Back in 2006, when we began rounding up our favourite albums of the year, we published a list of five LPs. (Booka Shade came in first, followed by The Knife.) 13 years later, the idea of selecting just five albums come year-end feels cruel, given the sheer volume of inspiring music we've tuned into these past 12 months. This year's selection of 39 LPs, compiled by our global team of staff and editors, is culled from the 287 album reviews we published on the site this year. It is presented below as an unranked list, ending with our 2019 album of the year.

These records capture an intriguing moment in the history of electronic music. There are producers from the usual electronic hotbeds—Detroit, Berlin, London, New York—alongside artists from Shanghai, Montreal, Lisbon and Moscow. Some are informed by political turmoil and the climate emergency. Others want only to make you dance. We hope that, together, they provide a vivid snapshot of electronic music in 2019.

- Loraine James
  For You And I
  Hyperdub
  
  For You And I was born in the daydream of a girl gazing out the window of the estate tower on its cover. As Loraine James recently told Pitchfork, her Hyperdub debut is an intensely personal album, exploring the forces, good and bad, that shape her existence as a queer black woman in London. Jagged and smooth, anxious and romantic, swiftly skating through glitch, ambient and grime, it's as fresh and addictive as anything the London label's put out for years.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- DJ Nigga Fox
  Cartas Na Manga
  Príncipe
  
  On Cartas Na Manga, the wild energy that ran through Rogério Brandão's trailblazing records for Príncipe and Warp was funnelled into something darker and woozier. Tracks like "Água Morna" presented a slower take on Brandão's trademark batida-inspired rhythms, while "Sub Zero" and "Nhama" plunged deeper into the Angolan-born, Lisbon-based artist's exceptional percussion toolkit. With Afrodiasporic sounds shaking clubs and festivals everywhere from Los Angeles to Kampala, Cartas Na Manga marked Brandão as a leading light for this global community.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Efdemin
  New Atlantis
  Ostgut Ton
  
  On New Atlantis, Efdemin achieved a subtle landmark, merging the experimental impulses of the records he makes as Phillip Sollmann with the sublime melodic techno he's built his name on. Fantastical instruments like the "sing-drum" waft in and out of the mix, giving the album an otherworldly feel befitting its inspiration, an unfinished 17th-century work of utopic fiction. New Atlantis was Efdemin's first album for Ostgut Ton, and it played a crucial part in the Berghain-affiliated label's extraordinary year.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Coil
  The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex +2
  Musique Pour La Danse
  
  Coil are best-known for occult experiments in electronic music, but this brilliant reissue from Musique Pour La Danse captures a lesser-known side of the English: their early '90s flirtation with dance music. What was originally written to soundtrack an educational film about gay sex from 1992 ended up becoming one of 2019's unlikeliest hits, and no wonder—the New Age sheen, Balearic tempo and trippy vocal hooks make each of these songs irresistible. A lush introduction to one of electronic music's most important bands.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Spotify / Soundcloud

Coil - The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex

RA's Andrew Ryce talks about the history of Coil's The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex during October's edition of the Critics Roundtable podcast.

- Nkisi
  7 Directions
  UIQ
  
  7 Directions feels at once ancient and futuristic. Nkisi's rhythms tap into the eternal beat of Congolese percussion music but the aesthetic presentation is hypermodern. There are also retrofuturisms in the mix, too—her pads often recall the stargazing drama of Detroit techno, while the white-knuckled intensity of hardcore bristles beneath the surface. For all its time- and space-spanning richness, the execution is powerfully spartan, making this an economical but profound world-building experience.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Various
  30 Years Of Rage Part 1 & 2
  Above Board Projects
  
  30 Years Of Rage, a four-part compilation by Fabio and Grooverider, is the story of how jungle came to be. The London club night's music policy was far from a straight line through the "hardcore continuum"—besides the conveyor belt of British post-acid-house records, the compilation includes Plus 8 anthems, Frankie Bones breakbeats and, as Joe Muggs wrote, "off-its-tits sunrise house." The set shows not only the fertile conditions for jungle's emergence, but that it took Fabio and Grooverider's imaginative DJing to bring it to life.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Spotify
- Anthony Naples
  Fog FM
  ANS
  
