Quality Brc

From album to album, Juliana Barwick's music is both consistently gorgeous and expressive of the subtlest change in her creative process. While Healing Is a Miracle is just as transporting as her previous work, it also reflects the shifts in her life when she made it. Not only had she moved to Los Angeles after 16 years in New York, but the vocal improvisations that became the album's foundations were the first music she'd made for herself after years of commissioned projects. A feeling of reclaiming and recovery comes from within and without on Healing Is a Miracle. Barwick gets support from some longtime friends and new neighbors, and as always, she's a generous collaborator who fully melds her style with other artists…

The project of experimental musician Daniel Lopatin, Oneohtrix Point Never explores how history, memory, and music intersect in retro synth reveries and more complex works. The flowing electronics of OPN's early albums - which were gathered in the acclaimed 2009 collection Rifts - suggested Lopatin was an heir to Tangerine Dream. However, he soon revealed other layers to his music with a string of releases that reflected his interest in high art as well as pop-culture artifacts including video games, science fiction, anime, and advertising (which Lopatin sampled cleverly on 2011's Replica). After signing to Warp Records, Oneohtrix Point Never only grew more adventurous with albums like 2015's Garden of Delete, an improbable yet moving fusion of metal, trance, R&B, and Top 40 pop. During this time, Lopatin also became an award-winning film composer…

At over two hours long, Feast/Beast is a thorough reminder of how prolific a remixer Clark was during the 2000s and 2010s. It also reaffirms just how versatile a sound-shaper he is: while there's definitely an aesthetic holding even the wildest moments here together, he never takes exactly the same approach on any two songs. The names represented on Feast/Beast are almost as wide-ranging as the way he refashions tracks for them. Obviously, his remixes for some of the bigger artists are among the standouts, but he's just as creative in his work for lesser-known acts. Not surprisingly, some of the highlights come from his collaborations with fellow Warp artists, whether he's remixing them or vice versa; the Clark tracks remixed by his friends offer yet another perspective on his music…

Winter in July can be a strange combination. Released in May of 2001, but seeing hype and sales in June and July, Chris Clark's Clarence Park is a frostingly cold glimpse at what winter feels like – even if one listens to it during the dog days of relentless sun. Big reverberated beats transform into a crisp sound experiment, synth washes cut and skate alongside and in between breakbeat scientology, and sound sculpture paints imagery of glacier-like masses floating along in the sea minding their own business. Albeit not sounding especially original, and having an immense amount of pressure to do so, Clark turns in a fine debut of sensitive and cerebrally brash material that sits comfortably alongside some of the better records of 2001.

Spinning through 29 tracks (+ Bonus track for Japan) in just under 50 minutes, Scott Herren's sixth proper LP as Prefuse 73 offers more of the same musical madness for fans of his no-attention-span cut-ups - and that's a good thing. With remarkably few guests and remarkably few samples (at least recognizable ones), it's basic Prefuse material, but with dozens of ideas and delicious dead ends. Anyone looking for a differentiator between this and recent Prefuse material may look in vain, but there's slightly more electro than hip-hop going on here. Also, as in the past, there are occasional glimpses of his other projects bleeding through. Beginning with "DEC. Machine Funk All ERA's," with its airy introduction and female vocal samples, Herren reels off a series of tracks that switch back and forth between cavernous hip-hop and airy folktronica with vocal samples, all the time spending less than two minutes per cut…

Warp20 (Chosen) placed the track selection process in the hands of fans, who voted online with the option to add messages like "This song makes you feel like a proud parent, à la John Hurt in the movie Alien," as reprinted throughout the booklet. The ten tracks (+ bonus track for Japan) that received the most votes make up the first disc. After track five, the disc makes a swift transition from covering exemplary material (Aphex Twin's bent lounge-porn single "Windowlicker," Boards of Canada's eerie yet blissful "Roygbiv"), to looking more like a sampler of recent releases (from Plaid's "Eyen" to Clark's "Herzog," all 2001-2006 territory). The 14 tracks on the second disc were picked by label co-founder Steve Beckett…

On his fourth full-length release, Preparations, Glitch-hop king Guillermo Scott Herren, better known as Prefuse 73, shows that emigrating to Barcelona has not dissociated him from his fountain of sonic inspiration. The former Atlanta, Georgia, phenom continues to blaze a trail for Prefuse that stands distinct from his other projects (Savath & Savalas, Delarosa & Asora, etc.). With contributions from Tobias Lilja, Battles drummer John Stanier, and Secret Machines offshoot School of Seven Bells, Herren crafts a multi-hued, constantly shifting prism of electronic sound that's always propulsive and visceral, but frequently gorgeous in its juxtaposition of atmosphere and angularity. The album was released both on its own and with a bonus disc, as Preparations & Interregnums.

Inherent to the tradition of his past and present influences, Guillermo Scott Herren (aka Prefuse 73) has delivered Golden Pollen, an album that explores a wealth of history and exceeds all expectation. The songs featured on this album, some of the first Herren has written with only himself as the primary vocalist, are indicative of a lush, organic texture that reflect mainly on the very personal and transparent nature of their arrangements. Recorded over a period of isolation, these songs enabled Herren to let go of inhibitions and reflect on ideas of love, beauty, and sentiment, becoming common themes for the album itself. Golden Pollen represents a period of change and self-searching that occur to many, but very few are capable of translating these experiences with such poignancy…

Spinning through 29 tracks (+ Bonus track for Japan) in just under 50 minutes, Scott Herren's sixth proper LP as Prefuse 73 offers more of the same musical madness for fans of his no-attention-span cut-ups - and that's a good thing. With remarkably few guests and remarkably few samples (at least recognizable ones), it's basic Prefuse material, but with dozens of ideas and delicious dead ends. Anyone looking for a differentiator between this and recent Prefuse material may look in vain, but there's slightly more electro than hip-hop going on here. Also, as in the past, there are occasional glimpses of his other projects bleeding through. Beginning with "DEC. Machine Funk All ERA's," with its airy introduction and female vocal samples, Herren reels off a series of tracks that switch back and forth between cavernous hip-hop and airy folktronica with vocal samples, all the time spending less than two minutes per cut…