It's more chillout room than chillwave, all dub and little step, and the better for all of that.

It's heady stuff.

The tension created by the lyrics and music is wonderful and uneasy, ensuring that The Idler is endlessly fascinating and unlike anything else you're likely to hear this year.

The Lost Tapes is no barrel-scraping… it's more dark magic straight from the source.

It's compelling, and finds new territory.... But it doesn't do a huge amount to lodge itself in your memory

Mostly: total bliss session.

This is a thrilling joy ride of an album.

An obsession with sex that's rarely heard outside Lil Wayne albums is combined with the woozy sizzurp lilt of A$AP Rocky and his own stunningly sinister devil's whisper delivery to create something remarkably dark and original.

The lyrics, meanwhile, continue to move FOTL up two or three rungs of excellence.

Tasteful and perfectly executed, but workmanlike.

The only problem is that at times, it feels like all parties are a little intimidated by each other, stopping just short of going the whole way with the primal force that the best moments prove Womack is still capable of.

They're staying put, yet somehow they're kicking harder than ever.

The first glitchy music released this year that you could happily have sex to.

Sébastien invites you to follow him, like a sexy David Koresh, and with tunes like 'Sedulous', 'Pepito Bleu' and the aforementioned 'Cochon Ville' ('pig city' en Anglais), the call might just prove irresistible.

There's something missing here, and that something is soul.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

When Dinowalrus get it right, they do Britrock rather well indeed. From 'Riding Eazy''s shimmering funk to the dance-punk strut of 'The Gift Shop', there's a lot to like--even if on paper it does all appear terribly clichéd.

Aside from an introductory impersonation of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' (on the title track), they continue where their 2010 debut left off.

They're at their strongest when at their hardest.

A few strokes of fortune might send this London quintet--or, say, Clock Opera or Fixers--towards stratospheric hugeness.

Of the most recent phases of Patti Smith's musical output (always surprising since 1996's Kurt Cobain tribute 'Gone Again'), Banga is by far the most successful.

Let it be said that Lex Hives is amazing.

While it's briefly thrilling to hear Young's bolshy take on Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land', it's nowhere near Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin standards, or even a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

What WIXIW's working process has given them instead is yet another way to find the manifold, melancholy and menacing nature of Liars.

It's good to have them back--but only just.

There's nothing on Anxiety so arrestingly new or comfortably familiar.

Kill For Love keeps in this spirit, playing with the attention to detail of an art-house movie (and a near 1½-hour running time).

Manifest! is back-loaded with the big hitters, so you need faith and tenacity to find the gems.