Barrow doesn't go through the motions – and >> is definitely not the sound of a band in decline.

[Chamber of Light] is like an exquisitely constructed mosaic of UK dance music signifiers, perpetually re-shuffled into new configurations and never losing that sense of possibility that lifts this album beyond the realms of nostalgia. LHF's modus operandi may seem anachronistic in 2012, but it's a damn sight fresher than most of the stuff out there right now.

Land of Sleeper is unlikely to win over anyone who doesn’t already enjoy Pigs’ (etc.) particular brand of stoner rock, but then, I doubt it’s really trying to. A steadfastly unsubtle affair.

Dark Hearts marks an astute shift away from the energy of the clubs, focusing instead on hazy synth pop. Languid ballads run through the album and their production feats, led by the work of Stefan Storm, are best enjoyed on headphones.

Noctunes repeatedly feels like a homecoming of sorts. It isn't, however, without its shortcomings: it's a tad prolonged (three tracks here could easily go) and there's a tendency for Beal to get comfortable in his compositions.

Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is a fun album that allows Frasqueri to show both sides of her personality. ... The main problem with Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is that it doesn’t contain anything as devastating as ‘G.O.A.T.’, ‘Tomboy’ or ‘Kitana’. The songs never quite hit the same vein of intensity, catchiness and lyrical abstraction. There are moments when it comes close.

Taken from the album sessions, the organ-bolstered "Polymers Are Forever" combines classic FOTL with a worrying tendency for grandiosity which was emerging on Travels...; a stylistic development which, along with an increasing funk elasticity, is a far cry from Falkous's efficiently cutting Mclusky.

Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is a fun album that allows Frasqueri to show both sides of her personality. ... The main problem with Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is that it doesn’t contain anything as devastating as ‘G.O.A.T.’, ‘Tomboy’ or ‘Kitana’. The songs never quite hit the same vein of intensity, catchiness and lyrical abstraction. There are moments when it comes close.

Like Untitled, Excerpts is slow-paced (for the most part), grainy and sombre, with crumbling synth textures clustered around skeletal rhythmic shuffles and most human interjections rendered opaque, like ghostly shades mewling in the dark.

In short, a solid enough second effort with some promise for a more expansive third.

This a welcome shot of vitamin D in the cruellest month of the year where summer seems to be an eternity away while the filling of tax return forms only adds to the harshness of January.

It doesn't necessarily break down the boundaries of rock music, but it sure gives them a good kicking.

Recorded in Berlin, the eight tracks here pay easy homage to their European forebears, but are unmistakably British in their overall sound and feel, nodding melodically to the traditional folk music of these isles, and existing at a slower pace, on a smaller scale, than the cross-continental constructions of Kraftwerk and company.

1992 Deluxe is a powerful starting point from which the “New York aficionado” can further hone and refine her sound. For longtime Princess Nokia fans, is is also the climax of a five-year crescendo and satisfying evidence that she has retained her powerful sense of self.

Rites Of Percussion is a fine addition to the lineage of drum albums largely thanks to his sense of intuition.

This is a record that leaves you wishing for one thing more, though--some of these beats seem too good to be used on an instrumental, and could stand up handsomely against a powerful wordsmith.

Django Django are at their best when their sounds are at their gnarliest.

While ‘no body, no crime’ is easily evermore’s biggest misstep, there are a handful of forgettable songs on here. ... evermore benefits throughout from a more forgiving production style, but the songs are slightly less good here: it doesn’t have a song as accomplished as ‘the last great american dynasty’, as revelatory as ‘peace’ or a crowning achievement like ‘exile.’ It is generally a joy to listen to, and it is a joy to see her so comfortable and so prolific.

It's a fun slab of obnoxious rock-gone-mad, and sometimes that's all you need of an evening.

In the end, the accompanying audiovisual film probably captures the album’s possible reception: numbers of people dance happily around Harle, while others stand still, looking slightly underwhelmed.

It's a fine and enjoyable listen, and it's certainly Lone's most consistent album to date, but at times it can't help but feel slight.

Title track ‘Love Invention’ continues to push this colourful pop juggernaut with its exploration of “wellness” culture, and there are a few songs in this louder kind of vein – painted with the broader brushstrokes of disco and house, with varying degrees of success. ... In truth it is Goldfrapp’s vocal that anchors this record, and things take a more interesting turn when the melancholy sets in (as is so often the way).