  If Anthony Naples' last album was made for low-key afterparties, Fog FM rewinds (or fast-forwards) to a heaving dance floor. It's pitch-black and someone has been going OTT with the smoke machine. The tunes are detailed and twisted, full of strange melodies, zippy rhythms and slamming basslines. You feel disorientated yet at ease. Later in the night, the music softens to house. There's even some ambient. From open till close, you're completely lost in the music.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Ossia
  Devil's Dance
  Blackest Ever Black
  
  Devil's Dance was the year's best dub techno record. The form, though, was a radical departure from the Basic Channel school. Ossia's first album essentially reimagined the style as a rootsier product of Bristol rather than Berlin. What also set the album apart was its supernatural bent, a detached unreality comparable to films like Jacob's Ladder and Enter The Void. Whether on heavyweight thudders like "Hell Dub," the hall-of-mirrors sax of "Rubble" or the 23-minute driftathon "Vertigo," Devil's Dance evoked something like an out-of-body experience.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Octo Octa
  Resonant Body
  T4T LUV NRG
  
  Each of Maya Bouldry-Morrison's albums mirrors her journey as a trans woman in a deeply personal way. Where her earlier records were moody and introverted, her third LP, Resonant Body, finds a new sense of empowerment. Released through T4T LUV NRG, the label she launched this year with her partner, Eris Drew, Resonant Body serves up vintage breaks and joyous house jams, further fueled by love-preaching vocals. As the artist said in an interview: "This record is different from my other ones, mostly because I'm just happier than I've been."
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Lifted
  2
  PAN
  
  Getting talented musicians in a room and expecting great things to happen often leads to disappointment. The joy of 2, the second album by Lifted, is that it seems to have much humbler aspirations. The music, loosely inspired by ECM-style jazz, flows like a rambling, beers-round-the-sofa chat among friends, the instruments interplaying with a conversational rhythm. The players— Max D, Jeremy Hyman, Motion Graphics, Matt Papich—could have been a leftfield-house supergroup. But that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- E-Saggila
  My World My Way
  Northern Electronics
  
  Techno, gabber, noise, breakcore, with the occasional metal shriek thrown in—whatever My World My Way is exactly, it's more DIY basement show than European nightclub. In fact, it makes most club music look woefully safe, which might explain how it landed on Northern Electronics, the label co-run by techno's enfant terrible, Varg. Awe-inducing in its power and chaos, My World My Way has an attitude you might wish was more common in electronic music.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud

E-Saggila

On making My World My Way

"I definitely wanted to make this not like a proper techno album. I don't only listen to underground punk and noise, I'm into mainstream pop and dancehall and reggaeton. It inspires me to work differently and not just have the same foundation of making a techno track. It just helps me to look through a broader spectrum of how to reduce."

- Oli XL
  Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer
  Bloom
  
  "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?" The line is borrowed from Beck's 1994 hit "Loser," but it sounds right at home on Oli XL's debut album, which is anxious, self-deprecating, funny and banging in equal measure. Homing in on a unique sound that combines the skip of UK garage and the autotuned lilt of modern hip-hop, the Swedish artist puts an irresistibly funky spin on bedroom pop.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Moor Mother
  Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes
  Don Giovanni
  
  On her most striking album yet, Camae Ayewa weaves slave narratives, experimental jazz and negro spiritual samples into an end result that is equal parts haunting and empowering. Her knack for poetics and storytelling shines as she unfurls stories dispelling linear notions of time, intimately conveying the rage and anxiety of our political climate. On Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes Ayewa channels this fury into a fiery call for mobilization, backed up with buzzing modular sounds that feel like they're carrying you through space and time.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- PTU
  Am I Who I Am
  Trip
  
