The age-old border between techno chill and pop-analog warmth has been breached once and for all on Matthew Dear’s new opus, Black City. Granted, Dear is hardly new to this; he’s been edging toward this once seemingly impossible merger for about a decade now. But Black City is where his machines bleed and feel and (dare I say) love, and it’s clear even before the piano-driven album-closer “Gem.” At the front end, the opening track, “Honey,” strikes a cool, almost noirish vibe via its ever-so-slightly restrained pacing, while “Soil to Seed” shows that even a potential dance-floor hit can come across just as warmly vibrant as any acoustic-guitar jam—just give equal prominence to Dear’s weirdly slurring vocals and a one-note guitar part as well as the slyly mid-tempo beat. It all takes place in Black City. (James)

Magic Kids’ debut, Memphis (named for the band’s hometown), features a wonderfully joyous and dreamy take on classic pop. Their sound bridges the stylistic gap between the teen idols of yesteryear and the chamber-pop darlings of today, with singer Bennett Foster’s unabashedly sincere expressions of young love supported by orchestral swells and sweet girl-group backing vocals. Lyrics like “I’ll be waiting here right by the phone” (on the breezy Beach Boys-style opener “Phone”) are delivered with pure hope and not a shred of bitterness; it’s a blissful innocence that succeeds at being wholly endearing and never cloying. Track after track is infectiously exuberant and beautifully arranged, with the potential to win over hopeless romantics and hardened cynics alike. (Kiri)

Young though they may be, Ra Ra Riot has been through a lot in its four-years-plus of existence (including the tragic drowning death of drummer John Pike), which could explain the unusual sophistication of The Orchard, the group’s second full-length (besides three EPs). A curiously calm restraint characterizes the album: The softly haunting “You and I Know” seems to follow the secretive hush suggested by its title even as the song (sung by one of the women in the band as opposed to keyboardist Wesley Miles) builds to a satisfying climax. Even a bouncy number like “Too Dramatic” seems content to fill a contained space, though in other more reckless hands it’d be tempting to let the tune explode. Curious in Ra Ra Riot’s case is hardly a bad thing—indie-rock this smart and tailored is never a bad thing. (Bosco)

This CD/DVD combo is a must for any self-respecting Mogwai fan—because any self-respecting Mogwai fan knows well the fluid power and emotional grace of the Scottish band’s live shows, and its entire discography is sampled from on the CD, a collection of tracks recorded over a three-night stand at BK’s own Music Hall of Williamsburg in the spring of ‘09. “Mogwai Fear Satan” is particularly expansive and explosive (around its near-silent middle passage); “Like Herod” (from the band’s 1997 debut) draws back the hammer time and time again, and tellingly, they’ve placed it as the penultimate track, just before “Glasgow Megasnake,” from 2006’s Mr. Beast, showing that while the band has progressed and occasionally gone in directions its fans either didn’t grasp or didn’t like, its catalog is a whole. Burning, the DVD included with Special Moves, is a superb (if comparatively short) B&W live film by the brilliant director Vincent Moon, whose “Blogoteque” series of web short-films (“videos” doesn’t seem the right term) has revealed so much more about the artists featured than any set of reviews or blog comments could. As if a high-quality live CD and DVD weren’t enough, the set includes a code to download six more live tracks. (M.L. Thrope)

If it wasn’t broke before you kinda messed with it, go back to before you messed with it: !!!’s fourth album finds the dance-rock group going back to basics, putting its collective head down and unfurling groove after groove. Strange Weather, Isn’t It? relies less on melodic and rock elements that !!! (y’all know how to say it by now) had added to its sound over time, and more on straight up, quasi-disco beat-beat-beat repetition. The echoed-out vocals and synth washes that swell and ripple across the firmament of “The Most Certain Sure” can’t faze the perfectly pitched rhythm, and on “Even Judas Gave Jesus a Kiss” (the band continues to excel at naming their tracks), Nic Offer’s vocals, which almost frame a conventional pop song, eventually surrender to the nonstop mid-tempo forward impetus of the beat. Giuliani’s left the schoolyard, but !!! continues on unflinchingly. (Bosco)

