Down In Heaven is a great, hazy summer album.

Cut And Paste is a well-crafted slice of guitar pop in and of itself, but it largely functions as a placeholder album that succeeds in stoking into life the flickering embers of a dying flame without ever truly reigniting the pyre.

While British Road Movies can’t quite match the shock of the new provided by The Long Blondes’ early material, it’s a strong and confident comeback, and better than we’d any right to expect from someone who hasn’t been involved in an album release for over eight years.

It probably won’t satisfy those who still yearn for a return to their ‘90s alt-rock beginnings but it’s a good starting point for newcomers. For the rest of us though, what this all amounts to, in the end, is another fantastic Radiohead album.

It’s a record stacked with an adeptness of touch from a production standpoint, a modern tapestry that weaves in and out of genres defined by black artists of past.

The unerringly loyal will find enough here to sate a hunger for anthemic bobbins drenched in atmospheric production, but there’s little to match the handful of magical songs for which he is known.

Driven by crispy drum machines and shimmering synths, Lanza’s second full-length Hyperdub offering is instantly more direct and relatable than its predecessor; cloudy reverb is replaced by sheeny production.

Her history and significance is rooted in rebellion--but that’s easy to overlook with a record this diluted.

It’s a collection that proves Moby’s a gifted, mature songwriter.

There's still a level of discontent that quietly rumbles along beneath the bass, but every cloud has a silver lining and it seems that Eagulls might have found theirs.

While some tracks do begin to sound alike, the effortless cool that drips from the more fleshed-out and established cuts provides Nosebleed Weekend with more than enough substance to make up for them.

It’s an exemplar of her adaptability, and in a music realm stacked with mind-numbing, homogeneous house numbers, Katy B still occupies a lane of her own.

Unfortunately their laudable desire to sound like the future rather than the past seems to have backfired, leaving ‘Paradise' a crop of good ideas that wear quickly on the ears. On the plus side this overly polished sound might help convert at least a few godforsaken You Me at Six fans onto real punk (that is, if real punk will have them).

This mini album sees Wire once again looking askance at modernity via cryptic cynicism, bassist Graham Lewis's obtuse lyrics reaching new levels of vexatious impenetrability.

Views packs much less of a political punch than Bey’s must-hear epic, and at 20 tracks, Aubrey for the most part provides a rather overweight and lethargic waltz through his musical comfort zone.

Ultimately The Impossible Kid is an album that will reinforce whatever preconceptions about Aesop Rock you already hold. However, it’s also worth noting that this is most probably the least cryptic and most honest of all his records.

Pity Sex may have taken few risks to make a breakthrough album and they’re hardly re-inventing the wheel, but White Hot Moon is a solid effort and a worthy follow-up to debut ‘Feast Of Love’.

The travelling folk shows of Michel Cleis and Die Vögel, healing dancefloors and faiths while handing out daisy chains, head the electronic curiosities helping join the dots of a compilation that poses as much might as it does magic.

Within the iron grip, the looseness of categorisation between dubstep, grime, trap and mutant techno means each mission has something riding on it, transferring an aftershock of grim satisfaction throughout.

If you sometimes need to reach for songs that make you smile, that deliver adrenaline or emotional balm, then you could do an awful lot worse than Everything At Once.

This is a very strong album about love, written by two people who aren’t in love.

Considering the lucid, poignant albums to come to fruition from cabin writing retreats (Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ etc.)--Standards is an album that is almost completely devoid of such clarity and space.

Whatever your feelings around the words, and they are certainly a little clunky at times, this is a musically rich collection that is partly a logical step on from the rattle of 2011’s beautiful ‘Let England Shake’ and also as melodic a rock record as Harvey has released in some time.

Lemonade is Beyoncé at her most benevolent, and her most unadulterated. Treating her blackness not as an affliction but a celebratory beacon, Lemonade is a long overdue, cathartic retribution.

Distortland may not see them return to the genius pop level they had up until 2003's ‘Welcome To The Monkey House’. But it is much closer.

A tense but rewarding debut--one that fits in nicely with the Clinic canon, while also giving Sherwood a starring role.

This album works best when those ideas are allowed to flourish and persist. When the arrangements get too embellished and full, they veer too far away from what makes Carpenter’s economical gestures so enduring, relying too heavily on virtuosity for comfort.

With only a few elements, Kowton crafts expansive, diverse compositions that, while still being functional, take the idea of the dance floor in novel directions.