This is still an intrinsically Maxwell record, but he navigates familiar tropes through friction and distressed noir-soul, the cohesiveness of the record all the more commendable as a result.

A sorrowful, yet captivating collection of songs, ensuring that Ms. Mitchell continues to snap at the heels of PJ Harvey in the female singer songwriter stakes.

He has vision and ambition beyond the scope of most of us and he is able to bring it to fruition. Long may he find new fans for his challenging but deeply satisfying work.

The answers aren’t as easily obtained as on its Grammy-winning forebear, but ‘King’s Disease II’ dares to ask questions of its maker, and its audience.

Like it or not – I very much do – this is not an artist playing it safe. As on the last album, RAYE is unequivocally at her best when she leans contemporary, in production and subject matter.

Process is his ‘Carrie And Lowell’, a healing record for the broken, the lovelorn and the lost.

This isn’t a project for newcomers. ‘Springtime In New York’ – taken as a five disc whole – requires patience, and a degree of love for the core texts.

‘DEACON’ is a triumph because it realises and relives love’s quiet, archived moments, be it romantic or spiritual. It’s a triumph because it reminds us R&B exists on a vast continuum, forever a source of inspiration and innovation.

‘Big Conspiracy’ never fully sits in one place, this ever-evolving puzzle with J Hus at the core. He wears many masks, but it’s often when these slip that ‘Big Conspiracy’ is at its most viral, and revealing.

These 10 tracks comprise a head-and-shoulders-above collection that immediately imprints itself as one of the best hip-hop records of 2013 so far.

‘Praise…’ feels like a completed maze, a finite and full creation, and cements Tumor as an extraordinary explorer.

Without doubt, this is one of the folk albums of the year.

It’s a real banquet, a feat of folk re-contextualisation driven forward by the sharp emotional instincts of its formidable maker.

Through turns wholly strange and ambiguous, it’s often unclear where the breadcrumb trail of 'House Of Sugar' is leading us, but it’s a mind-bending trip worth taking nonetheless.

With its heady hooks and exuberant riffs, ‘But Here We Are’ is ambitious, poignant, and vivid in equal measure. The emotive and raw sonics are painful but positive at the same time and we as listeners feel every note, line and beat throughout this ten track album which ranks as one of the best Foo Fighters albums in their history.

‘Promises’ is five years' worth of experimental soundscaping condensed into one mind-boggling harmonic journey. A highly accomplished piece of music, Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points both excel in their newfound exploratory duo with a piece of work which will go down in jazz-cross- electronic-cross-classical history.

This album, though, is not a story of what might have been but never was; it is a picturesque view of what happens when a monumental level of care and attention is put into a project. It is a wonderfully constructed success.

An album with soul jazz, spiritual jazz, jazz-funk, electro-soul and many more genre-busting approaches incorporated across 16 wondrous pieces, aspects of free rhythms nestling next to vintage seventies soul sounds, all evolved effortlessly for the 21st Century. ... You won’t hear another record like it this, or maybe any, year.

Full of self-aware wistfulness and post-ironic references, it avoids the pitfalls of many other flash-in-the pan internet culture records by also being genuine; genuinely nostalgic, genuinely sweet, genuinely interesting, and genuinely great.

A work of real refinement, ‘The Great White Sea Eagle’ is peppered with jewels.

A stylish, impactful and accessible collection, ‘Negative Spaces’ is music for our post-genre, post-everything digital age.

Before its release, Fetti had the potential to be one of the strongest hip-hop albums of the year due to the skilled people involved and it has no doubt fulfilled that promise.

While the singles may be his most commercially appealing to date, he never once loses integrity or his aural signature as an artist.

Dublin in the rain belongs to Fontaines D.C., and rather than being too real this album is just right, it is a ragged delivery. The trick lies in the seemingly un-filtered rawness combined with its stark poetic reality. The three components help secure this album’s position as an example of authenticity; authenticity in its most concentrated and truest form and expression.

While some greatest hits collections can feel like cheap cash grabs, this feels like a reminder of why fans fell in love with Hot Chip in the first place. If you’re looking for an album of synth floor fillers, this will certainly do the job and some.

A dystopian masterpiece.

The second album by the Melbourne five-piece is a riot, in the party sense of the word.

Don’t listen to ‘Raven’ expecting immediacy. Instead see ‘Raven’ as a point of discovery, fostering dialogue on and beyond the dancefloor; an open expanse and a surround sound experience for the marginalised seeking thrills beyond the white gaze.