Badtaste, the creative vehicle of Czech-German artist Anna Kristina, has dropped a conceptual diptych titled "Hedonism, Sobriety." Now operating out of Paris, the singer, songwriter, and dancer has constructed a release that thrives on friction. It is a project that looks directly at the messy, often contradictory nature of human desire and refuses to tidy it up for easy consumption. The music operates in the...

I spent a solid hour this morning watching dust motes suspended in a single shaft of sunlight, my entire nervous system held absolutely captive by Magdi Aboul-Kheir and his devastatingly immersive new album, "Slow Heat". The Germany-based journalist and classically trained pianist usually writes across a massive spectrum of genres, pivoting wildly from trance to late romanticism. Today, he has dropped an ambient, contemporary...