  It's never been easier to break the rules than it is today. But acts of creative rebellion can often sound unfocused or even immature. Am I Who I Am, from the Russian duo PTU, might at first seem like that sort of LP, but there's a loose philosophy that governs this mad record. PTU are residents of "techno's strange sector"—the album's strength is that this description feels like an understatement. But for all the LP's weirdo impulses (it's introduced by a cyborg reading 1984) what stood out most in PTU's uniquely odd world was a cheeky, Cheshire Cat charisma.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Sarah Davachi
  Pale Bloom
  W.25TH
  
  For Pale Bloom, Sarah Davachi reduced her music down to its barest essence—classical solo piano—and then, one by one, carefully added hallmarks from her discography of otherworldly drone music. The LP gradually develops with swirls of organ, hums of string and quivering vocals, starting from nothing and growing into something intricate and complex. It's the most difficult, intense and rewarding album from an artist whose music rings loudest at its most quiet and tender.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Floating Points
  Crush
  Ninja Tune
  
  Sam Shepherd is the cleverest composer to emerge from UK dance music this decade. But Crush succeeds by tempering his studious impulses with a dash of raw energy. Written in just a few weeks, Crush shows Shepherd trusting his impulses. His cultivated take on harmony still dominates, but it feels all the richer alongside rough and tumble drum work. And unlike his debut album, Elaenia, it treats us to genuine Flo Po floor-fillers, too.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud

Find out how Floating Points used the Yamaha CS70 to create "Requiem For CS70 And Strings" from his new album, Crush.

- Bogdan Raczynski
  Rave 'Till You Cry
  Disciples
  
  Bogdan Raczynski's madcap personality cloaks his music in absurdity. But beneath the hooligan trappings, Rave 'Till You Cry is disarmingly heartfelt and diaristic. These qualities aren't often associated with so-called braindance, which makes Raczynski's complex yet slapdash music oddly intimate. In today's professionalised dance music climate, wacky recluses like Raczynski come off like relics of authenticity. Rave 'Till You Cry then is a much-needed talisman for a spotlight-dodging artist who deserves all the attention he can get from new listeners discovering the Rephlex catalogue.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Boreal Massif
  We All Have An Impact
  Pessimist Productions
  
  Climate change—we're fucked, right? Pessimist and Loop Faction, AKA Boreal Massif, certainly think so. Or do they? A sense of dread hangs heavy over their excellent debut album, We All Have An Impact, evoked via icy synths, leaden trip-hop beats and track titles like "The Brink Of Extinction." But it's not all doom and gloom. Some of the LP's best moments, like the frayed guitar on "Angel Of Dub," are tender and delicate. A sliver of hope, perhaps.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Oil Of Even Pearl’s Un-Insides Remix Album
  SOPHIE
  Self-released
  
  SOPHIE's remix album is predictably iconoclastic. Technically, it's not so much a remix album as a two-part mix made entirely of her own remixes of her own tracks. It's available only on YouTube, or, naturally, with a limited-edition clutch bag. It's also wall-to-wall heat, transforming the subversive pop of her debut album into killer house and techno, bringing SOPHIE back to the dance floors where she first came to prominence.
  
  Listen: Spotify
- The Caretaker
  Everywhere At The End Of Time (Stage 6)
  History Always Favours The Winners
  
  When Leyland Kirby announced The Caretaker project was coming to a close, few could have imagined how harrowing the end would be. Everywhere At The End Of Time (Stage 6) evokes the final stage of dementia, when mental processes break down completely. The music is some of the bleakest drone you'll ever hear, with Kirby's ballroom refrains obscured by a terrifying blankness. He calls it "listenable chaos," but that depends on how listenable you find the dissolving of a mind in real-time.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Soundcloud
- Lafawndah
  Ancestor Boy
  Concordia
  
