as more folktronic to me, but Kel takes it away from the normal dirty hip-hop setting as much as is possible, converging it with the aforementioned funk, as well as folk, jazz, psychedelia, and kraut-rock. The overall effect is funky without being clubby. It's a totally new sound, and that's what Kelpe has been missing before, its own sound. With Sea Inside Body, it sounded like a lot of other IDM at the time. With Ex-Aquarium, it sounded like Four Tet. With Cambio Wechsel, it sounds like Kelpe.

Jeff McIlwain drops the "Icl" again for his latest album on Ghostly. For those of you who've followed the Lusine projects over the years, "Lusine Icl" is typically reserved for Jeff's more ambient work, and "Lusine" for his more beta-oriented work. That formula doesn't change here, as A Certain Distance certainly has more in common with 2004's classic Serial Hodgepodge than 2007's Language Barrier (soon to be a classic I'm sure). Those two albums cemented McIlwain as a standout artist that is a flexible as he innovative. His understanding of ambience and thump shapes his works on both projects in a way that's clearly distinguishable from anyone else. As with everything on Ghostly these days, there's a commercial angle here with the single "Two Dots", with its echoed samples/vocals. It's not something I would expect from Lusine, but it works. These types of vocals appear throughout the album, and they're actually a nice accent to Lusine's sound. As with any Lusine album, there's some hip-hopesque beat experimentation going on, and it's wrapped in a Techno-IDM framework. A slightly more poppy Lusine, but still another good record from a true talent.

Bibio just continues to churn out quality in what has become his breakout year. Two albums and now two EP's, this one with new tracks and so many remixes it's basically another full length. The new tracks start the show, and are fantastic. The title track perfects the folk-hop template while maintaining an energy most tracks in this style can't compete with. It bleeds directly into "Rotten Rudd", which slows things down before becoming an athemic sing-a-long. "Steal The Lamp" retreats from a Jaga Jazzist style opening into a Squarepusher style DNB freakout at the end, showing Bibio still has more sounds he's willing to tackle. On the remixes side, highlights are Lone's effort, which throws the original sounds into a blender halfway in to create a smoothed out hip-hop groove. Leatherette's cut-up, pitchshifted version of "LOver's Carvings" takes some getting used to, but its lounge feel is too cool to be denied. Another highlight is Bibio's own rework of "Palm Of Your Wave", which takes the original tune to new heights. Another excellent release.

Justin Levy finally follows up his breakout album as DJ Signify Sleep No More with Of Cities, a hard nosed urban instrumental hip-hop album that completely eschews current trends in the hip-hop scene coming out of LA. Don't expect the wonk or style hopping of Flying Lotus at play here. Of Cities is much grittier and more focused. Coming from Brooklyn, this album almost plays like a defense of territory or a statement against the West Coast's influence on instrumental hi-hop. Of Cities is ambience for the city streets, the percussion of stepping in puddles, the sound of not having an umbrella in the rain. Aesop Rock appears here, and his vocals fit neatly with Signify's sound. Overall, I think the album fits somewhere in between the sounds of Blockhead and Deceptikon, firmly in the tradition of the genre, with a harder edge than anything I've been hearing in this space in quite a while. This album may not excite some for that reason, but for me, it's actually refreshing to hear the East Coast alive again.