This album is not just exciting for its sound, but for what it promises too.

This is not the moment where he will become a superstar, but it’s a promising beginning to what should be a very long career.

La Roux’s march may has slowed to a stroll, but she proves here that she can captivate at any pace.

No Love Web Deep is another scintillating missive from one America's most conceptually rich hip-hop acts.

The final outcome is a trebly plastic-fantastic quality, rendering Shrines closer in tone and texture to coke-rap than ethereal indie.

The Block Brochure is a daunting proposition and quite simply a difficult amount of music to process. This is unfortunate, though, given the sheer number and variety of gems strewn throughout.

Unfidelity stands out as a keeper.

In running time and number of songs, (III) may be their shortest album, but it's also their most cohesive personal statement yet.

By blending the conceptual drive of Post-Foetus and the organic songwriting of Baths, Wiesenfeld has delivered on the promise of Cerulean and found his place among contemporaneous pop experimenters like Grimes and Autre Ne Veut.

Unselfconscious and joyfully untrammelled, most importantly Never is charmingly weird--that quality so coveted by indie chancers everywhere.

At.Long.Last.A$AP is an unfocused, overlong slog of an album.

Lucifer is a very pleasant listen, but then so are The Wailers, without Bob.

Whether or not stadium pop is to everyone’s taste, this is it in its smartest and most human form.

Gorgeous, beguiling, strange and way way out there, records like this restore a sense of mystery and wonder to the world.

On 1989, she makes mountains out of molehills, but this approach feels one part the ironic distance of the digital generation, one part sincere embracing of the impact of life’s speedbumps. Nothing could be more 2014.

Produced by arena rock specialists Flood and Alan Moulder, Holy Fire sounds pop sound insofar as it’s smoothed off, big and accessible.

A Collection... isn't Maus' best record--played back to back with We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, it blanches in comparison--but it's a fine insight into the mind of an inspired Lord Of Misrule.

The meandering, incidental quality of their music works alternately in their favor and against them.

AMOK isn’t quite dazzling, but it’s a clear improvement on its predecessor, and more than enough to win over old fans--and perhaps a few new ones, too.

Love, lust and longing are chronicled and dissected in True Romance through online relationships being gradually given tangible, tactile form, setting Charli up as a young pop star to be reckoned with.

By and large, this is a downbeat record, one suggesting maybe Albarn recently had a listen to ‘Mr Robinson’s Quango’ and decided never to do ‘whimsical’ again. Still, there’s a couple of more upbeat numbers that work in neat counterpoint.

Kwes is a resourceful, competent producer and songwriter who’s not short on ideas; if anything, he’s overwhelmed by his own creativity.

Berberian Sound Studios is a wonderful, intense and darkly beautiful legacy to Keenan's unique character, and testament to the band's continuing ability as their world changes.

All things considered, this is a handsome, stately album.

Minor issues like that [decision to release Stranger Than Fiction as a hybrid album/mixtape led to some questionable choices] make Stranger Than Fiction very good rather than great, but Gates hasn’t sacrificed any of the characteristics that garnered all this recent attention.

Hive Mind doesn't quite possess the same strength as what has preceded it.

It's as if by having every tool and style of every era and nation available to them at the press of a button has stripped AC's world of its mystery; as if there's nothing more to discover.

Cupid Deluxe starts strongly with ‘Chamakay’, ‘You’re Not Good Enough’, and ‘Uncle ACE’, but sadly loses focus.

Here’s an hour or so of music that’s cold as the cosmos and as unsentimental as physics, but something you can nonetheless gaze upon in awe.

By and large, Overjoyed works when it rocks--the snarling chugga-chugga of “Do It Nation”, the nursery-rhyme feedback shredding of “Overjoyed And Thankful”--and falls a little flat when it doesn’t.

A delicate thing, and for all its studied complexity sometimes comes off a touch insubstantial.

For music that is over 15 years old, Back on Time sounds as fresh as a sitar-wielding half-stepping daisy.

Whilst The North Borders is hardly a stylistic leap of faith into the unknown there’s definitely a more confident and varied use of textures and instrumentation than on Black Sands, and it marks a new, very much worthwhile chapter in Bonobo’s continuing story.

The percussion is low in the mix and the bass way up, giving the songs a molten, fluid quality. The parts themselves, however, are guided by an erratic intelligence.

Government Plates is sometimes just incoherent.... But in the end these are minor quibbles.

On Mess, surface is meaning, with the album’s vacuous hedonism merely another expression of the theme of spiritual oblivion that Liars have explored ever since their debut.

At its core, Long.Live.A$AP succeeds because it lets Rocky be Rocky: a rapper with a unique voice and an ear for captivating beats whose lyrical shortcomings can be glossed over with healthy servings of charisma and panache.

Overall this is a fine, and occasionally transcendent, stepping up of Fiona's game.

It’s so clean, stylish and pleasant that few will rubbish it, so the spotlight is instead shone on select tracks whose impact is then over-stretched as they try to inject some gravitas into how fluffy it can be.

When times are lean, Smalhans contains just the sort of shamelessly calorific dance music that we should be thankful for.

Personality's not a start-to-finish winner like Glass Swords was, but it's refreshing and gratifying to hear Scuba step out from the shadow of the Berghain and dreary discussions of the "dubstep-techno crossover", and start to release some music that sounds like it was fun to make.

Lonely At The Top has ample points to recommend it: its breadth of scope tempered by its unity of feel; the finesse of its construction paired with Blair's ear for bold sonic combinations. And yet it's curiously difficult to love.

The fact is, what we're presented with here isn't filler exactly, but it's certainly not killer either.

Though it sounds like it couldn’t be by anybody else, it’s more sonically diverse and less dense than previous Jesu albums.

Space Zone keeps the bar propped up impressively high without treading back over old ground.

Ital has finally found a place to call home, and it suits him very well indeed.

Whether or not an attempt to be faithful to the original recordings (which kind of defeats the purpose), his compositions are, while lyrical, touching and impressively accomplished, fairly middle of the road.

All in all, it’s as if the watery concoction of before has been distilled into a potent musical treacle--richer in atmosphere, sharper, artistically decisive and intoxicating.

Rap Album One breaks away from rap conventions in an effortless manner.

While it's unlikely to garner them a new generation of fans, as an exercise in generating fresh fodder for their festival sets it's effective enough.

Ultimately, the overall feeling of Mature Themes is of a band and songwriter that don't really care. So why should we?

There are much worse records out there but at the end of the day, and somewhat ironically, it's just much too kind.

A record that pushes a catholic range of sounds through filter after filter, and turns out something at once smudgy and beautiful.

Underpinning the shots White fires at the world has always been a deep-seated melancholy that she brings out effectively here.

It’s a record that masks its lack of content under swathes of super-hip production tics.

There's nothing here resembling stadium polish: if anything, the lush arrangements often yield subtly fascinating results.

Aerotropolis manages to navigate its concept without being crushed by the weight of it, and is a thoroughly enjoyable LP that--perhaps like Ikonika herself--will only mature with time.

Possibly, some will leave Luminous disappointed that The Horrors haven’t pulled off another quantum leap, but by slowing down and bedding into their sound, they’ve made a record that feels both studied and instinctual, elevated and elemental, and that’s no mean feat.

This is a fine collection of songs and although there is nothing here to dispel the feeling that even if this is no masterpiece, that doesn't mean that Ranaldo won't be producing one sometime in the near future.

It succeeds as an exploration of bodies, but more specifically, of the kinds of tension created by the dichotomies between them and within them, throughout an intimately crafted pop record that treads that careful line between wallowing and pleasure in the way that all the very best pop records do.

To praise To Rococo Rot can be to undersell them; their most attractive qualities, their sense of minimalism and simplicity and concision, are hardly the sort of things you bellow from rooftops. And yet, it works, and beautifully.

While Barrow and Salisbury have painted a forbidding picture of the overall future, their own futures as producers with an ever-expanding, consistent repertoire looks assured.

Ultimately, Beauty Behind the Madness is a heftier House of Balloons. Its weight is carried in the access to better production and drugs, and what the album truly accomplishes is proving that The Weeknd has never been wretched.

These four tracks may cry out for proper soundsystems and bear many of dance music’s hallmarks, but their lengths (they add up to nearly half an hour), discordant layering and meandering structures render them more suited to body listening than the dancefloor.

