Many of the best rap records are monochromatically single-minded, but then the other half, embrace contradictions as a weapon, rage hiding insecurities, heartless satire shielding weakness, such as Earl’s hero, early period Slim Shady.

Mindlessly hummable and pure of vision, Howlin’ sounds just as good coming from your headphones as it does from Marshall stacks.

Nepenthe isn’t The Magic Place, but it certainly sounds like she’s found another special site of inspiration. Thankfully for us it’s just as prodigious and marvellous as anything else Barwick has put out before.

RocketNumberNine should be commended for the killer tracks that they’ve managed to pack into MeYouWeYou.

On Bitchitronics, Bitchin Bajas make the journey from unconscious creation to physical expression in a way that few of their electronic peers would understand. Brian Eno and Robert Fripp would approve, I’d imagine.

Even though Supermigration is constructed as a whole, it doesn’t always work best in one sitting.

At the very least instead of sounding like he was curling up into a melancholic hibernating state as on Exercises, here he sounds like he once again wants to fight the boredom and start actively engaging the listener on all levels.

Though it’s hardly labyrinthine--these songs proceed in pretty much a linear fashion–Slow Focus immerses the listener in an aural landscape that offers so much to explore.

It just runs over half an hour, but time slips away when you’re inside it, wandering about.

Ultimately, this is sound of two dons recognising their rightful place at the top of the summit, surveying their kingdom and proceeding to piss all over it. And it sounds fucking glorious.

Fans of Yuck who are coming into Unreal hoping for and album as plentiful of hooks as that album might be slightly perturbed at first not to find anything as tight or punchy as something like “Get Away” or “The Wall,” but after spending time with the album you’ll find that each song possesses an airy, sing-songy hook that’s easy to latch onto.

Kveikur is the band’s noisiest and most muscular record yet. The variety of experience it offers not just from Valtari, but from the band’s entire catalogue, means that it stands among their best.

Saab Stories is the least appealing of those [albums], but that has less to do with the rapper and more to do with the production which doesn’t allow this extra-large personality to conflate alongside it. Action Bronson is a big man; he just needs room to breathe.

Embracism is a record that’ll grab you and bring you close, but also one that won’t hesitate to push you away with a gut punch and expect you to take it like a man.

It’s big, heavy, and worthy to soundtrack plenty of dancefloors. The only thing Ghost System Rave is arguably missing is the real personality from its creators.

The growth in Austra from Feel It Break to Olympia is palpable throughout.

The music on This Is Another Life isn’t the kind that boasts colour, or even deep and dark hues, but rather is full of big strokes of dull greys.

There’s a wealth of sonic variety on display but the concise run-time--clocking in at a fraction over 40 minutes--keeps matters focused and thoroughly engaging.

Soft Will is certainly not as immediately infectious as Smith Westerns’ previous outings, but that does not make it a weaker album. There are still many injections of fun in the wordless gang vocals and theatrical guitar solos.

Sunbather is a future classic, no matter where you pigeonhole it, and that’s the mark of a true sonic masterpiece. Black metal, not black metal, just call it what it is: perfect.

All in all, Hopkins’ roadmap is splendidly plotted, taking the right amount of time to deliver you to your destination and showing you the detours you didn’t even know you wanted to see.

Fair play to them for expanding out on Kids in L.A. and finding appropriate inspiration, but I dare say that the emotion that brought the couple together seem to be their deepest well of inspiration.

If there’s anything Mr. West finds completely alien to his person, it’s restraint, and Yeezus is the perfect, chaotic, and ultimately uncompromising dive into this world.

If Born Sinner proves anything, it’s that he’s not ready to take the fall, but he as a long way to go if he wants to rope off an area all his own in hip hop’s evolution.

Pinned up and thoroughly artistic, Field of Reeds is affecting, but it’s also hard to get genuinely excited about.

As his name implies, Ghostpoet can be vague, mystifying, and a little bit of a downer--but ultimately the best art is the kind that makes you think and broadens your perspective, which this record does in spades.

Desire Lines is undoubtedly a Camera Obscura album, but it might be their first that is more suited to quiet winter nights inside, rather than the sunny side of things that dominated their sound on their previous albums.

He’s fulfilled every promise made by Badlands and then some, and despite whatever depths of pain made such an eruption of shattered awesome possible, he’s managed not just one of the best albums of the year, but one of the most genuinely moving, as well.

Crawling Up The Stairs should be praised not only for its beauty, honesty and sonic specialty, but also for the way it’s sequenced.

Each track posseses different sounds, colours, styles and textures, but they combine to make an odd but strangely appealing whole.

Where Music Has the Right seemed grounded in the real world (albeit a twisted recollection of such) and Geogaddi straddled the line between Star Wars and The Sandlot, Tomorrow’s Harvest finds the duo launching their sound into Lovecraftian orbit. And it sounds terrific.