  Since she stepped onto the scene, Lafawndah's work has been steeped in the vast world of experimental club music. Her debut album is her most evocative project yet, with soft-spoken but boldly delivered sentiments on geography, identity and intimacy. Merging club, Middle Eastern rhythms, moombahton and pop with sensual R&B vocals, Ancestor Boy draws from global influences without losing its singular appeal.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Karenn
  Grapefruit Regret
  Voam
  
  We had to wait until November to get what might be 2019's best techno album, a heavy-duty double-pack from Blawan and Pariah. Released eight years after their landmark debut as Karenn, Grapefruit Regret captured what's magical about their raw, energetic sound, perhaps best reflected in the blistering highlight "Crush The Mushrooms." The pair recorded the album's eight tracks during an "intense" studio session, harnessing their extensive modular setup to create an explosive techno record.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Jenny Hval
  The Practice Of Love
  Sacred Bones Records
  
  On this striking LP for Sacred Bones, the Norwegian musician and novelist Jenny Hval dismantles abiding notions about love, digging into the historical, psychosexual and political aspects of this most essential part of the human experience. Her sound of choice is expansive dance pop that nods towards trance's euphoric potential. The combination of these elements is a triumph, an improbable inversion of love's inherent conservatism towards artistic and personal freedom.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Barker
  Utility
  Ostgut Ton
  
  There are no kicks on Sam Barker's debut LP, Utility. And yet, the album is as fit for the club as it is for deep listening, a special balance the Leisure System cofounder achieved only after more than a decade of experimentation. Using unconventional rhythms and sound design, Barker combines the euphoria of trance, the movement of techno, the expansiveness of ambient and the detail of IDM. The result is an impressive challenge to the established dance floor formula.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Various
  Fingertracks: Vol. 1
  ESP Institute
  
  In the age of reissue mania, Fingertracks Vol. 1 felt refreshingly personal, hearkening back to a specific place (Southern California) and time (the mid-to-late '00s, when Andrew Hogge shared 1000 deep cuts on lovefingers.org). Lovefingers' original list presaged the sound and attitude of the "selector" movement, but at the end of the day, it was a labor of love. From Italian minimalism to private-press psych, Fingertracks replicates the feeling of listening to records in the living room of a vastly knowledgeable friend.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud

Lovefingers

On Nuno Canavarro's Blu Terra, from Fingertracks: Vol 1

"I made this mix when I first started doing ESP Institute, it was called Golden Age, and it was all really chilled out, almost meditative stuff. I basically only made that mix because I wanted to use 'Blu Terra' as a centrepiece, everything before and after kind of hinges on this one track. This is everything I love in production—it's melodic and really uses the whole stereo spectrum. Everything has this short reverb on it, and that marimba is a little bit digital. It's insane, it's so good."

- Flying Lotus
  Flamagra
  Warp Records
  
  When big budgets and big ambitions collide, it's usually a mess. Across a string of excellent records, Flying Lotus has earned the trust to meander off-piste. Flamagra is core FlyLo: funky basswork, zig-zagging beats and sweeping strings are all present. With a starry guest cast that includes Solange, George Clinton and David Lynch, the beatmaker explores moments of lucidity and despondency that occur when you crash back down to earth from a psychedelic high. It makes for one of his most varied and compelling albums to date.
  
  Listen: Apple Music / Spotify
- MoMA Ready
  The NYC Dance Project
  Self-released
  
  "Take great care with these," MoMA Ready cautions as he introduces his second LP. "They go." With masterful sampling, The NYC Dance Project transforms long played-out classics like First Choice's "Let No Man Put Asunder" and Jeremy Sylvester's "Not a Perfect Love" into raucous new party-rockers. True to its name, The NYC Dance Project teases the ethos of New York's clubs scene from some of house's greatest classics.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Soundcloud
- Pelada
  Movimiento Para Cambio
  PAN
  
