From the roar of Tibetan horns and the clangour of metal percussion that opens Beauty in the Beast, Wendy Carlos signalled a new direction in 1986. Beauty in the Beast is Carlos's magnum opus, an album that should have established the synthesiser's role in the new global music landscape. More than that, it should have established Carlos as a composer and not just a Switched-On Bach jukebox. But not too many people were listening. Re-released now after 14 years, Beauty in the Beast has lost none of its power. Carlos is profound and poignant, dissonant and disarming on Beauty as she fuses a global orchestra from her synthesisers. "Poem for Bali" is the centrepiece of the album, an episodic, 17-minute excursion as Carlos orchestrates the sounds and rhythms of a digital gamelan orchestra. In addition to replicating the metallophones, gongs and flutes of the traditional gamelan, she creates her own hybrid sound designs, giving this work a surreal and sometimes harrowing tone, like a dream bent through funhouse mirrors. But then there are pieces like "A Woman's Song", based on a Balkan melody. The title track merges nightmare landscapes and a crazed carnival calliope with a haunting theme that sounds like a lament for the end of the world. [+]

Moby is an ambitious man, both musically and philosophically, and that quality seeps into every aspect of Everything Is Wrong, from the wunderkind DJing that stretches the genre limits of techno to the angry, antiestablishment manifesto on the CD sleeve. The record's opening salvo of dancey club music sets the listener up for "All That I Need Is to Be Loved", which, out of nowhere, bludgeons would-be club kids with tuneless, mad vocals and punked-out guitar solos. The same bait-and-switch formula repeats twice on the CD at almost regular intervals in the industrial shriek of "What Love" and the sudden, slow, and acoustic bent and folksy vocals of "Into the Blue". All three shifts are jarringly abrupt. However, dance-floor continuity is in Moby's blood, and he uses these songs as parts one, two, and three of the underlying rage that drives the record's concept. Without these three tracks, in fact, you'd have a moody yet convincingly cohesive danceathon, bouncing between house breakbeats ("Feeling So Real", "Bring Back My Happiness") and blissed-out trance ("God Moving Over the Face of the Waters"). Instead, Moby expresses his bewildered and desperate view of modern life by periodically yanking away the escape of blind, danceable ecstasy, using that discontinuity to express the eyes-wide-open ruminations of a furious idealist. -Matthew Cooke.

Similar in vibe to A Man Called Adam, Air and DIY, Groove Armada embody the original spirit of Balearic downtempo music or what is now known as nu house, in that any groove that is good, loose and strange goes in-hence their name. After the phenomenal success of Vertigo, a reissue of Groove Armada's summery debut couldn't have arrived at a better time. Positively enigmatic, Northern Star has a wonderful remix of "Captain Sensual" and a classy edit of "Dan-solo". Packed full of motifs from the last 20 years of global dance culture, Big C and Simba mix up genres with refreshing ease. There's something here to please everyone with a taste for adventurous, soulful electronica-shimmering melancholic romanticism, ("M2 Many") latin rhythms, ("Dan Solo") swinging big beats ("Pressure Breakdown ") shuffling euphoric disco("Entrance to Zanzibar") and ambient funk ("Jeanneret's Groove"). Think sunshine, cocktails and a sandy white beach. -Reuben Dessay.

Back in the mid-1990's, Sven Väth gained himself something of a hedonistic reputation: a drug guzzling party behemoth prone to playing 12-hour DJ sets at The Omen, his infamous (and now defunct) Frankfurt club, home to one of the most terrifyingly intense dancefloors ever and HQ for the irresistible, Väth-inspired rise of German techno-trance-the sleeker, meaner, underground predecessor to all that more recent ATB/Gouryella Dutch cobblers. Sometimes he (understandably) lost it-witness the concept turd of an album that was The Robot, The Harlequin And The Balletdancer. Then along came Fusion. It's still definitely techno-the funky but pacy electronics of "Discophon", deeper, dubbier "Augenblick" and pulse racing drum machines of "Scorpio's Movement" see to that-but there's more: moments of trip hop, elements of electro, dashes of dodgy ambience and, best of all, the utterly, gratuitously, flamboyant, Oompah orchestra and vibes solo-a-go-go silliness of the title track. The party's not over yet. -Robert Heller.

Everybody Hertz is the obligatory Air remix album; a collection of re-worked versions of tracks from their "difficult" second album-2001's dark and cinematic 10,000 Hz Legend. As you'd expect, the mixes here are more Pink Floyd than Zero 7, and subsequently those looking for Moon Safari-style serenity will almost certainly go away disappointed. That said, if you enjoyed 10,000 Hz Legend's mix of eerie progressive rock and dark soundtrack cool, there's plenty here to excite. The fuzzy, electroid re-rubs from Mr Oizo, Malibu and hip-hop heads The Neptunes all impress, but it's Adrian Sherwood's skanking dub and the Hacker's tongue-in-cheek synth-pop version that really stand out. A bit more variety wouldn't have gone amiss-there are nine remixes of three album tracks-but overall Everybody Hertz is that rarest of things; a remix album that fulfils its purpose admirably. -Matt Anniss.