It’s one of the most gleeful and replayable debuts of 2013.

Now on the other side of forty, this is QOTSA as weary of mortality as they’ve ever been. They also sound as vital, forceful and rough around the edges as they have in over a decade. Welcome back, gentlemen.

On MCII, it’s a dual-edged sword that he brandishes skillfully into a scintillating sophomore record, one stacked with some of the year’s best pop-rock tunes.

Eagle is definitely Marling’s most considered work, and most of that comes simply from the fact she’s stripped away a lot of the decoration, and yet ultimately it feels easy for her, if not a little predictable.

Nocturnes rates better as an album that sounds better with time, as opposed to Hands’ sugar rush appeal. However, it also retains an uneven quality that can make getting through Nocturnes feel like someone trying to drag the party on a little too long.

An aura of mystery and ambiguity hangs over Impersonator. The emotions and resulting thoughts are always present and felt, but their cause isn’t always clear.

Abandon is one of the most cathartic, brutalizing, and beautiful experimental releases this or any year.

[A] sprawling, at times impenetrable, but most outstandingly, engaging ramble.

RAM can oftentimes feel scattered, too ambitious, or too similar to the era it’s working from, but, in the end, it’s an album held together by that palpable reverence.

Sometimes pushing the envelope may be a grandiose gesture, other times more subtle, and while Wild Nothing may never be a Brian Eno, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a Felt or Go-Betweens.

Modern Vampires of the City finds the band in both familiar and unfamiliar territory, and it’s pure pleasure hearing them navigate these waters.

Unpredictable it is not, but taken as a study of sound and mood, it’s kind of perfect.

It may not be the most instantly appealing of albums, but with a little time it proves itself to be more than its title suggests.

While the fury remains, there a perceptible dip in quality in nearly every aspect of the Thermals’ formula.

It’s surprisingly how unaffecting and mediocre most of it is.

Since Savages have cultivated such a politicized aesthetic, it’s hard to divorce the concept behind the art from the art itself, but Silence Yourself delivers if you are willing to submit to its unflinching authority.

It may not reach the same creative highs or artistic wholeness of their previous releases, but in its own right, it can be just as enjoyable.

Akron/Family are never going to stop changing and you never really know what you’re gonna get, but they could perhaps do with a bit more cohesiveness and bit less grandiosity next time around.

With additional help from fellow musician and frequent collaborator Justin Vernon (whose vocals are the only overdubbed aspect of the music), the songs on To See More Light are as devastatingly personal as they are emphatically otherworldly--inhuman sounding even. This stark dichotomy of sound and intent throws Stetson’s music into austere relief.

Thirty tracks and seventy-five minutes, Fabric 69 is a work of incredibly sturdy sonic architecture; it’s hardly inert or monotonous, yet at the same time it takes techno’s notion of repetition to what might be considered a logical extreme.

The Marriage of True Minds is something of a record built for everyone, a fusion of sounds and ideas built from the thoughts and minds of lots of different people; there will be different moments that deter and attract different people, but there are more than enough of the better ones to keep you hooked for the album’s runtime.

Nothing here is overtly thrilling but ultimately the record is a real joy to listen to.

Bankrupt! suffers because it feels a little detached at times, like you can’t really tell where the band are in the big picture.

Tunes are built slowly and satisfyingly, ebbing and flowing into oceans of ambient sound. Through these layers, though, shine frequent flashes of utter brilliance.

As a pure entertainment piece, Twelve Reasons To Die appeals directly to the brain’s pleasure center.

They’re still capable of brilliance (particularly on the opening and closing tracks), but too much of Mosquito is bogged down by tongue-in-cheek frivolity.

If any record of this relatively young year demands your full attention then Shaking the Habitual is it, as it opens up as a vast chasm of unexpected possibilities, and despite any possible subconscious misgivings, you’ll immediately want to jump in without thinking twice.

Excavation is vivid and physical, each moment meticulously and purposefully crafted.

With any luck, Wakin On A Pretty Daze will go down as a document to the workman he really is.

Off the Record, despite a few promising tracks, never provides a strong enough reason for listeners to do anything but go back and admire what he accomplished with Kraftwerk.

Dadub have crafted an LP with depth and subtle yet grand-scale dimension, adding another excellent release to the Stroboscopic Artefacts canon.

Total Nite comes less than a year on from Children of Desire and feels like a natural continuation of their sound.

While James Blake felt aloof, even ahuman, Overgrown is packed with feeling, and releases it with the smallest of gestures.

Wolf is a serious mess.

As one of the most polarizing records in their extensive discography, this release is sure to divide certain fans, especially those who were disillusioned by the relative inaccessibility of Embryonic. For listeners looking for a noisy and thoroughly experimental album, though, The Terror is just what the doctor ordered.

