The weird, aquatic-sounding requiems are getting better all the time.

Their self-titled debut, aptly enough, is one of the most bitterly anti-romantic albums this side of the third PiL offering.

Haunting and harrowing, the uncomprehending first reactions are combined with a score both alarming and consoling. Also here, Mallet Quartet (2009) and Dance Patterns (2002), but it is WTC 9/11 which packs the most powerful punch.

Delicious.

Unrefined, unresigned, occasionally clunky, frequently obtuse but always, always fit to bust.

A seething, soundtracky, high-gloss, high-energy orchestral Latin "fusion", full of licks and stabs and twiddly bits.

Their unadorned, effects-free music remains simple and straightforward, like a rock equivalent of the Dogme school of cinema.

The songwriting has come into focus and the hooks get under your skin.

An intimate, introspective album that takes tentative steps to reveal the soul behind the star.

It's nevertheless a hugely enjoyable ride, Clarke and Gore's duelling synths creating an entirely instrumental soundtrack to the sci-fi movie playing inside your own head.

There’s nothing here to quite match his finest moments, but nothing stinks and that, I suppose, is the best you can expect.

How you respond will depend on how you react to such gubbins being brought to bear on Merritt's A-to-B-and-back melodic sense. No doubting its realness, though.

Unless I'm going insane, On a Mission sounds like a modern pop classic.

Ice on the Dune is a seamless suite of elegiac synthpop, with fairydust-flecked melodies, a perpetually peaking bass end, chord changes that reach into your heart, and fantasising falsetto vocals.

One moment--the Jason Molina tribute “JM”--is startling enough to forgive the clunking stadium-grunge workouts that seem, conversely, to be bringing Strand of Oaks to wider attention.

It's that rare thing: an album that will reward repeated listening by drip-feeding you its secrets.

Tales of Us has a stately pace and woozy beauty, with cinematic orchestration of swaying strings over acoustic guitar or mossy cello.

It starts nervily and there's some creative recycling of motifs, but once he builds up a head of steam the force is truly with him.

Enchanting stuff.

The overall theme is utopia defiled. Until, that is, Deacon – ever the optimist – brings it all together on "Manifest", the big rapturous finale.

Somewhere between Ladyhawke and M83, it's 1980's fetishism all the better for the apparent lack of irony.

The warm human purr of her ethereal vocals is juxtaposed towith fluid electronic elements and the occasional welcome interjection of bluesy guitar and jagged off-beat percussion.

It is, as you'd expect, spacious, gentle, reachy, euphonious and, for Air, fairly organic sounding.

Danilova's commanding tones evoking nameless terrors over wonderful doom-laden synth-rock.

Jamal sounds close to his 1950s Chess Records best.

Their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.

The constant here is Arthur’s voice: genuinely soulful and able to switch from MC to Marvin at the flick of a falsetto.

Comedown Machine is, essentially, The Strokes' 1980s album.