I never quite know what to say about Bjork.

Musicians often talk about getting their inspiration from some other plane of existence, and acting as messengers for some otherworldly force that creates the music through them. While I have never heard Bjork say anything of the sort, she’s one of the few I would believe without question. Everything she does sounds like the product of some alien civilization trying to approximate our pop music, and ending up with something bizarre and beautiful that sounds like nothing else on the planet.

On the one hand, Bjork is a stunningly creative artist, a genius sonic manipulator and a one-of-a-kind musical force. She’s never done anything halfway, committing completely to an uncompromising vision. (I mean, just look at her album covers.) It should be easy to lavish her work with praise. But on the other hand, that vision is so uncompromising that it’s almost impenetrable. Bjork makes music for an audience of one – herself – and it’s sometimes difficult to figure out just what she was going for, let alone whether she succeeded.

That was especially true during the years after her breathtaking third album, Homogenic, when she drifted more into tone poems and electronic meanders, with a stop-over in a cappella land. I can barely tell you anything about Volta or Biophilia, despite hearing them multiple times. But all that changed in 2015 with Vulnicura, easily her most human work in more than 15 years. Over thick, sad strings, Bjork detailed the dissolution of a long relationship in heart-rending terms, and the result was powerful. Still otherworldly and unique, but powerful.

It was also the beginning of her artistic partnership with Venezuelan musician Arca, which she continues on her new album Utopia. It’s a relationship that seems to spark the best in her. Utopia is her longest album at 71 minutes, and it’s overflowing with inspiration. Structurally it seems similar to Vulnicura – its musical foundation is built on strings and woodwinds, with electronic touches – but its mood couldn’t be more different. Utopia is a joyous record about love, rendered in major keys and light. Even Bjork’s trademark full-throated singing voice sounds sweeter here.

That’s not to say it’s sickly or sappy. This is still a Bjork album, still light years away from Justin Timberlake country. Everything is still delightfully alien, as the watery keyboards, boots-stomping-through-ice drums, harps and overlapping voices of the first song, “Arisen My Senses,” will attest. But Bjork has never sung so much about kissing, about longing, about simple emotions like missing someone with all of one’s body and mind. Some of this record is remarkably specific: “Is all of this excessive texting a blessing or just two music nerds obsessing,” she asks in the lovely “Blissing Me,” and she opens “Features Creatures” this way: “When I spot someone who is same height as you, and goes to same record stores, I literally think I am five minutes away from love.”

There are darker moments, of course. “Sue Me” (about the man who inspired Vulnicura) is as angry as its arrangement of skittering drums and flute sounds will allow, and the lyrics of “Tabula Rasa” – which seem to be about a cheating father and his effect on his children – belie the song’s almost cloud-like arrangement. But these are the minority. Most of the record is full of love. “The Gate” is a menacing-sounding near-ambient thing, but it’s about letting love flow though you, caring for others and being cared for in return. “Saint” makes the most use of the birdsong that connects this album together, spinning a delicate flute melody for a tale of the healing power of music. And closer “Future Forever” returns to that sparse sound from “The Gate” as Bjork exhorts you to “imagine a future and be in it.”

It’s great to hear her so blissful again, after the heartache of Vulnicura. If this is what a sexy album of love songs sounds like to Bjork, then more power to her. It may not sound anything like our earthling love ballads, but it’s beautiful, striking, grand and wholly unique. I’d expect nothing less from Bjork, and I’m looking forward to further puzzling this record out.

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I don’t know if this counts as a secret confession, but I always liked Oasis.

I don’t just mean from the start, because everybody loved them in the Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory days. I mean I enjoyed Heathen Chemistry and Don’t Believe the Truth and Dig Out Your Soul, records even the Gallagher brothers probably don’t remember much about. They were never as good as they thought they were, but when they got about the business of just being a Beatles-inspired rock band, Oasis were pretty great.

