jazz/rock/noise

The long-awaited follow-up to their 2007 debut finds a much different Normal Love. The lineup has gone through several changes, members are now scattered between Philly and NYC, and the sound has evolved from a chamber-prog-metal onslaught into an uncanny no wave-industrial-new music cyborg. Still recognizable on Survival Tricks is the combination of complexity and chaos, brutality and wicked humor, reconstructed into a post-human sonic organism. —Shaun Brady

jazz

After a series of releases paying tribute to his mentors, keyboard player Orrin Evans reasserts his own bold identity on Flip the Script (Posi-Tone). His new trio features bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Donald Edwards, both matches for Evans in sensitivity and strength. The disc features a half-dozen originals, from the strident blues of "Big Small" to the tender melancholy of "When," alongside four covers. Evans gives his regular nod to his hometown, as well as the late Don Cornelius, on Gamble & Huff's Soul Train theme, and gets downright celebratory on Luther Vandross' "A Brand New Day" from The Wiz. —Shaun Brady

electronic

Having perfected his brand of ambient-inclined techno back on 2007's This Bliss, with only minor modifications since, Henrik Weber, aka Pantha du Prince, has found a fresh way forward in illuminative, symbiotic collaboration with producer and experimentalist Stephan Abry. The duo's self-titled LP, Ursprung (Dial), is a textural odyssey: patient, even placid, but far from static — and an intimate, intricate examination of the possibilities of guitar-derived sound, billowing expansively within and beyond Weber's ringing, broad-vista'd beatscapes. Ideal cloud-watching music. —K. Ross Hoffman

dance/hip-hop

After an absurd three-year-plus delay, Rye Rye's debut could've been a confused mess, watering down her Baltimore club roots with faceless club-pop bloat. Go! Pop! Bang! (Interscope/N.E.E.T.) has some of that — generic electro-house RedOne hook here, asinine Akon collab there — but the pint-sized Charm City charmer hasn't exactly pulled a Nicki. Even the most brazen pandering just feels like more ammo for her gutter-ready dance arsenal, and Ryeisha more than holds her own alongside M.I.A., Robyn or the frickin' Vengaboys. —K. Ross Hoffman