In an era of widespread digital artistry and eye-blink information traffic, we are so bombarded with the new that simply processing the amount of music emerging from blogs and file-sharing sites can’t help but draw our attention from the existing foundation of musical cornerstones. With so many splashy debuts each week, each month, each year, it’s not uncommon for them to shine brighter in the media than the latest work from an established, proven artist.

Guillermo Scott Herren (aka Prefuse 73) is nothing if not proven. It’s hard to think of a name that carries as much weight in both hip-hop and avant-rock circles as Prefuse 73, who in the past year alone has been asked to remix TV On The Radio, Pelican, BLK JKS and Cornelius, not to mention his early collaborations with School of Seven Bells and Battles. These interactions have clearly helped to shape the evolving Prefuse 73 sonic aesthetic, which has expanded to include Herren’s twisted visions of prog-rock, “machine funk” and global psychedelia.

For Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, Herren rejected the idea of straight digital recording and instead went the much more intensive route of recording to analog Ampex tape, giving the album the sound of a lost tape of exploratory studio musicians from the not-too-distant past. In addition to the recording process, Ampexian also differs in its composition, existing as a tapestry of tracks of varying lengths and moods, albeit with a remarkable linear flow and, of course, unmatched rhythmic bump.

From the drum machine prog of “Parachute Panador” to the driving noise jam “Violent Bathroom Exchange”, it’s easy to deduce that Prefuse 73 is comfortably stretching out musically. “Nature’s Uplifting Revenge” sounds as if broadcast from from a pirate radio station equally enamored with Animal Collective and J Dilla, while “Simple Loop Choir” is anything but simple…an expansive robo-ballad, featuring a vocoded chorus of Herren’s voice and clouds of analog debris.

The uncommon reach of the album also serves as an oddly appropriate introduction and companion to Guillermo Scott Herren’s newest musical incarnation, Diamond Watch Wrists, and the album Ice Capped at Both Ends. Created with superstar drummer Zach Hill (Hella, Marnie Stern, etc.), DWW shows an entirely new form of Herren creations, organic songs featuring Guillermo’s plaintive vocals, guitar and studio wizardry, Hill’s singular drumming as well as previously unheard nods to 60’s European acid-folk, classic American singer-songwriters and krautrock.

While Herren would call the Diamond Watch Wrists material, “simple songs about everyday things” they, of course, strike the listener as much more. Deceptively complex in their arrangements, the songs never fail to strike a fascinating balancing act between brooding and uplifting, making for an uncommonly well-rounded album.

These two albums are tantamount in their differences, but strong musical and emotional gravity unites them, which will make the spring and summer of 2009 a very interesting time for lucky concertgoers when Prefuse 73 and Diamond Watch Wrists take to the road together for a joint tour across Europe, Japan and the USA. Given the boundless scope of these two projects, there’s little telling what these live experiences won’t touch upon.

From Delarosa & Asora to Savath & Savalas, through to Prefuse 73 and Diamond Watch Wrists, there’s no way to underestimate the reach of Guillermo Scott Herren’s influence and 2009 appears to be a significant culmination of the artist’s most resounding material.

David Ellis is an artist born into a family immersed in music. His paintings are often recorded in a form of digital time-lapse animation he calls motion painting. Like jazz, these works provide Ellis with an opportunity to combine ideas with collaborators and work solo within a form that promotes improvisation and spontaneity.

Ellis often stages events when exhibiting his motion paintings, inviting musicians, performers, and sound artists to interpret the work live. His motion painting, Paint on Trucks in a World in Need of Love was exhibited at MoMA. Ellis further explores sound with kinetic installations that produce analogue sequences in rhythm. His latest work, often in collaboration with composer Roberto Lange, deconstructs the inner workings of player pianos to create sprawling sculptures that automatically play percussive rhythms with recycled typewriters, buckets, bottles and cans.

Recent projects have been exhibited at The Huntington Museum of Art, ICA Philadelphia, Rice University Gallery, and PS1/MoMA.

Jon Hopkins is a musical shapeshifter: a composer, pianist and a self-taught studio wizard. He makes affecting, bold electronic music using walls of synths, lustrous melodies and amorphous bass rumbles. As such his two albums have seen him labelled by the likes of ambient patriarch Brian Eno as an electronic innovator while an impressive sweep of artists from Herbie Hancock and David Holmes to King Creosote and Coldplay, have called upon his handiwork as a producer and composer.

In fact, Coldplay were so taken with Light Through the Veins - the first single from Hopkins’ new album Insides - that they used a reworked version to bookend last year's bestselling Viva La Vida and persuaded the 28-year-old Londoner to spend the last six months of 2008 opening their live shows across the USA, Europe and Japan.