Of course, a significant part of that greatness grew from the tension between Liam and Noel Gallagher, who always hated each other a little bit. Their relationship has now completely imploded – the two reportedly don’t even speak, and they are always sniping at each other in the press. An Oasis reunion looks increasingly unlikely. The good news is that both Gallaghers have gone on to lead new projects. The bad news is that neither of those projects – Liam’s Beady Eye and Noel’s High Flying Birds – comes close to matching the band the brothers once fronted together.

Both have now released their third post-Oasis records, and it’s fair to say we’re seeing the new normal. Given that, it might be a surprise just how good Liam Gallagher’s first album under his name, As You Were, turns out to be. This record came out in October (yes, I held it so I could review it with Noel’s new one, which was just released) to some startlingly good notices, and it lives up to them. Liam has always been the more charismatic, with the more immediately appealing voice, but he’s never been the songwriter his brother is. As You Were works hard to change that impression, delivering a catchy set of 12 tunes with some genuine emotional underpinning.

I’ll admit to some surprise at the relative quality of these songs. “Wall of Glass” gets things off to an Oasis-y start, chiming guitars underpinning a big chorus with some catchy harmonica and gospel-style backing vocals. “Bold” gets into a shimmying acoustic groove, augmented by subtle strings, where “Greedy Soul” brings the bluesy rock. So far so-so, but “For What It’s Worth” kicks this album up several notches. A memorable mea culpa that somehow still remains defiant, this is probably the most thoughtful song Liam Gallagher has written. “Let’s leave the past behind with all our sorrows, I’ll build a bridge between us and I’ll swallow my pride…”

Much of the rest of As You Were is similarly thoughtful, in an everyman kind of way. “When I’m in Need” is a sweet waltz about love. “I Get By” lays down a Led Zeppelin-esque bedrock for a tune about moving on from a bad relationship. Closer “I’ve All I Need” is an amiable anthem of contentment, one that manages to get a George Harrison reference into the chorus. (They’ll always be the guys from Oasis, after all.) Overall I’m impressed at this rough-and-tumble little record. It outpaces his work with Beady Eye and marks Liam as a solo artist worth watching.

I’m similarly surprised at how much Noel struggles to keep up, given that his High Flying Birds has been the better of the two projects, by and large. Who Built the Moon, the Birds’ third album, is certainly not bad, but there’s a lack of inspiration you can hear from the start. Noel himself has lauded “Holy Mountain,” the first single, as a powerhouse, and it’s… you know, fine. It’s a standard blues-rock stomp with some nice saxophones and no melody to speak of. Much of Moon is built on groove and mood more than memorable songs, and while that groove is often awesome – check out the electric piano shimmy of “Keep On Reaching” – I found myself yearning for tunes I could sing along with.

Much of this album sounds like it grew from jam sessions, and if I had this group of musicians – including Jellyfish’s Jason Falkner on bass – I’d want to jam with them too. I like the looping chorus of “It’s a Beautiful World,” and appreciate the “Tomorrow Never Knows” psychedelic touches throughout, but found the songs oddly plodding. “She Taught Me How to Fly,” just as an example, is so bargain-basement blues-rock that I lost interest a couple minutes in. I enjoy the slinky bass-and-acoustic vibe of “Be Careful What You Wish For,” but ended up wishing for a chorus.

As a mood piece, Who Built the Moon is pretty good. The instrumental interludes fit in nicely, and carry the feel of the record forward. But for all of the sonic frippery and atmosphere, I think I enjoyed the bonus track best. It’s just Noel, his acoustic guitar and a piano player, live in the studio, singing what may be the album’s best song, “Dead in the Water.” It’s unfussed, unhurried and quite beautiful. I wanted more like this, more open emotion and simple, good songwriting. I know Noel has it in him. Here’s hoping for more of it next time out.

I’m definitely planning to keep up with both brothers as they move down their separate paths. I hesitate to make any Beatles comparisons, but so far their solo careers have been similar to those of John Lennon and Paul McCartney – decent, solid stuff, without coming anywhere near the heights they achieved together. I expect them to continue doing exactly that until they are old and grey. And I hold out hope that they will surprise me along the way.

