It's time again to spotlight the good, the rad, and the surprisingly mediocre records of recent vintage. Vamos...

ALARM WILL SOUND, Acoustica (Cantaloupe Music, cantaloupemusic.com): AWS turn Aphex Twin's spasmodic IDM brain-twisters into acoustic facsimiles that—surprise—often resemble Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling's madcap cartoon music or ominous Stockhausen pieces. The professional musicians who translated Aphex's demonically perverse compositions are expected to make a full recovery.

FERENC, Fraximal (Kompakt, kompakt-net.de): Ferenc leapt to the front of many DJs' boxes in 2002 with the saw-tooth stomper "Yes Sir, I Can Hardcore," and now they bestow their debut album, a solid foray into atmospheric, gently insistent techno. Fraximal's memorable melodies and tranquil tones make it amenable for reclining with your favorite mood-elevator, yet the record also works as a table-setter for clubland's peak-time bangers.

GITHEAD, Profile (swim, swimhq.com): Githead's strong lineup—Colin Newman (Wire), Malka Spigel and Max Franken (Minimal Compact), and Robin Rimbaud (Scanner)—portends great things. But Profile merely offers lukewarm post-rock with humdrum tunes and gray-toned vocals. These ringers sadly have succumbed to middle-aged spread.

MINOTAUR SHOCK, Maritime (4AD, 4ad.com): The follow-up to 2001's toytronic charmer Chiff-Chaffs & Willow Warblers, Maritime reflects Minotaur's enchantment with things nautical. Minotaur Shock translates his obsession into a more extroverted, amiable brand of IDM wherein vibrant melodies cascade along bouncy beats and clarinet, violin, and flute merrily weave around his winsome digital-synth mosaics.

MUTAMASSIK, Masri Mokkassar: Definitive Works (Sound-Ink, sound-ink.com): Masri Mokkassar collects eight years of this female NYC DJ/producer's incendiary productions, most of them consisting of choppy hiphop beats, brutal ratatatats of Muslimgauze-like Arabic percussion, and Mecca-approved melodies. I can get behind this Desert Storm.

NAW, Green Nights Orange Days (Noise Factory, noisefactoryrecords.com): NAW (Montreal producer Neil Wiernik) specializes in ice-water-in-veins minimal techno, a hard style to keep engaging over a full album. But Green Nights Orange Days is chilled brilliance throughout, evoking the Chain Reaction label's aquatic-dub buoyancy, soothingly glitchy textures, and hypnotic propulsion.

ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, insen (Asphodel, asphodel.com): The follow-up to 2004's excellent vrioon, insen finds Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) filtering Ryuichi Sakamoto's plangent, Debussy-esque piano through stringent DSP software. The resultant minimalist ambience wistfully toggles between tense and tranquil, and damn if it ain't the ideal soundtrack to deleting spam.

S.E.V.A., S.E.V.A. (Mush, dirtyloop.com): New-age hiphop? Don't wince—this is lovely. The blessedly blissed-out product of Mumbles and Gone Beyond, S.E.V.A. brings brown-rice beats and tofu melodies more likely to appeal to your guru than Gang Starr's Guru. Nevertheless, this disc taps into that same Zenlightened state of mysticism that animated astral jazzers Don Cherry, and Alice Coltrane.