Mixing the exotic sounds of Laibach, Sparks and forgotten camp Euro-disco heroes Army Of Lovers, he's on to a winner even if he feels he's losing the corporate fight.

The Manics' 10th offensive is a more playful beast than that--poignant, joyful and above all really, really loud.

Swans' bleakness is beset with great beauty, black wings to another world.

Marcus Lambkin seems to have a thing for awful names and even worse puns. Luckily for us, as Shit Robot, his ability to craft sublime slices of electro house and muscular techno pop trumps everything else about him.

It's all rather one-paced and sags badly after tenth track 'Lick Up Ya Foot' but, by crikey, the likes of 'Big Tings Redone' and 'Dutty Rut' provide the perfect soundtrack for out-on-the-stoop sunshine boozing.

For a record just 30 minutes long it feels impossibly epic and for all its scuzzy, lo-fi production, it still sounds fully realised. Not to mention fully brilliant.

Though lacking standout tracks, this is an icy masterclass in how synths should sound.

This album, like their previous two, has one moment of utterly triumphant rock Valhalla amidst a bunch of pretty good retro-soaked poses.

Their fourth album has none of the witchy class that makes these others so compelling and comes off like a painfully hokey play-act.

If San Diego's Crocodiles sound flawless on paper, they damn well prove it on record.

False Priest is also Of Montreal's first and only adventure in hi-fi, a co-production job with Kanye West consort Jon Brion.

Sex with a z – amusing but dull.

Band Of Joy is an essential purchase... if your dad is having a birthday this month.

The devil be praised that, rather than visiting the shrink or brothel to deal with his sexual dysfunction, the Grinderman went to the studio instead.

Many people who have heard Flamingo have said it sounds a lot like a Killers album. Wrong. It is more that The Killers' albums sounded like Brandon Flowers solo albums, with a bit of indie guitar on top to snare those Reading & Leeds headline slots.

That surprising lack of offensiveness, though, isn't replaced with anything to particularly excite, leaving it a tasteful aural curtain of an album without much of a view beyond.

This collaboration-heavy eighth album tends to fail when it experiments.

Cassius man's production is a deluxe weave of dreamy synths, biting snares, throbbing bass and warbly Vocoders, but it feels as if Chromeo are just doodling knobs over the top.

Once the dust dies down, though, the remainder of Who We Touch feels disappointingly timid in comparison, and the particularly saggy middle section sees them pitch their tent smack bang in the middle of the road.

Produced by Boyz Noize, this is the sound of a rook shuffling with a maverick king, full of harpsichords and pianos and sexy European beats; it will arouse the mind and stimulate interesting positions.

It's got the charm and spark of the Weezer of old, and that's a quality you just can't fake.

It's an unassumingly great record that exists solely to celebrate the pleasures of making a gigantic, melodious racket.

Combining afrobeat, dub and more samba slickness than you can shake a headdress at, the frenzied carnival rhythms of Pop Negro will spark a fire in your newly tropical soul that will still be smoldering come next year's Mardi Gras.

They're clearly not aiming for a worldwide banker, but the seam they mine is creatively profitable and floridly engineered.

This is an album to fall in love to, to break up to, to drown sorrows to, or to bounce around to. One-hit wonders? Well, the wonders part is right.

With not a single duffer over another eight tracks, it looks like our eventual Best Of Body Talk compilation might just be the album of the year.

Overall, Interpol seems cinematic, abstract and complex, but that adds up to something interesting rather than thrilling.

Just when you think Audio Secrecy can get no more infuriating, you find the most overwrought of the ballads lodging their tunes inside the melodic part of your cranium.