That’s all for this week. Next week, U2, the Dear Hunter and my friend Greg Boerner. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Remember last year, when the grim reaper saved up many of its deepest cuts for the final months?

In the last weeks of 2016, we lost (among others) George Michael, Carrie Fisher and her mom Debbie Reynolds. It was like the year was saving up some of its biggest wallops, delivering them on the way out the door. I have a terrible feeling that we’re headed for the same thing this year, if the increasing rate of notable deaths is anything to go by.

The two most related to the topic of this column this week were Malcolm Young and Mel Tillis. We’ll start with Young, the mastermind behind some of the most iconic rock and roll riffs of all time. With his brother Angus, Malcolm Young formed AC/DC in 1973, and shepherded the band through the next 40 years. Though Angus was always the more flashy and visible Young brother, it was Malcolm who truly led the group, writing or co-writing all of AC/DC’s iconic stompers.

I have always liked AC/DC, even if they’re the poster children for finding one thing and doing it over and over again. Their one thing was sleazy, ballsy rock and roll, and they perfected it. They’re responsible for some of the most famous ringing guitar lines of all time, including the stutter-stop awesome of “Back in Black,” the thunderous “For Those About to Rock,” and of course the nimble “Thunderstruck.” They’re one of the few bands I can name whose hits are 100 percent representative – the deeper cuts and catalog numbers are more of the same. There’s something to be said for that, especially when you know that’s what you’re doing. Malcolm Young staked out his territory and did it very well for decades.

Young took a leave of absence from the band in 2014, suffering from dementia, and died on Nov. 18 at the age of 64.

While Malcolm Young spent most of his career happily ceding the spotlight to the flashier members of his band, Mel Tillis was always front and center. The country legend began his career in the ‘50s, writing songs for the likes of Webb Pierce and Brenda Lee and recording his own albums. He had a string of hits in the 1970s cemented his place in the country music pantheon, including “I Ain’t Never” and “Good Woman Blues.”

Tillis remained popular through the ‘80s, both on his own and as a songwriter for Randy Travis and Ricky Skaggs, among others. In his later years he joined with Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare and Jerry Reed in the Old Dogs, a hilarious supergroup that sang Shel Silverstein songs about growing old. He was inducted into the Grand Old Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame in the same year, 2007.

Tillis had been battling various illnesses for more than a year. He died on Nov. 19 at the age of 85.

I’d also like to mention Della Reese here. The venerated actress did have a long-running singing career, scoring a hit in 1959 and Grammy nominations later in life. (She made 28 albums! I had no idea before looking her up.) But I know her from her various roles in film and television, particularly Touched by an Angel, that weird quasi-religious ‘90s sensation. Reese was a long-running presence on television, and I was always interested when her name would pop up. Heck, she was B.A. Baracus’ mother in an episode of The A-Team that I still remember pretty vividly. I always enjoyed her work.

Reese died on Nov. 19 as well, at the age of 86.

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Of course, all that is a lead-in for talking about another well-respected black woman singer, Miss Sharon Jones.

I can’t even explain how sad I was to learn of Sharon Jones’ death. It was almost exactly a year ago that we lost her to cancer and a related stroke. One of the great regrets of my last 10 years is never getting to see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings live. I became aware of them only about seven years ago, thanks to my friend Jeff Elbel, who played their great 100 Days 100 Nights album for me. Here was a truly authentic old-school horn-driven soul outfit, and at its center, a voice that could shake mountains.

Naturally, I bought everything I could find. Hers is a discography without any weak points, and that remained true straight to the end. Last year’s Christmas record, It’s a Holiday Soul Party, is a treat, and now, a year after she left us, we have the final Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings album, Soul of a Woman. I’m beyond pleased to report that it’s just as good as anything she’s done.

