The longtime Chicago black metal band get back to basics, eschewing the experimentation of 2010's genre-bending Addicts: Black Meddle, Part II for a hard-hitting, riff-heavy appoach. It suits them.

Antibalas swaps didactic specificity for sneaky allegory, torn-from-the-headlines trendiness for generations of weight, and the catalytic spark of the freshly-minted young radical for the perseverance of the long-struggling citizen, making for protest music without an expiration date.

This EP finds Junior Boys, Blondes, and Mohn (Jörg Burger and Wolfgang Voigt) remixing tracks from the Field's 2011 album Looping State of Mind. The pleasures here are traditional, and minor, but they're still pleasures.

Vancouver's Loscil and Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri each curate a disc of Air Texture Vol. II, the second installment of  the Agriculture co-founder James Healy's electronic ambient series. Where Loscil favors dark hues and emotionally unreadable impressions of submerged movement, Irisarri cultivates an air of preoccupied melancholy.

Originally issued as a self-released CD-R in 2011 by the Sun City Girls co-founder and master guitarist, this collection showcases Sir Richard Bishop's catalog-surfing range and monk-like patience.

The 25th anniversary reissue of Paul Simon's Graceland shows how the album gave a human face to the perception of South Africa during apartheid by synthesizing geographically disparate musical strains that turned out to be remarkably complementary. 

Showtime isn't the home run some of the Chicago rapper's fans might have been waiting for, but its genuine diversity and ambition has a wide appeal that feels like a major step forward after a relatively quiet period.

On their self-titled debut, the Stockholm band offer synth-driven pop songs that nod to post-punk and hardcore. Holograms focus on weighty topics like isolation, industrialization, and being ashamed of their country's history, but their hooks can be outright jovial.

Comprising Lee Ranaldo, David Watson and drummer Tony Buck, Glacial's debut full-length album is a masterpiece in blurring and burning the edges, riding the divide between chaos and melody like a skateboarder gliding on a rail.

The N.J. funeral doom legends' first album in five years is an obstacle course that rewards endurance with one of the most oppressive, majestic hours of music since they eked out their last one.

This sprawling set comprises all seven Blur albums, three DVDs, and five-and-a-half hours' worth of rarities. For its breadth and complexity, the box tells a simple story: Blur are a band that did an astonishing amount of different things really, really well.

David Cohn's latest LP is a fine chronicle of the amiable pessimism and occasional nihilism of a rapping Bukowski who can't seem to find a way out of the condition in which he finds himself.

This collection of the Icelandic band's first experiments predates their 2001 debut, Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is OK. It makes for a strange listen in 2012.

The two songs on the crusty Seattle doom band's excellent second album, their first since 2008, clock in at 14 and 20 minutes, respectively, and yet it still feels like they're holding out on us.

The inaugural reissues from Editions Mego's new imprint are French composer and "musique concrète" inventor Pierre Schaeffer's last composition (and lone purely electronic work) and a composition from his student Guy Reibel that explores "the mathematical idea of the limit."

Despite guest spots from the likes of Jay-Z, André 3000, and Dr. Dre, the victory lap crowning Rick Ross' four-year rise to dominance still feels depressingly earthbound.

Merge's remastered reissues of Bob Mould's early-1990s post-Hüsker Dü records Copper Blue, Beaster, and FU:EL are wonderfully presented documents of a punk legend starting over creatively and emotionally and succeeding beyond his and anyone's expectations.

For a rapper so perfectly suited to 2012 sensibilities, the rising Chicago teen Sasha Go Hard showcases an exhilarating return to tradition on her promising new mixtape. It's exciting to feel an MC grow palpably better, brandishing tough-talking tunnel-vision confidence.

The Vancouver punk band's fast, threatening 19-minute sophomore record is compulsively listenable due in no small part to vocalist Mish Way's melodic but intimidating approach.

On a handful of releases in the early 2000s, the trio of Jay Reatard, Alicja Trout, and Rich Crook mastered a stabby sort of punk/new wave hybrid. Lost Lost is a collection of rarities for Lost Sounds, a group that really didn't have many non-rarities.

As a solo artist, GZA was essentially everything that distinguished Wu-Tang Clan from other crews: strictly chess, kung-fu, battle raps, investigative reports, mysticism. This masterful 1995 collection is the most potent distillation of that aesthetic.

The South London producer/singer's latest album is consistently, deceptively understated. But its juxtaposition of complex drum patterns, slow-motion melodies, and heavily floating basslines makes it feel completely immersive.

Following in the path of 2009's God Is Good, Om incorporate instruments like tabla, cello, and flute on their fifth collection, Advaitic Songs. Diversity, it turns out, can be a diluting agent.

Although the spotlight has shifted from Balearic pop in recent times, London duo the Idjut Boys are unlikely to care, having been trekking that breezy coast for nearly two decades. Astonishingly, this is their debut album, a warm, comforting collection with a wriggling focus.

The Glasgow-based graphic artist's mostly instrumental Regional Surrealism brings together half-remembered childhood memories, severe dreams of the future, pastoral-electronic wistfulness, and a guest spot from Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite.