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.