This trio meetingmdash;recorded live at the Big Ears Festival in 2009 in Tennessee (guess which part)—proves that Christian Fennesz and his two cohorts, guitarist David Daniell (whose resumé includes work with Thurston Moore, Rhys Chatham and Tortoise’s Doug McCombs, among many others) and Australian drummer Tony Buck (whose list is just as long and star-spangled) have every bit of the intuitive skill and feeling as any jazz trio working today. The three, whose only prior experience playing together happened at soundcheck that day, spun enormously airy worlds into four mid-length pieces, each bristling with vim, vigor, vibe and drive. The first, “Unuberwindbare Wande,” finds the trio seemingly inventing the elements from thought, building to a rousing immensity that’s hard to get over. Computers are used here but you’ll find no maschine-soundz—the second piece is titled “Heat from Light” and it’s got no shortage of either. Knoxville is awesome work from three modern masters, highly recommended to anyone who’s ever felt the feeling from any of their past excursions. (M.L. Thrope)

As this comp’s subtitle—Mixed with Love: Essential & Unreleased Remixes 1976-1986—suggests, this is a collection of disco remixes, which is automatically going to be a fun listen. But in this case, the remixer was not solely concerned with dancefloor utility: Walter Gibbons’s remixes are transformative in unexpected ways, and at times rhythmically unusual. He makes odd aspects stand out starkly, such as what he does with the opening of Bettye LaVette’s “Doin’ the Best That I Can”: It’s stripped down to a beat so sonically one-dimensional it sounds like a cheap set of bongos, while the scant bass allowed fulfills no harmonic function and her vocal floats above it all in a nearly disassociated way. Eventually more instrumentation kicks in, but then he strips everything back again to slowly build a new climax. Gibbons does this over and over for 11 minutes, not stretching out the song’s structure as a classic remixer such as Tom Moulton would do, but downright obliterating it. This is like dub techniques applied to disco. It’s no surprise that Stetsasonic reputedly hated his remix of “4 Ever My Beat”; he rejected a lot of what artists probably considered to be crucial elements of their songs in favor of a more abstract approach that at times seems to philosophically question the very definition of music. It makes sense that this two-CD compilation includes two remixes of his also innovative friend Arthur Russell’s music (including a previously unreleased version of Dinosaur L’s “Go Bang”); one senses in both artists a dissatisfaction with filling a circumscribed role or delivering the expected. Consider yourself warned, or alerted to the delights to be found here. (Steve)

What started with a brief reunion tour—of the Philippines!—a couple of years ago has led to indie-rock’s most welcome return this year. All of the halting, precious indie bands of today should be made to listen to the new Versus album (not to mention most of its ‘90s output) for lessons in songcraft and emotional expression. On the Ones and Threes isn’t the best Versus album, but it is Versus in full form: “You’re racing your history, though you did nothing wrong / Except for following the song,” sing guitarist Richard Baluyut and bassist Fontaine Toups in perfect, time-proven unison on the dirgey “Nu Skin.” “To live again,” they continue, “you need nu skin.” If all Versus have done with On the Ones and Threes is write ten more excellent Versus songs, it’s been long enough that it does seem nu. Toups takes the lead on the thrillingly powerful “Into Blue,” a melodic storm of dynamics and emotional resolve-cum-release that makes a simple lyric like “Whatever happened to me?” seem like the most profound question ever asked. I know the answer: They’ve gotten ten years older, just like everyone else. If only we could all wear it as well as Versus does here. Just awesome! (Vinyl includes two bonus tracks not on CD.) (M.L. Thrope)

Oliver Jones wasn’t even close to being of legal drinking age when he first started popping up at stateside dubstep nights (such as NYC’s then-underground, now well-known Dub War). Today, the producer known better as Skream and the micro-genre he helped kickstart have grown up together: Every electronic-music producer with slightly jagged beats aspires to be considered part of the dubstep scene. Meanwhile, Skream has big-profile remixes for La Roux and Bat for Lashes to his credit, and more important, on Outside the Box, he’s already moving beyond the scene. Skream’s audio thumbprint is his architecture: towers of metallic, perfectly proportioned beats and diagonal beams of bass frame huge spaces you’ll feel in your chest cavity. While the guest-hit by Murs on “8 Bit Baby” might draw attention, the track isn’t one of the album’s strongest; much better are the return favor by La Roux on “Finally,” which adds lean muscle and menace to her brand of electronica, and the sumptuous “Where You Should Be,” another late-night jam that could nice up any mainstream club. Of course, there are plenty of Skream-style bangers to be found as well: “CPU,” “I Love the Way” and the bleak coolness of “Metamorphosis” show an artist in full motion. (Limited boxed version contains bonus Skreamism CD.) (Bosco)