Following over a decade spent in the underground, james K is poised for a breakthrough. The artist born Jamie Krasner has worked with Yves Tumor and Beta Librae, in addition to holding down an NTS residency with the show Trip Lick. Previous records have landed on quiet institutions Incienso, Crude Tapes, and PAN’s influential Mono No Aware compilation. Her CV caters to avant-garde festival slots over streaming success, but suddenly she is experiencing both.

What if slugging a Monster was as refined a tradition as afternoon tea? Welding techno, bass, IDM, and dembow, JP López’s hotwired output presents an answer. The Colombian producer grew up in Medellín and began making music as a teenager. In 2017, he settled on the moniker Verraco — a localized slang word that expresses anger, praise, and difficulty interchangeably. Around the same time, he founded the rebellious label Insurgentes to challenge preconceptions of Latinx music. López now co-manages the imprint TraTraTrax with DJ Lomalinda and Nyksan — a vital resource for everyone from Nick León to Doctor Jeep to Ezmeralda.

Oscar Henson’s early material as Facta orbited the post-dubstep diaspora of the 2010s, landing on venerated UK labels including Livity Sound and Idle Hands. An East London native, Henson lived in Bristol during a formative era for the city’s electronic underground. He picked the moniker Facta at random from a history textbook — an obscure reference to Italian politician Luigi Facta. “I thought it just looked like a dubstep DJ’s name because it had the ‘a’ at the end — like Hatcha and Youngsta,” he tells me over Zoom, chuckling. “It turns out that he’s, like, probably the most pointless character in all of Italian critical history. I go to Italy and say, ‘I’m named after this prime minister Facta’ and get laughed at massively.” European bureaucracy aside, Henson’s output is no joke.

The liner notes for Djrum’s latest record, Under Tangled Silence, emphasize that the artist, born Felix Manuel, was a child prodigy. Cynically, I took this as a PR humblebrag before pressing play. But the swirling piano that unravels on opener “A Tune For Us” immediately allows this angle to become vital. The album — issued by fabric’s Houndstooth label — is more in line with the swirling avant-garde legacy of Luaka Bop than Hyperdub’s austere dread.

The last we heard from Sam Barker, he was subverting his distinctive “kick free techno” approach on the 2023 EP Unfixed. The four tracks were centered on shifty basslines, translucent percussion, and snotty knob tweaks. An exploration of low-end thuds, the EP was snarling and conceptual. Previously, Barker’s fingerprint had been languid and elven — not quite ambient, but certainly not far from it. Unfixed stood in stark contrast to the serenity of his prior releases Utility and Debiasing. The Leisure System imprint founder is an enduring Berghain resident and was a cornerstone of the club’s Ostgut Ton label from his formative days as a member of the duo Barker & Baumecker. But it wasn’t until Unfixed that he had been so clearly impacted by imposing warehouse contours.

aya came up adjacent to the deconstructed club boom of the early 2020s. Her murky, feverish breakout tracks, for labels including Wisdom Teeth and Tri Angle, traded hands like poorly kept secrets. Yet her music has always felt more like a tool for dissociation than a gesture to motion. Sure, many of the releases on YCO — the label she co-runs with kindred experimental dance favorite BFTT — favor pounding dubstep. But aya’s solo album material is more formless, calling to mind aural sludge dripping from warehouse rafters. On her celebrated 2021 full-length debut, im hole, hyperpop, ambient, and grime were melted into a radioactive muck that thrummed with inexplicable spontaneity.

DARKSIDE materialized in 2011, bridging patchouli-stained guitar jamming and slinky electronic darkness. The duo’s full-length debut, Psychic, saw founders Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington crafting what sounded like the Grateful Dead catering to leather-clad clubbers. The acclaim Psychic garnered pushed the then 20-something duo to the forefront of the indie landscape, making them chic outliers in an era dominated by lackadaisical dream pop. As a high school rock purist playing in punk bands, falling in love with the project’s iconic 2013 Boiler Room session felt like alluring sacrilege. Sure, Harrington’s noodling was clearly indebted to CAN, and Jaar’s deep talk-singing reminiscent of Scott Walker. But these rocky elements were outlined by a danceable, synthetic pulse that felt worlds removed from the DIY spaces I grew up immersed in.

Miami’s bass substratum is currently at a fever pitch, making for one of the buzziest electronic scenes in the world today. But the South Florida hub wasn’t always a hotbed for singular dance music. For years, the city’s nocturnal spaces favored Top 40 hits and reggaeton. While that thrum can be electrifying, the lack of good jungle music readily available caused Miami native Jessica Gentile to grow restless. “I was just a raver,” she tells me over Zoom, an array of neon trinkets sprinkled behind her. “I was going out all the time, and — I’m going to date myself — it wasn’t cool then. Electronic music wasn’t popular. You were just, like, weird if you were into it.”

Jamie xx is widely known for his fizzy productions and role as a founding member of the xx, which positions him at the intersection of indie rock and electronic music. Like UK peers James Blake and Mount Kimbie, this duality allowed the artist born James Smith to locate a home on the mainstage in the 2010s. If I had not fallen for early Jamie xx singles including “Sleep Sound” and “Far Nearer” as a teenager, it is difficult to determine whether or not I would be as invested in propulsive sounds as I am today.

If there is a single word that encapsulates the broad state of electronic music right now, it is “gauzy.” Reflecting on a period marked by long nights in futuristic spaces, I recall taking in more sets indebted to Basic Channel than Orbital over the last 12 months. Sure, there were exceptions, with dubstep, jungle, and progressive house coming back into vogue. For the most part, though, it seems as if the style’s mutual consciousness agreed to cater to moody lounging in 2024. The best releases of the year are overarchingly cerebral and echoing, suited for hermetic subway journeys and bouts of introversion.

Before they had much output to their name, CCL was one of the buzziest up-and-comers in clubland. From the mid 2010s and onward, the Berlin-based selector, producer, and event programmer has gigged heavily in a respected corner of the party circuit. They have orbited crews including Planet Euphorique and T4T LUV NRG and become a fixture at lauded festivals such as Dekmantel and Sustain-Release. CCL flaunts a meticulous approach to DJing, pulling from a bag of chunky deep cuts unearthed from dusty dollar crates and obscure recesses of the internet. For evidence, look no further than their Resident Advisor guide to expansive digging with Discogs, which encouraged one fan to develop an impromptu app.