A shining example of what hip-hop should always strive to be, at least to a devoted segment of rap nationalists untroubled by the anachronism of rejecting the clean synth lines of this century’s rap in favor of its dusty aesthetics of the early to mid ‘90s.

Tricolore is enjoyable, but it’s a sum of two different parts; together it comes off as strangely disjointed, like shifting from speaking German to speaking Japanese.

Seabed is a luscious album that implores you to dive into the gorgeous depths of its sound and atmosphere.

More variety would help his cause, but Holiday is a graceful, emotionally affluent debut.

The character of each new Low album is always a mystery until you hear it, so speculating on whether they’re likely to continue working in this manner is pointless at this juncture, but it’s good to know that ten albums in Low still have the ability to put together a stirring collection of songs.

Here she sounds more polished and pop-friendly than ever, largely thanks to some new additions and some smart subtractions.

With Lines, Lynch has managed to trudge on ever closer to the boundary separating the two worlds that he calls home, though at least for now he’s decidedly, satisfyingly settled on the side of the outré.

Thematic speculation aside Green has managed, more simply to write a compelling collection of guitar pop songs.

As commendable as their attempts at exploring different genre’s are, Fol Chen do sound their best at their poppy moments.

On balance, it’s what you’d expect from a Wavves record, hardly revelatory and moderately inconsistent, but packed full of reckless exuberance and fun, hyperkinetic jams to thrash around to that take only a couple of listens tops to get lodged firmly in your head.

While Comedown Machine drags itself through a number of dead zones (most notably the dud pair of the title track and “50 50”), there are moments where they recapture some of what made them a great band.

It’s not an album that immediately reveals itself, but when it lets you in it’s hard to find your way out.

the record does manage to impress despite being vaguely familiar and prone to flights of guitar fancy for no other reason than it can.

House of Woo suggests an artist who’s still coming into his own without being afraid to play chameleon at the DJ booth.

It’s rare to find a lyricist so honest and a vocalist so earnest, and when put into song it seems to Houck as if every word is vital and cathartic and necessary.

Outrun is exactly what it aspires to be: a fun retro-pop-dance album for those who like to drive fast through cities at night, perhaps behind a pair of sunglasses.

There are a couple of lesser tracks on Nostalchic and it’s up for debate as to how well Howard sticks the landing on the LP format, but Lapalux is a singular talent and his debut is evidence of that even if the pieces don’t all quite click neatly into place.

Despite the thimble of predictability or aural similarity, Wahlfeldt has accomplished in Crusher an interesting take on familiar sounds. It’s too fuzzed out to just be post-punk, too sparse to just be a home-recorded take on his alt-rock idol.

On Mala he certainly could have done himself some favours by trimming away some lesser moments (particularly the pointless minute long “Mala” or “A Gain”) but there’s certainly a sense that’s he gradually becoming more efficient with his song writing.

Girls Names does not dwell on the dourness, but conquers and transforms it into a solace--a sound resulting from some hallucinatory fever like a Max Ernst painting, realizing the shadowy dimension parallel to this existence.

Frank Ocean might have a gutsier pen game–and Usher more moves and Miguel more sex appeal--but 20/20 is easier to fall into a groove with than any of the best contemporary pop/R&B albums out right now.

There’s a confidence exhibited here that’s refreshing.

New Moon has extended the the group’s realization of their own freedom.

Punk Authority sounds too accomplished to be the product of mere caprice.

A tangled and glorious mess of aggressive glitches and clipped synths and stuttering beats and hints, shadows, and fragments of tunefulness.

The duo retain a stripped down approach and it helps make each production choice and songwriting turn feel pondered and noteworthy, each track carving out its own identity and mood within a larger thematically consistent body.

Sweat’s new album, All My Love In Half Light, follows from her debut, Mantic, utilizing the same setup albeit this time she sounds clearer, grander, and more in control of herself and the world she’s creating.

Javelin’s sound has in fact undergone distilled changes, but the result is still a fun album that once again brings up the question of what could be next for the duo.

When viewed on its own, Vol. 3 is a pleasant, though fundamentally flawed, ending to Smith’s musical journey.

Sudden Elevation is her first album entirely in English, and is the result of an escape to a seaside cottage to focus herself on her songs and the concept of the album itself, detailing the way tracks would ebb and flow. As a result she’s created arguably her best work to date.

Lesser songwriters might stop there, and accept lyrical maturation as the only necessary step toward a sophomore effort, but Crutchfield also uses Cerulean Salt as a way to expand her sonic palette beyond the crackling acoustic guitar ballads that marked her previous work.

They’re wisps and fragments that might leave you feeling nostalgic for the nostalgia that marked Payseur’s past. If only the messages contained within the songs rang as true as the guitars.