The band, of course, is hot as always. The Dap-Kings are just a great soul band, and here they are joined by a veritable army of horn and string players. You might be worried that with all those players jockeying for the spotlight, Jones might be drowned out. Nothing could be further from the truth, thankfully. The record opens with a one-two punch – the civil rights anthem “Matter of Time” and the shimmying not-quite-reunion song “Sail On” – and they’re both awesome. Jones nails the swagger of “Sail On,” easily dominating the proceedings, her voice soaring alongside the vintage-sounding trumpets.

Much of the rest of Soul, true to its title, is made up of slow, soulful ballads, and Jones shines on this material. The strummy ‘70s goodness of “Come and Be a Winner” is an absolute delight, and the tricky time signature of “Pass Me By” allows Jones to sway with the melody. “Searching for a New Day” is hopeful and fun, while “These Tears” is pensive and heartbreaking. “Girl (You Got to Forgive Him)” is a massive production, full of horns and strings and tympanis, but Jones is in full control of it.

And on the last song on her last record, she branches out into new territory, enlisting the Universal Church of God Choir for a plaintive gospel song she wrote herself, titled “Call on God.” It seems like it would be out of her wheelhouse, but she’s awesome on it, pouring deep feeling into every line. Every time I listen to this, I miss her more. Her loss leaves a deep hole in the music world, and in my world as well. Having one last visit with her is a treat, particularly one that captures everything that was so great about her in one tidy package.

Goodnight, Miss Jones. And thanks for everything.

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That’ll do it for this week. Next week, Bjork and the Gallagher Brothers. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This week I was going to talk about the avalanche of live albums and remasters and box sets that pummel your local record store at this time every year. It’s a topic I revisit seemingly every fall, and I never have anything new to say about it. The record companies like money, they want your money, so they offer lavish sets to commemorate records they know, through market research, that you will want to buy or give as gifts.

It’s really that simple, and yet each year I devote lots of words to these sets, many of which I buy just to buy. Last week, for instance, I picked up multi-disc remasters of Metallica’s Master of Puppets and R.E.M.’s phenomenal Automatic for the People. But there isn’t much I haven’t already said about these records. I could talk about the first time I heard them – Master at 14 as I was truly launching my teenage metalhead phase, Automatic my freshman year in college – and what they mean to me. That would certainly fill my quota for the week.

But I’m not listening to either one of them. I think it’s partially because I have them memoried. Master of Puppets is carved onto my soul – it’s possibly the best metal album ever made, dark and progressive and socially relevant. And Automatic for the People might be my favorite album from the Athens superstars, the culmination of their search for beauty in the ‘90s. (Have they ever written a prettier song than “Find the River”?) I love these records, and I’m very happy to have them in shiny new versions. But I’m not eager to listen to them right away.

Similarly, I’ve not really dug into the live albums I’ve picked up recently. Spock’s Beard reunited to perform all of Snow, their final album with Neal Morse, and I had to have it, and I’m sure it’s great. But it hasn’t captured my attention. Same with live documents from Pearl Jam, the Pineapple Thief and Kansas. I’m sure it will be the same for Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and ELO, which I will buy this week. I’ll get to them, but I’m not in any hurry. The one that has inched up my list is A-Ha’s new unplugged effort, but it hasn’t broken through yet.

So what have I been listening to? Well, in addition to my Doctor Who audio stories (I’m years behind) and Chopin’s complete Nocturnes (a long story involving work), my attention has been consumed with a pair of albums I paid for months ago, but just received. I talk a lot about Kickstarter here, but it’s not the only crowdfunding platform bands and artists use, and I supported both of these new albums on PledgeMusic, which basically provides a storefront for a project and manages pre-orders. In concept, it’s similar to Kickstarter, and it offers the same service – it helps bring into the world works of art that may not see the light of day otherwise.