  House and punk don't often meet. Few people have considered how Marc Kinchen and Joan Jett might sound together. This is one of several unlikely ideas realised on Movimiento Para Cambio. Had the album been purely instrumental, it would still be fantastic—Tobias Rochman's tweaky spins on dembow, breakbeat, experimental pop and '90s house are a joy. Chris Vargas's vocals, however, make this LP exceptional. Whether they sing, bark or rap, one word always comes to mind: "badass."
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Caterina Barbieri
  Ecstatic Computation
  Editions Mego
  
  How many artists on this list can say they've been called "satanic" and banned from performing by the Catholic Church? You have to admire the irony. According to Caterina Barbieri, her soaring synth music actually sounds best in churches—a fact tragically overlooked by the Portuguese priest who canceled a preview of the Italian's fourth album, Ecstatic Computation. Radiant to the point of being almost overpowering, it's a rush of blissful melodies and trance-inducing arpeggios.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud

Caterina Barbieri

On modular synthesis

"The music I'm doing now is basically guitar music but with synthesizers... I wanted to make something interesting out of just one voice. If you do fast arpeggios, which is typical of the guitar, it's just a way to basically resemble the effect of a harmonic chord. So with my synthesizer I ended up developing this sort of very fast arpeggiated style to resemble the presence of harmony."

- Klein
  Lifetime
  ijn inc.
  
  Klein compared releasing Lifetime to "giving someone your diary." That this happens to be a mostly wordless album shows how expressive electronic production, and in particular sampling, can be. Lifetime is a ghost-train through Klein's inner world. Its samples (choirs, harmonicas, an overheard argument) are as loaded as they are mysterious, drifting one into the next with rhythms only occasionally rising through the murk. Tommy set expectations high, but Lifetime revealed startling depths to the London artist's sound.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- J Majik
  Full Circle
  Infrared
  
  Full Circle is as good as any of J Majik's jungle records from the '90s, which means it's flat-out amazing. He was inspired to make it after DJing for RuptureLDN, a crew whose back-to-basics ethos helped him fall in love with the good stuff all over again. The result is one of the best drum & bass albums in recent memory, full of pristine synths, wonderfully worn-out samples and the casual breakbeat brilliance of a jungle master.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- Nathan Micay
  Blue Spring
  LuckyMe
  
  What happens at a renegade rave in cyberspace? This storyline, evoked in cinematic detail, is what drives Nathan Micay's debut album Blue Spring. There are sci-fi synths and mysterious vocal samples, while the beats beneath spiral between dreamy jungle, glittering electro and anthemic trance. Though the album has plenty of emotion and fantasy, best of all are the mega bangers like "The Party We Could Have" that send Blue Spring booming through the galaxy.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Moodymann
  Sinner
  KDJ
  
  Anyone at Movement Detroit last year might remember a juicy rumour doing the rounds involving Moodymann, barbecued meat and $10 records. Turns out, it was true. The LP being sold out of Kenny Dixon, Jr.'s backyard was Sinner, a slim hodgepodge of new and old music that served as a hearty snack while fans continue to wait for his much-anticipated (and cruelly teased) next album. Ridiculously funky and soulful, with Dixon, Jr. flexing plenty on the mic, Sinner captured the Detroit maverick on exceptional form.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Carla dal Forno
  Look Up Sharp
  Kallista Records
  
  "DIY is something I stand behind quite firmly," Carla dal Forno said earlier this year. This was already clear through her fledgling label, her dedication to home recording and her skeletal, synth-laced post-punk sound. On her second album, everything felt sharper. The ambient bits hung in the air, the songs, like "So Much Better" and "Took A Long Time," were anthemic. Look Up Sharp feels like a future cult classic, a rallying cry within a modern movement of small-press pop experimentalism.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Maayan Nidam
  Sea Of Three
  Perlon
  
  Maayan Nidam has been a leader in minimal house for a decade but it took Sea Of Thee to reveal the sound she always envisioned. The result of years of studio research, it infused her spartan but suggestive productions with a new personality and connected with listeners who might otherwise never listen to a Perlon record. It has a muscular sound with a lifelike, breathing quality, but it's Nidam's nimble ideas that make it the label's most fully developed LP in years.
  