Drums are present, but they often function as little more than pensive timekeepers. All the better to frame those tunes – artful, delicate things, rarely saying more or less than they need to.

Skillfully and bewitchingly arranged, its neatest trick is in the way it enfolds so many distinct personalities into Glasper's own vision, his music always complementing their voices without ever being dominated by them.

While a large portion of the LP sounds like a continuation of his earlier work this year, these tracks point optimistically towards something a little different once again, while still managing to fit under that increasingly hard-to-define Bambounou umbrella.

The pacing is tentative, the tone one of suppressed pain, and the FX custom-designed to denote ‘meaningfulness’ or emotional sensitivity--all rustic organ sounds and tinkling guitar notes.

Herndon is quite unique, using her instrument to engage in a constant dialogue with her immediate environment in such a way that makes conventional divisions --between the natural and the synthetic, or between the everyday and the extraordinary--seem dated.

In short, this album holds together even better than On a Mission, and Katy B is still our best pop star.

As a psychological snapshot of DOOM's current inbetween-ness, it's certainly a fascinating listen. But, interesting as it is, it's a mite too spiritless to be considered a classic DOOM record.

With Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey remains a singular figure in music, sounding (and addressing the idea of authenticity) like no one else.

The result leaves the listener with less of a sense of control and more of an experience controlled by someone who knows exactly what they are doing.

Spun out over a sometimes painful hour, NYC, Hell 3:00AM is a mess of an album that, despite a questionable concept, still has plenty of genuine highs.

Whereas 2009′s Missing Chairs carried a prissy frivolity in its floridness, Piramida is a noble, self-possessed creation; a masterclass in considered arrangement.

On Evolve or be Extinct he spends an uncomfortable amount of time simply sounding doddery.

When the whole thing drops back to its kickdrum-hi-hat backbone in the closing minute, it’s as stringent, and as satisfying, as any techno moment of recent times.

On paper Vapor City looked like Stewart’s descent into a sump of his own pompousness; in reality it’s anything but.

The Soul of All Natural Things realises her intent wonderfully, its gorgeously crafted pastoral songs a gentle invocation to inner peace.

As far as historic compilations go, this is an undeniable belter, successfully capturing music with a very particular energy worth celebrating.

So safely, solidly familiar is Hawk's third album that it's enough to make you nostalgic for the sound as it splutters on its deathbed.

An uncharacteristically difficult end to a record that’s not quite a paradigm smasher, but a must-hear for anyone who likes their hip-hop weird and with teeth.

A fair and fine experiment in folk that sees a more mature and worldly Lynch gently come to the fore.

Surrender to the Fantasy is undoubtedly good, but occasionally falls short of its potential.

There’s very little sense of a uniting personality, and you’re left wondering how genuinely great an album H&LA might make, how much more they would feel like a band rather than a conceptual project, if they cut loose as much as they do on ‘The Key’.

Love Letters proves to have all the pop addictivenss that Riviera did.

Instrumental Tourist is unlikely to be viewed as anything more than an unimposing footnote between solo records.

Body Music lacks both the pace and range required to sustain repeated listens, and rests too heavily on one--and even two-year old singles to bolster its overall quality.

There’s definitely an ancient, unformed quality here, and it results in some of Lustmord’s most inspiring work to date.

It's Kemp's uncompromising beat patterns and bouncing, funk-infused basslines that ultimately deserve the spotlight here.

The lion's share of this album is sprawling, confused, and almost grotesquely misshapen--a grand experiment with disappointing results.

The result is unexpected; thick, major label-backed, acoustically driven independent pop songs with a folkish tinge, laced with soft electronics and David Bryne-like vocals. BBC Radio 2 beckons.

As with Hive Mind, the record's most interesting moments are its briefest, almost as if Martin-McCormick's strongest ideas are the implied ones, the unrealised ones.

The result is a strange paradox in typical Animal Collective style: a suite of songs that’s at times alien, other times sentimental; often cutesy, but a little too bristly to curl up with under a blanket.

It’s fair to say that, from a purely musical point of view, this is far from Herbert’s best work, but that’s hardly the point; The End Of Silence aims to unseat us and provoke a more profound engagement with the events around us, and to that end it’s a success.

It's really working out for him.

Trap Lord’s such a tightly bound listen, however, that it jars when it misses the mark.