Although Last Night On The Planet isn’t likely to find itself on any end of year lists, it’s a welcome addition to the Letherette oeuvre, despite being intermittently overwrought with retrospect.

Saturation III is for the fans: their most abstract, their most experimental, and by far their weirdest.

Algiers isn't so much a portrayal of New Orleans as it is a manifestation of the city's often observed ability to both elevate and weigh heavily on the soul.

It is, of course, a very good album from start to finish--but you would expect that from an elder statesman of American alt-pop and one of the brightest talents of the current NPR-approved indie-rock scene.

Theirs is a physically and mentally overwhelming (and exhausting) form of full body sonic experience that's equally akin to the psychedelic techno battery of Jeff Mills and the blissed-out sensations of swimming through MBV's arcs of feedback. With its airless surrounds and restrained feel, however, Factory Floor clearly doesn't sound quite like they do onstage.

Cohen brings to mind the far out, oddball eccentricity of Robert Wyatt, patted down and smoothed over by Colin Blunstone's suavity, adding to the canon of otherworldly, offbeat artists who resist definition.

Behind The Sun could easily lose a couple of tracks and increase its impact, but Motorpsycho conspicuously always want to provide a fully immersive, all-or-nothing headtrip to the listener--and in this day and age, for that we should be very grateful indeed.

It's not wholly convincing, but underneath it all, the melodies sound nostalgic, and enlightened--a contrarian whiplash reaction only a band like Interpol could get away with.

The detail is wonderful, ghostly and rich, but the whole would have benefited from a clearer, less meandering navigator.

While the album is by no means a disappointment, one can't help but long for the return of a less inhibited Krug, free of – albeit self-imposed – limitations.

Regardless, however you or I might feel about almost-literal computer music is beside the point. The strong sense of perpetual emergence – of listening in on an intelligent system gaining confidence – makes Blossoms an especially remarkable listen.

There may be no dramatic leaps in style from No Age, yet there also doesn't seem to be any requirement for them. An Object is the refining of a formula that remains open to play and experiment, without adopting a slash-and-burn policy to all previous outings.

In its explicit references towards woozy psych, soul and even glam, Tripper is better, and marks Johnson as being a songwriter and rock auteur deserving of comparison with the likes of Mercer, Andy Cabic and Jim James.

Crucially, her sense of humour remains intact, sharp and lethal – the sweet laments carried by her increasingly accomplished voice feel often to be one step away from, not laughter exactly, but self-deprecation, or a mordant smile at her own expense.

This is not his best record. It's about sixth or seventh. But it's still a triumph of sorts--a curious, meandering journey that needs to be made a good few times.

When It Comes is a very balanced record that shows the artist standing on solid ground, in comfort with herself, and ready for a further creative take-off. A soothing and pleasant listen.

Plug in and turn on, baby, surrender to its augmented charms.

Primitive And Deadly is imbued with an energy of its own: a bold, if flawed update on the Earth model.

In A Dream is certainly not going to alienate those who adored The Future Will Come, yet it should be said there are notable points of evolution--most importantly Whang's prominence and the diversity of Maclean's songwriting. But it is difficult to place this above The Future Will Come, as despite the brilliance that Whang radiates throughout, there are up to three songs that sap momentum with their lack of vim.

It's hardly that nearly everything else completely clones itself song for song, but you can almost pick any song and get the same feeling from it, making it a little hard for individual moments to stand out. But they're there.

Matangi sounds like a mess on first, second and third listen--and it doesn't help that the album's worst missteps, the lumbering Britpop-worthy ballad 'Come Walk With Me' and the squeaky irritant 'aTENTion', weigh down its first half. But when it coheres, it's a thrill.

What Long Island captures is the warm sound of the room in full flow--it's a live album, really, recorded in a studio but improvised on the spot.

Light Divide is difficult to find one's way into--it's not welcoming, and it's not unwelcoming enough to announce itself with a metal or noise record's sense of authority.

It’s dark, unrelenting. ‘Almost Loved’ showcases the fictional Void Pacific Choir chanting like an Omen soundtrack, a song of regret becoming a pounding mantra. The “perfect lie” of ‘And It Hurts’, the “dying sun” of the Killers synth-pop of ‘Are You Lost In The World Like Me?’, the falling sky of ‘Don’t Leave Me’ – Moby’s worldview feels unremittingly bleak. It's not all spit and thunder, not quite.

These are long form constructions, masterfully wrought from the simplest of sonic elements--basically just synths, the odd sample and plenty of percussion--and festooned with idiosyncratic detail.

