From the deluge of outstanding electronic releases that's washed upon our inbox/mailbox, we present four essential albums from the mother (down)lode.
Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma (Warp; www.warp.net): One of L.A.'s foremost beat scientists, Flying Lotus (aka Steven Ellison) has been altering hiphop's DNA with a kind of post-Dilla restlessness since his 2006 debut full-length, 1983. After the overwhelming critical praise for the 2008 follow-up, Los Angeles, FlyLo could've replicated that approach and made many people perfectly happy. But with Cosmogramma, he's veered off into a more astral-jazzy direction (insert obligatory Alice Coltrane reference here; she is sampled on Cosmogramma, after all). Amid all the weirdly angled funk, Flying Lotus has perfumed these tracks with soulful, lush orchestrations that augment his brain-iac production techniques. Cosmogramma offers you spiritual depth and melodic beauty—plus a Thom Yorke cameo—on top of its rhythmic and textural dazzle. Ill, logical progression!
Prins Thomas, Prins Thomas (Full Pupp; www.myspace.com/fullpupp): Norwegian disco prime mover goes... kraut rock? Ja, and with wunderbar results. On the cover, Prins Thomas looks like Neu!'s long-lost third member, and the seven tracks that populate his solo debut album mostly adhere to that seminal group's streamlined motorik pulse and silvery, plangent shafts of electric guitar. Of course, remnants of disco appear, as some strains of kraut rock traditionally have dovetailed with disco's metronomic-beats template. One exception is "Slangemusikk," which sounds like Suicide monomaniacally jamming on a bass-y synth chord as Haruomi Hosono emits Fairlight fairy dust over the relentless throb. Overall, Prins Thomas is an Autobahn-ty of sweet, trance-out grooves and transporting synth/guitar fantasias.
Mark Van Hoen, Where Is the Truth (City Centre Offices; www.city-centre-offices.de): Mark Van Hoen was integral in fostering the sound of Seefeel, a British band that nearly stole the shoegaze-rock crown from My Bloody Valentine in the early '90s. He embarked on a solo career as Locust (and under his own name) in 1993 and produced some of the most rhythmically and tonally interesting electronic music of the last 16 years. Where Is the Truth lacks the radical exploratory thrust of Locust's Truth Is Born of Arguments (most things do), but it finds the British musician crafting a rich, hazy brand of electronic quasi pop that haunts in a chilling, torch-song manner. Seefeelin' it.
Vex'd, Cloud Seed (Planet Mu; www.planet.mu): Vex'd (Brits Jamie Teasdale and Roly Porter) dropped an early dubstep bomb in 2005 with Degenerate. They recorded the tracks on Cloud Seed shortly after that, but the duo moved to different countries and stopped collaborating, so they got shelved. Now surfacing thanks to Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas's insistence, Cloud Seed showers some stark, eerie dubstep on you, but occasionally sweetens the pot with female vocals (e.g., Anneka and Warrior Queen). The intense, darkly cinematic auras Vex'd generate here lend it a tonal range and depth beyond most releases of its ilk. 