  Listen: Soundcloud

Maayan Nidam

On her studio setup

"I really like to explore the different ways I can wire the machines and processors together, so I'll switch things around every six months or so. According to what combination or flow of pieces I'm using, I'll change the location of the gear and the furniture to suit, which is why I built these shelves and the pedal board some time ago... The wooden room we're in acts like a giant speaker, and I'm often impressed with the way the pedals help to get the sound swirling around the space. There's a real physicality and presence to it."

- Madteo
  Dropped Out Sunshine
  DDS
  
  As Discogs user rmcc so eloquently put it: "Techno is all straight lines and clean cuts. Madteo draws his impression in marker pen on a dirty napkin. Absolute badman." Dropped Out Sunshine is a case in point. The latest LP from the brilliantly erratic artist is house, hip-hop, techno and downtempo, shredded and smushed into an odd, filthy, pulsing mass no one but him could possibly concoct. This is the sound of a strange and inspired talent running at full tilt.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify
- 33EMYBW
  Arthropods
  SVBKVLT
  
  China pushed experimental club music further than almost any other country this year, and Shanghai's 33EMYBW might be the most-forward thinking of them all. Her music is inspired by the scuttling movements, hard exoskeletons and segmented limbs of arthropods—spiders, crustaceans and the like. Arthropods sought to capture their world through startling samples and dazzling rhythms. Club music got weirder and weirder this year, but few records sound as genuinely new as this.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud
- Special Request
  Vortex
  Houndstooth
  
  When your plan is to release four albums in a year, the first one better be a belter. VORTEX was exactly that, a take-no-prisoners record heaving with outlandish bangers. In terms of club styles, barely a stone was left unturned, with nods to gabber, techno, house, breakbeat and jungle. The whole thing could've ended up a noisy mess were it not for Paul Woolford's exquisite sound design and hard-earned understanding for what makes dance floors boot off.
  
  Listen: Bandcamp / Apple Music / Soundcloud

2019

Album of the year

FKA twigs
MAGDALENE
Young Turks

You can't talk about FKA twigs' music without talking about everything else. In the age of social media and creative directors, Tahliah Barnett's multimedia presence is one of pop music's most cohesive, most unconventional and, in the ultimate sense, coolest. MAGDALENE proves this more than ever. The project, thematically rooted in the sacred and profane, is a performance that extends far beyond the music. To bring it to life, Barnett learned to pole dance and sword fight. She tap-danced on tour. She shot her most alien and otherworldly music videos. She filmed stunning acoustic versions surrounded by classical art. Her fashion, too, all linked back to the project. For months we saw visuals of her in baroque gowns and court jester-inspired couture. In the video for "Cellophane," she donned crystal stilettos that scraped like knives across the floor.

The dancing, costumes and sheer size of the project echo the workaholic hustle of a Gaga or Beyoncé. But the reality of twigs' music is much more experimental, closer to a Kate Bush or Björk. This mix of star power has in turn attracted some of electronic music's boldest contemporaries to work on MAGDALENE. Nicolas Jaar, Skrillex and Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never) are listed as co-producers. Arca and Hudson Mohawke are in the credits, too. Together, they've arrived at a genre-defying mix of classical and electronic music. It's also one of the most modern and polished records in recent memory.

At the center of it all is twigs' vulnerable soprano. She focuses on one topic: heartbreak. Despite the music's grand and theatrical presentation, herein lies its simple pop pleasure. MAGDALENE is a universal breakup album, done artfully. On top of gorgeous instrumental flourishes and hushed electronic parts, twigs pores over her lost love and the questions that arise out of it—a guilty pleasure the heartbroken, whether they be pop stars or everyday people, can't help but obsess over. Long after these lovers are gone, MAGDALENE wears its scars beautifully. It's music to keep close to the heart.

Listen: Apple Music / Spotify / Soundcloud

Listen to highlights from our best albums of 2019 on Spotify, Apple Music and Buy Music Club.