Throughout Fabriclive 100, Kode9 and Burial piece together their choices with little care for linearity or the kind of journey-led approach many might expect from a mix CD. Ambient interludes--many of them carrying Burial’s signature sound palette--weave in and out throughout the mix, perhaps bridging the gaps between the respective artists’ selections.

Ones And Sixes is an album brimming with ideas, but with such a varied batch of songs, some work better than others.

Now everything is dark and obscure, ghostly, as if moving in slow motion, bursting here and there in a few powerful and desperate explosions, mainly when Soko and Argento get to sing.

Like pretty much all of his previous work, C4C isn't really open for the casual listen. Music as densely layered and as assimilated as this tends to unwrap itself at different times in different situations and with varying results.

Black Is Beautiful is a still more refined musical iteration of displaced and replaced citizens: slow sirens and distant voices, as if urgently broadcast in foreign languages over distorted subway intercoms, soundtracked by free jazz and hip-hop, lover's rock and electro, j-pop and dub - themselves diasporic, oppidan genres.

This is a cautious yet dignified return that allows the Reids and their associates to spend even more time together than they’d have expected to create something positive rather than engaging in an orgy of self-destruction.

Slow Summits doesn't rank with the Pastels' best work, but it will subtly remind the group's committed, fanatical following of why they fell in love in the first place.

Although not strikingly different from earlier work, I Am All Your Own appears more terrestrial and less transcendental. This being a refreshing new granting-of-access to his style.

As percussive as her previous offerings, A Man Alive is jaunty but perhaps less folky than normal, endowed significantly with the spirit of Tune-Yards' Merill Garbus, the queen of both loop and uke.... That's not to deny that this album is a step forward, however.

They haven't quite carved out new territory here, but if the best moments of Nocturnal Koreans are anything to go by, the wheels have started turning.

While songs like '5AM' and 'Aaliyah' are very much made with mainstream dancefloors in their peripheral vision, much of the album, particularly some of the supplementary tracks, are still steeped very much in underground dance culture, and its in these moments that the album really excels.

For all its conceptual flaws, Asiatisch is both a pleasurable and an intelligent take on sinogrime--proof that its initial wave of productions was brief not for lack of potential.

Some incredible songs also made it through, and if Minor Wave and Haunting and Daunting sound like perfectly listenable period pieces, then The Burdens of Genius and The Spiders are Getting Bigger are for the ages; timeless encapsulations of youthful frustration and depression, and the outer limits of a drug-warped imagination.

Two or three more long jams in a double harmonic scale would have worked just fine. But the lack of closure, like the lack of polish, is entirely characteristic of this release, which to be honest is less of an 'album' than a longish EP.

Not all of Spectre is quite equal to 'The Whistleblowers'. There's the occasional functional interlude--standard-issue industrial synth propulsion. But, compositionally and sonically, Spectre is intriguingly accessible.

Ozanne's brand of tentative indiestep is a new form of music in a landscape of few, and a still-evolving artform. And The Keychain Selection deserves special treatment because, in its field, it's somewhat of a zenith.

This thinly veiled sequel, 2t2, continues in much the same fertile vein as her post-Throbbing Gristle output. At the same time, it also appears a little more guarded, as if the candid moments in her early days have left her more cautious.

It's a strange album on the whole, though there's no doubting Corgan has his mojo back, and if you can stomach a 45-year-old man still whining on about isolation and stuff then this may well be up your proverbial alley.

With only ten tracks, half of which are under three minutes long, Personal Computer feels just a few bits short of a byte and you may well find yourself moving straight onto Unknown Mortal Orchestra's back catalogue just to get some closure.

Out Of Touch represents a steady evolution of a band, and while you sense they've still not made a truly great album, the Uncles pack a sturdy punch on their most focused album yet.

I think of this band as one of the most consistently interesting musical projects of the last ten years, and this new material hasn't proven me otherwise.

As ever with Yorke's work, a strong desire not to get stuck in a rut results in a few experiments that don't quite pay off, but largely, AMOK is a slender, admirable record well worth investigating.

Prurient's Through The Window, a three-cut techno tour-de-force released this month on the Blackest Ever Black imprint, is at once limiting and liberating.

The sense of real guts that was missing on Zeroes is here all too present, on a record that feels messy, desperate and at the end of its tether--yet also ironically accomplished, impeccably crafted and resolutely forward-looking.