Insides is much bolder than its predecessors, showcasing Hopkins' intriguing musical aesthetic to brilliant effect. His immense compositions transcend genres, melding digital coldness with subtle, bucolic textures; veering from simple elegance to strange, unsettling sonic depths. Hopkins' artfully constructed palette of rhythmic loops and treated piano can be partly explained by his unusual adolescence; he was a child piano prodigy before discovering the bleeps and beeps of dance music. In his west London bedroom he balanced a teen obsession with acid house, early hardcore and grunge alongside weekend piano tutorials at the Royal College of Music. At 16 he flitted between the twilight stoner world of drum'n'bass pirate radio and German label Recycle or Die's hypnotic electronica, and the classical discipline of playing a Ravel piano concerto.

His first album, 2001's Opalescent, was written in a Wembley bedsit while he jobbed as a session musician. Although he was still naive about rave culture and its comedowns, Opalescent unwittingly tapped into a cultural shift as rave morphed into a more downtempo sound. A collection of instrumental songs with an escapist feel, it earned him a cult following among the electronica cognoscenti. His second outing, Contact Note (2004), was more enticing still: a cinematic, layered work with a harder experimental edge, it earned Hopkins comparisons to, and praise from, Brian Eno. An introduction to the sonic alchemist lead to sessions that were later released as part of Eno's Another Day on Earth, and subsequently to Hopkins working alongside Eno as an additional producer on Coldplay's Viva La Vida. A stint producing Scottish folkie King Creosote's Bombshell lit the touchpaper for the genuinely exploratory electronica of his new album.

Insides moves on from the cold clinical accuracy of earlier, more rigidly sequenced work, to a drifting, wordless electronica that has a seductive intimacy. Opener The Wider Sun is a slow, layered violin lament that conjures a rural idyll, gently melting into pulsating electronics. The likes of Vessel and title track Insides have a more ominous quality, infused with a particularly British strain of melancholy. Their delicate melodies mutate into bass heavy oscillations that wouldn't be out of place at an east London dubstep night, or even accompanying avant-garde choreography - the first half of Insides formed the score to Wayne McGregor’s recent contemporary dance production Entity, which has been touring the world since its premiere last year at Sadler’s Wells.

As each track segues seamlessly into the next, thunderous claustrophobic frequencies are offset by familiar sounds - the submerged noise of cars on the street, birdsong - and cold currents of melody that open a window and let the day back in. First single, Light Through the Veins, which featured expert remixes from David Holmes and Ewan Pearson, is all but perfect: drawing the listener in with each pure, serpentine note. None of which is to say that Insides is cerebral music for art boffs. It's hardly even a dance record. Instead it's about juxtaposition: natural, arcane textures welded to uneasy rhythms, beautiful acoustic melodies set against jarring bass. Above all, Insides is an audacious album which boasts a magical aura all of its own.

Iggor and Laima Cavalera are a husband-and-wife dance music group from Sao Paolo, Brazil. As Mixhell they have released 10 original tracks, remixed over 25 songs, and have been remixed over 20 times.

When Iggor was 15 he founded Sepultura with his brother Max. During the next 20 years Iggor sold over 15 million albums, toured stadiums around the world, and is generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest heavy metal drummers of all time.

In 2006 Iggor tired of Sepultura and was ready to take some much needed time off. But he soon discovered the joy and power of dance music. He and Laima began making tracks, DJing, and linking up with some of dance music heaviest hitters.

Before long they were being mentored, championed, or played out by the likes of Soulwax/2ManyDJs, Justice, MSTRKRFT, Diplo, Busy P and James Murphy.

Mixhell has played over 100 gigs in Europe, selling out venues while refining their spectacular live show. In it, Iggor and Laima both DJ, side-by-side, playing their own edits and enhancing the records they play with original percussion they’ve recorded themselves, triggered via MPC. But what makes them really stand out from all other dance acts is when Iggor leaves his turntables and gets behind his drum kit, which he prefers to play in the middle of the dance floor - like Girl Talk and Dan Deacon.

Pounding on drums live, tattoos and muscles bulging, Iggor incites the crowd, who, dancing all around him, becomes part of the show, turning the dance floor into a mosh pit. It’s an incredible thing to behold. Many dance artists have introduced live instrumentation to their sets. None have ever had the power and intensity, and rock as hard, as Mixhell.

Iggor and Laima are warm and fun, enthusiastic, positive, attractive and engaging. They have 5 children, 4 from separate marriages and a young boy together. Iggor’s story, his journey from metal to dance music, from being in the biggest band ever from Brazil to starting anew, from touring with Napalm Death and Motorhead to playing with Justice and Soulwax, is remarkable.

He’s been on the road for 25 years and has the stories to tell. Their upcoming projects range from tracks with 2ManyDJs and Crookers to museum installations to documentaries with Brazilian models, plus new tracks, new releases, new remixes, new mixes, and their debut album. They are also on the cutting-edge of a new dance scene coming out of Brazil, collaborating with artists we’ll be talking about next year and the year after that.

Listen: Black Metal Soundsystem