On Wenu Wenu, everything is present and correct, and that's part of the problem: it feels polished.

There is a kind of pure, cathartic rage in Virgins and it leaves moments of intense peace in its wake.

What really marks Machinedrum's growth are the moments that subtly push Stewart's sound into small stylistic corners only hinted at before.

Youth Code isn't a perfect album, but it is one hell of a first stab.

Psychic doesn't quite burn itself into your memory.

A nicely well-rounded debut album from an artist who's only been releasing music for a couple of years.

At times, it seems like his most interestingly textured and complicated release to date.

Trumpets, drums, vocals, violins, flutes, saxophones and cellos make for a much fuller, richer and more authentic sound than ever before.

Colonial Patterns is not a flawless record, but it does open up a whole new world of possibilities for Leeds as a producer, and places him decisively outside any box people might wish to put him in.

It's a wild, theatrical and, at times, bloated ride.

A well-considered and promising debut album, one that knows just when to stop and breathe before breaking another sweat.

It's this combination of shadowy unknowability and full-hearted melody that makes Pull My Hair Back such an intriguing listen, and certainly one of the year's best debuts.

For a jingle writer whose album is almost relentlessly upbeat, his music can cut surprisingly close to the bone.

Copeland is an accomplished collage artist adept at combining the highbrow and the trashy, but when the individual bits are laid out on their own they can seem a bit throwaway.

Loud City Song is her most broadly scoped and epic album to date.

Black Jazz Records is a label worth knowing. As far as introductions go, you could do worse than a tribute mix by Theo Parrish.

What Barnes has done here is give us a full tour of a hidden place he only let us peek at before, a place that's even more breathtaking than Dagger Paths made it out to be.

Ikonika has delivered one of 2013's definitive summer albums. It's time to get happy.

This is a perfectly fine debut, but probably nothing compared to seeing them live.

Surely Saginaw's most confident work yet, No Better Time Than Now shows a young artist maturing with the grace of a seasoned musician.

Blue Gardens is another milestone in a banner year for one of the UK's most consistently exciting labels.

These might not be Martin's most envelope-pushing beats, but it's hard to think about that when the walls are violently shaking.

That feeling of organic growth and decay is, definitively, what makes Blondes unique--everything is in its right place, but instead of processed-to-death perfection, it just feels natural.

Slow Focus is more often than not an Olympic-standard piece of work.

Where Moderat sounded at times tentative and disjointed, II is in every regard a better and more well-rounded record. If there were no third Moderat album, this would stand as a definitive statement.

It's peaceful and distantly serene, but with flickers of dissonance rubbing away at the edges. Those contrasting textures are part of what makes The Inheritors perhaps the year's most revealing and intriguing album yet.

Serious and focused but also enormously fun, it represents the late flowering of a distinctive, accomplished talent.

You're drawn in by a minimalist master at work.