Noctunes, Willis Earl Beal’s 2015 release on Tender Loving Empire, is an album of Angelo Badalamenti-inspired synth pads, sparse drum machine percussion, and Beal’s lithe voice. It’s a collection of slow-burning, ambient crooner ballads that’s something like Windham Hill R&B—a previously unimagined genre for Beal’s rare kind of breakup album, one that focuses almost entirely on post-relationship mental traps rather than the faults of the other person. The largely ignored Noctunes is a far cry from the self-proclaimed outsider music on Acousmatic Sorcery that brought him international acclaim in 2012, but it’s no less surprising. Out of all the potential directions that Beal has successfully entertained over the past few years, no one could have guessed that he’d sound most at home in the far extreme of subdued minimalism. JOSHUA JAMES AMBERSON