The career of Sean Green, aka Bonobo, has been one of slow yet steady ascent. A DJ and producer, his debut record Animal Magic contained the trademarks of a man impressed in the details. One could listen to the record without realizing the jazzy, funkified trip-hop beats have been playing and seeping into your brain. The sitars ring, the guitar strings fuzz, drums mute, and all of a sudden the listener is transfixed. When Black Sands came out in 2010, the formula was complete – global melodies, hip hop precussion, a meditative producers touch. “Kiara” remains one of my favorite “play-this-any-time-of-day” track of the past 5 years, while “Eyesdown” is the most seductive 9 megabytes available for remixes. Listening to Black Sands can be akin to sitting in a Van der Rohe chair. The details are everywhere, you just have to look.

So needless to say, The North Borders might be the most anticipated release on Ninja Tune this year.

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Ghostpoet is a rising star of UK grime/rap/garage vocalists. Ever since 2011′s pristine Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam, his cult following status has only grown larger, including some stateside love (myself included, of course). His music wonderfully blends moodiness and reflection. The dark, brooding beats hover and oscillate between grime, trip hop and backpacker hip hop. And his voice, well, his voice captures an emotional context that few can achieve. “Cash and Carry Me Home” was remixed endlessly, while “Survive It” feels like a million life lessons all rolled up into one. So where’s the follow up?

The new album, Some Say I So Say Light, emerged on May 6 to equal aplomb. Not afraid of bending genres and convention, the record takes soul, rap, grime, and reflective or meditative lyrics and mashes them together. Fortunately for us, the excellent new single “Meltdown” gets remixed by the one and only Squarepusher. He amps it up a few notches, dropping the meditative nature of the track into a wobbly, brilliant mashing of sound. This is one of those songs that will feel iconic for the year as time goes by, a microcosm of the variety of sound in 2013.