Many of the artists who use PledgeMusic are under the radar, connecting with a small-ish audience to create personal works that probably wouldn’t thrive in the mainstream, but that hit the spot for the people who pony up. Robert Deeble certainly fits that bill. I discovered Deeble at AudioFeed a couple years ago – he played a set on his own, and then one with Choir drummer Steve Hindalong. He’s an unconventional guitar player who writes in an ambient folk style – stripped back yet lush, sparse and airy yet as full as it needs to be. He’s been making records since the late ‘90s, but I jumped aboard with 2013’s delightful Heart Like Feathers.

Beloved is Deeble’s first album since then. A hundred forty-nine of us pledged to bring it to life, and it’s everything I hoped it would be. Beloved is a deeply intimate record, telling the story of his journey as a new father, first fostering his daughter and then fully adopting her. As you might guess, it’s a very pretty set of songs, led by Deeble’s whisper of a voice. It opens with a sweet arrangement of “You Are My Sunshine,” and moves in that vein from there. It’s 42 minutes of a father’s love, which he felt from the first moment he met her (as he details in “Coal Miner”), and it’s guaranteed to leave you with a warm glow.

Deeble enlisted a pretty large number of collaborators for this record, including singers and string players, but he’s retained that open, airy feel of his previous work. “Uncertain” and “Coal Miner” are bigger tunes, the latter ending with a singalong refrain of “it’s gonna be all right” that might be the most massive thing Deeble’s ever done. But still, this feels small and intimate, like reading his diary. The fragile lullaby “To Find You” details his reunion with his daughter after a year apart (she was in the care of her birth mother), determined to come to some arrangement that would protect this little girl he had come to love. “And I’ll take all I can get to give all I can for you,” he sings, and you know he means it.

“Even Now” crackles, even though the instruments in it are barely moving. Somehow the drums on Deeble’s records tend to snap in a way few others I’ve heard manage, especially when the rest of the instrumentation is so subtle. It’s a song of sorrow, but as he says, sorrow that bonded him and his wife together with his daughter’s birth parents, so there is hope.

The final few songs of Beloved are guaranteed to move you. The title track relates the night he and his wife picked up their daughter and drove home as a family for the first time: “And we’ve cried, and we’ve cried for such a long time, and it feels like for the first time it’s going to be all right…” “Sleep” is truly lovely – you can imagine him rocking his baby girl back and forth as you listen – and the untitled interlude uses her actual voice, singing “doo doo doo” along with a fun beat. The final track, “Recovery,” is a sweet instrumental, a loving and lovely way to end.

Without AudioFeed, I don’t know that I would ever have found Robert Deeble. Without PledgeMusic, I don’t know if Beloved would have been made. My musical life would have been poorer for it. I’m enamored with this little record, this love letter in song. In a world that makes me want to hang my head daily, it’s a joy to have something this precious, this full of heart. Beloved makes me want to keep going. I’m glad it exists. You can check it out at Robert’s Bandcamp page.

Sara Groves is more well-known than Deeble is, but her new record is similarly personal. Groves has made her home in the Christian marketplace, but has always been more thoughtful and artful than most of her contemporaries. She tells stories of life through the prism of faith, admitting that sometimes life is harder than she knows how to deal with, and it is that faith that gets her through. Two years ago she made a great record called Floodplain that dealt with depression and day-to-day hardship with poetry and grace.

In some ways, it’s a bit of a shame that her new album, Abide with Me, is entirely arrangements of old hymns, but only in that I always want to hear more Sara Groves songs. There is no doubt, listening to it, that these songs mean so much to Groves. As an artist, she always makes me feel what she feels, even if I don’t always believe what she believes. That’s all I ask of anyone. These songs, she says, were with her during the hard times that informed Floodplain, and as a companion piece, it’s a beautiful thing.

And I love old hymns. Some of the most beautiful melodies ever composed were written in the service of prayer and worship. I grew up in a church that sang nothing but these often centuries-old pieces, and I always respond to them. I knew about half of the songs on Abide with Me, and grew up singing several of them. This album was recorded in a church in Minnesota that Groves and her husband have adapted into a performance venue and community center (the original building is on the cover), and just as they updated the space with reverence, they do the same for the songs.