Granular Tales is not without its flaws, but perfection isn't necessarily what makes a good album.

Gorillaz helped re-unite both indie and pop with that most Paul Morley's jowl-wobbling of things: the abstract.

In Free Fall often feels like floating, but it never really makes the crash-landing you’d expect from gravity’s pull. Rather, it stays in the atmosphere, lingering on the feeling of uncertainty of a jump, right before your feet touch the ground.

The organising of Sun Ra's music here is more like a film with staggered yet complimentary scenes, than a coherent and fluid sequence of events. With this compilation being a hefty double LP, this'll be a fairly abridged take.

Ultimately it's the breaking of a cycle that leads to change and, on this record of both progression and recollection, Esben And The Witch suggest that they haven't yet quite achieved that.

I Know What Love Isn't turns out to be a graceful break-up album, one that eschews ugliness and rage.

For the most part, Unpatterns is slightly sinister, stretched out, anxious, fidgety house.

Due to Snaith’s decision to make music in situ, FabricLive 93 tends to veer and swerve all over the place in terms of a 'narrative'. ... You can hear that Snaith is clearly having fun letting his instincts take him where he feels the music needs to go. This rubs off on the mix--you do find yourself propelled by the energy, despite the missteps made on the way.

The group has made their name by blurring the lines between genres, letting multiple ideas meld into one airy texture, and this album follows suit. But it’s in the spurts of tension, the swelling melancholy, the subtle melodies, that Monument feels its most compelling.

It's a pretty indulgent affair (Halstead has acknowledged this) with most songs clocking in close to or exceeding the five minute mark; the last couple of tracks are disposable.

If we were picking holes here, you might gently suggest Tied To A Star is not altogether captivating, but for serious fans of J Mascis' acoustic incline--it does deliver. His lack of clear narrative, comically dull song titles like 'And Then', 'Drifter', 'Heal The Star' and 'Come Down', still leaves J Mascis as something of a stranger to us.

Beautifully composed and beautifully produced.

Lioness: Hidden Treasures is an appropriately muted set, with Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi producing an honourable and moving tribute to the Amy Winehouse.

Return to Archive is a funny and unsettling trip through the past, to a time before we felt like we’d heard everything. But its greatest power is in forcing us to question what we should archive, given that any noise can capture the world it came from.

Their sound now possesses a withering, caustic wit instead of a joyous, ostentatious cackle, and the suspicion is that it's only the start of an enticing middle chapter. We'll see better still from them as they develop.

This is a solid pop album and Nayeon’s charms shine. Her voice, visuals, and sweet attitude deliver a feel-good tracklist full of fluffiness and catchy hooks, but it’s also clear that her own colour still waits to be found.

Even if Nocturne isn't going to shove Wild Nothing to the front of any groundbreaking movement, it's still a really good record, made by a guy who likes really good records and who seems really happy to share the refinement of his craft with us.

Insomnia is generally solid, with more peaks than troughs. All things considered, it probably isn’t groundbreaking, and doesn’t feel as vital or captivating as Dave’s Psychodrama or Headie One’s Music X Road. But it’s a welcome addition to the artists’ respective back catalogues.

All [tracks] are grand, and strong-hearted.

SD Laika compresses space to the point that That's Harakiri becomes constricted by its own sheer density; appropriately, the album is suggestive of inner space, one that is seemingly fraught with anxiety. As a result it's difficult to sustain such energy and tracks seem to be rapidly exhausted, most are less than three minutes. But such are the ideas and impact of them that they linger a lot longer.

Drenge is giddily goofy.

When each song begins, you’re never quite sure where they’re taking it; each of the five tracks leads us through unfamiliar, pared-down disco landscapes.

For every instance on III set to give the listener an aural acid bath, there are nearly as many that might induce a snooze on the bus, and a dribble on your neighbouring passenger's shoulder.

While the album itself falls short. The ambition is admirable, but what makes the songs commendable is their refusal to thrive. They are deeply melancholic. There's a focus on Rothman's drug addiction itself rather than the desire to resolve it, a resignation to dying rather than a desire to learn how to live.

Pixies have played it straight and stayed in their lane, their once vital weirdness cast into the laundry basket like a vampire costume post Halloween. Head Carrier is 80% classic Pixies. But it turns out the missing 20% is as fundamental as oxygen is to air.

Re-recording one's old songs in an older style isn't a revolutionary manoeuvre.... Kylie's addition to the tradition is also a fairly mixed bag.