Dancing stuff about structure (or, the translating shapewords into music)

I like your friend's descriptions, much more interesting than the way most music nerds would describe what they like

WFD, I totally agree - and also it triggers the music nerd need to prove how smart s/he is (or in this case, what great access to ILM s/he has) to see if there are musics that match this description. Structure/patterns/disruption but with an element of romance in there too.

Circle - Lokki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JaYMfbDikc

15-minute motorik piece (a very basic patterned framework), stays on one chord with different little parts and incidental bits fading in & out, suddenly kicks up the volume & pitch eleven and a half minutes in, lots of crazy dark heart-pounding psychedelic shit popping off everywhere

obv the description is very open to interpretation!

Early Robert Hood? Stuff like Moveable Parts and Minimal Nation.

Woah Robert Hood! If he were even more minimal and further from the club/dance context - and a little more gritty, that's the sound at least I've got in my head. Funny, I played some basic channel, and I think it's close but probably again too dance-y and less "music-y."

This came up as something cool - very textured -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ4b5t0Aa_I

'dance' - think a lot of stuff that's been released on Opal Tapes and/or kind of mushroomed around that whole thing would fit the bill. not actually au fait w/ her records but my recollection of a Karen Gwyer live set in the summer ticks all the boxes in the OP

'rock' - maybe Shellac in their more awkward/patience-testing/rock-not-rock mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fch4YoMz_t8

Opal Tapes! - Lumigraph in particular sounds like the structure/disruption and has that grain. My friend's going to like this, I think. These are all cassettes?

I also thought about Ben Frost, Hauschka stuff--some of it might be a little too classical-esque or film score-y.