The arrangements here are breathtakingly beautiful. Groves has, without fail, chosen songs of comfort here, songs that believers hold close in their darkest hours. The instrumentation is similarly comforting – pianos, guitars, some subtle embellishments, extremely subtle percussion. She sings these songs like an angel, but more than that, like someone who holds them dear. I mentioned in my Derek Webb review that the music I tend to respond to most is about the ways we connect with whatever is beyond us. Abide with Me is, at its core, about how Groves connects with the divine, and is drawn closer to it.

I’ll probably have a tough time mentioning highlights, because I love it all so much. “What a Friend” is a song I used to sing in church, but I’ve never felt anything like I feel for it now, in Groves’ hands. The brief “Song of Blessing” is glorious, as is the title song. I love what she’s done with “To the Dawn,” a re-working of “There’s a Light Upon the Mountains.” “And the hearts of man are stirring,” she sings, and stirs mine.

But I will make special mention of the closing song, “He’s Always Been Faithful,” because it’s my favorite. Oddly enough, it’s the only original song here – it first appeared on Groves’ album Conversations, from 2001. Performed just on piano, with a smattering of upright bass and clarinet, it’s a song about God being with us in our pain, in our sorrow, on our worst days. Songs like this have always, always gotten to me, particularly if they’re so clearly personal and honest, and Groves, as she always does, makes me feel what she feels. I like that she added one of her own songs to this, and that it fits right in. Hymns are being written all the time, as people work through and wrestle with their connection with the infinite.

I’m still working through and wrestling with mine, and music has been one of the most helpful ways I do that. Sara Groves has been with me through much of that journey, and her authenticity and genuine artistry has been deeply valuable. Abide with Me is a record of solace in a world of turmoil, and even though its songs are hundreds of years old, documenting hundreds of years of man’s yearning for comfort from above, they feel brand new in the hands of Sara Groves. I can’t stop listening to this. Once again, I am glad it exists.

Next week, who knows. Be here and find out. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Dudley Simpson died on Saturday at the age of 95.

I’m sure most of you reading this right now have no idea who I’m talking about, but the music of Dudley Simpson has been imprinted on my life since I was six years old. As the resident composer for Doctor Who throughout the ‘70s, Simpson created the music that accompanied pretty much all of my favorite Tom Baker stories.

Music has always been a gateway to my soul, and it’s usually what I remember first about any film or television show. I know this has always been the case, because I vividly remember watching The Brain of Morbius and The Deadly Assassin and The Robots of Death and the whole Key to Time season when I was young, and I can still remember the music that goes along with those stories. Simpson’s orchestral scores were oddly reassuring at times, brighter than the stories they accompanied, but they still scared me as a kid. Tom Baker-era Doctor Who to me is splashy horns and lumbering percussion and, of course, that incredible walking-around-Paris theme from City of Death.

Of course, he did a lot more than just score Doctor Who in his long life. His list of television credits is enormous. But I hope he forgives me for remembering him most fondly for helping to open the door of imagination for a wide-eyed kid entranced by his work on his favorite goofy sci-fi show. Thanks, Dudley, for everything. Rest in peace.

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I’m coming around to the sad realization that the new U2 album is going to suck.

We’ve heard three songs now, and of them, only “The Blackout” moves with any conviction. “You’re the Best Thing About Me” is embarrassing, and it sounds like they just went with Bono’s first draft of the lyrics, too: “The best thing to ever happen a boy” isn’t even English. And now they’ve given us “Get Out of Your Own Way,” a sappy, repetitive bore-fest that proves that they can’t even take their own advice.

This is disheartening, since I loved (LOVED) Songs of Innocence. Its counterpart, Songs of Experience, was one of the few records I was holding out hope for in the waning months of this year, but it sounds like it’s going to be dismal. That leaves the new Dear Hunter EP, All Is as All Should Be, as the main bright light for the rest of the year, and because it’s an EP, it’s ineligible for my top 10 list. I feel like I could write up that list right now and nothing coming out over the next seven weeks will change it.

