There were no real tectonic shifts in electronic music in 2016; even the most skilled artists’ efforts went largely toward improving upon—or at least making their mark upon—long-established forms. Perhaps that’s why our year-end ranking is so full of veteran players, like Aphex Twin, who continued his post-comeback streak to put a new spin on slow-motion techno, and Larry Heard, who returned to his Mr. Fingers alias for the first time in more than a decade. (Speaking of comebacks, none was more unexpected than the Avalanches’ long-awaited return from the wilderness—but like some kind of sample-flipping Rip van Winkles, they managed to make Since I Left You seem like only yesterday.) While diverse takes on traditionalist house and techno set the tone for much of the year’s output, from Leon Vynehall’s deep-diving Rojus to Marie Davidson’s brittle, chilly Adieux Au Dancefloor, even more classic strains of funk bubbled up in the work of Mndsgn, Nite-Funk, and Moodymann, who dedicated his DJ-Kicks mix to a wide-ranging array of reconstructed soul. That’s not to say that there was nothing new under the sun, however: Autechre continued to bang out algorithmic jams that extraterrestrial beings may one day use as a kind of sonic Rosetta Stone to figure out exactly what made humans tick.