That’s not to say that music hasn’t been or won’t be coming out regularly. It sure will. My big score this week was the first album by Lost Horizons, the new project of Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde. It features vocals by the likes of Karen Peris (of the Innocence Mission), Marissa Nadler and Tim Smith (of Midlake), and it’s sweet and pretty and full of atmosphere and I just don’t have much to say about it. I also bought the new Blitzen Trapper and the new Lunatic Soul, but haven’t found time or ambition to listen to them.

‘Tis the season for live albums and box sets, too, and I’ll certainly be talking about a few of them next week, including the anniversary reissue of R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People. For new records in November, though, we have Quicksand and the Corrs and Four Tet and, um… Thankfully Bjork just announced her new one, Utoipa, for Nov. 24 or it would be a vast wasteland. (I welcome your suggestions for upcoming records I’ve missed. And don’t say Barenaked Ladies, because everything I’ve heard from that one has been miserable.)

Luckily, I do have something that has been capturing my musical attention this week. It’s new, as in it came out this year, but it’s not new in that it hit in January and I completely missed it. I don’t know how, but it fell through the cracks for me. I absolutely love Brian Transeau, better known as BT, and yet somehow he gave us a 92-minute record of glorious ambience and I completely spaced on it.

I have it now, though, and it’s magnificent. Transeau has charted a unique path through the world of electronic music, moving from the danceable trance of his first releases to an intricate, skittering hybrid of EDM and pop on the still-great Emotional Technology. From there he’s jumped from the soundscapes of This Binary Universe to the quiet atmospheres of If the Stars Are Eternal Then So Are You and I to the explosive guitar-driven pop of These Hopeful Machines to the all-out dance party of A Song Across Wires. Each album feels extraordinarily involved – each one clearly took years of work hunched over a console, editing sounds and sections – and yet each feels deeply emotional at the same time.

That certainly applies to his untitled new monstrosity. I say untitled – it officially has no title, but many streaming services don’t allow untitled albums, so he’s given it the unofficial designation _. That’s right, the underscore symbol. The lack of title adds to the air of mystery around this thing, which apparently shipped in a limited edition box with a USB stick containing all nine songs with nine corresponding videos. I will never get this box, and that’s OK. I’ve downloaded the album (yes, I paid for air) and that’s enough.

It’s more than enough, actually, because _ is massive. It’s a lot to absorb on first (or even tenth) listen. This is an instrumental electronic album, one more concerned with setting moods and feelings than entrancing with melodies. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to This Binary Universe – long soundscapes give way to stuttering beats that feel like taking off in fog and floating over technicolor vistas below. It has an interesting structure – four short songs, three multi-part suites and two long pieces – but it all works as a whole, and leaves you feeling like you’ve been somewhere special.

The three suites are the centerpiece of this record, and each flows so seamlessly that you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re not subdivided at all. They’re intricate, clockwork things, particularly “Omega,” the final one – it shifts restlessly for its first five minutes, then settles into a gorgeous and subtle groove. “Artifacture” develops its individual pieces more thoroughly, but again gives us the most complete bit last, a morphing synthetic cloud that drifts up and up. The final two tracks make up the last half-hour of the album, and they are among the most beautiful 3-D ambient music BT has made. “Chromatophore” ends with whole minutes of rain sounds, and “Five Hundred and Eighty Two” is based on tightly controlled feedback that feels otherworldly. It’s so easy to get lost in this.

I’m not sure how I missed _ when it first came out, but I’m overjoyed to have it now. I’ll take anything from BT, but my favorite things in his catalog are these deeply felt instrumental records, and _ may well be the best one. I won’t be able to adequately describe the experience of listening to it, but I recommend it highly. Once again he has spun magic, bottled it and delivered it as music.

Next week, probably some of those box sets and live records I’ve been picking up lately. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.