Here they've painted another masterpiece in post-midnight malevolence. Only this time, it's more hypnotic, with a new-and-Neu-found intransigence.

What you’ll know after listening to Vesper Sparrow, is an option for the album of the year.

Eisenberg manages to patch together not only personal memories but also their different musical routes into a stunning record that feels like an early contender for album of the year lists.

The album sounds like the process of ripping away at one’s own humanity in search of some kind of core; the music is colossal, destructive and all-consuming. ... Extraordinary, turbulent album.

50 Words for Snow is undoubtedly whimsical, but it's played and arranged so exquisitely that even the most po-faced should be able to acknowledge the scale of its achievement.

The daring, innovative breadth of his artistic imagination is given full licence in the sense of expansive space each track so effortlessly conjures--no doubt helped by his previous soundtrack work.

There'll never be another band like them. And if this is really it and they leave Blur to the history books, then it's a perfect way to remember this unique, occasionally annoying, but genuinely quite amazing band.

What makes Busy Guy extraordinary is its scorched-earth intimacy. Fretwell’s voice rarely rises above a whisper; his guitar playing consists largely of skeletal fugues so minimalistic it’s as if they are barely there at all. Yet oceans of pain and lifetimes of regret are packed into an LP that hooks a cable to the listener’s soul and cranks the voltage all the way up.

Hinterland is playful--a vibrant and urgent combination of genealogy and vision--and it is this that truly makes it a masterpiece. Not only does Campbell have the creative chops to create such richly evocative music, but she does it with a wink and a smile.

It is a bold, expansive body of work that should have all the praise heaped on it because, without warning, she dropped one of the strongest albums of the year on us.

A tiny marvel, this record. A tiny, exquisitely-tooled marvel.

This is not a live album, but an alive album, one of the most visceral, beautiful records you'll hear this year.

The enrobed duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have produced a beguiling work that distils the overwhelming impact of nature on the human psyche into 80 minutes of utterly transcendent avant metal.

{Awayland} is a treasure trove of an album, brimming with ideas, most of which work and all of which, at the very least, prove that O'Brien is not simply another little-boy-lost lamenting the fact his parents wouldn't pass him the salt, but a songwriter of real note.

A beautiful resurrection for Zamrock, Zango is one of those rare records that, after living with it for a few months, still makes me feel something very profound. A triumphant return indeed.

Timbaland, Kanye and Diddy are among the big names on the boards here, battling it out with lesser known producers, all gleefully playing to Pusha's style.... If Pusha T can keep this up throughout King Push proper, the forthcoming main event, he'll have the hip hop album of next year too.

As vital as the air that you breathe, you need this album in your life.

It is left to the listener to piece through these lyrical asides to find meanings of his or her own rather being led by the nose, which only makes Ancestor Boy all the more thrilling, especially when its driven by such an effective, powerful production.

[Jenny Hval's] most straightforward record to the date, full of colourful and warm sounds – as well as one of her finest pop tunes.

They show us what pop music can do.

You won’t hear a better pop album this year. I doubt you’ll hear a better rap album this year.

A masterpiece of sound design, that's no backhanded compliment. This album is the sort of sound design record that more sound artists should aspire to make.

Although the stylistic variations across the two LPs make it seem as though there is more music here than could reasonably be expected to be contained within eleven tracks, much of it is highly accessible, addictive even.

Her phrases heave through a cycle of breathy registers, then crash into a wail of the song’s title. Those repetitions, moored by no predictable structure, are hypnotic, intoxicating, and the lyrics heighten the sense of time being distended. ... Desire avoids feeling derivative by crossing so many wires, drawing from a more adventurous time in pop and placing innately familiar elements in new contexts.

Astronaut Meets Appleman might very well be King Creosote’s masterpiece. It is at once ethereal and contemplative, grounded and matter-of-fact.

Autumnal, witty, sad, lovely and very, very English The Violence is the high watermark of Hayman's career and one of the finest British releases of 2012, a record that neither floats, nor drowns, but soars.

The result is no sucker punch, but a knockout blow.

I don’t think anyone in modern mainstream music — certainly nobody on the same scale of global fame — analyses and unpicks the breadth of their trauma, in so piercing and revealing a way as Billie Eilish does here. .... I’ve found Hit Me Hard And Soft to be a focused, self-contained, sometimes stunning piece of work. If there’s a flaw, to mix metaphors, it may be that having grown in ambition and sanded down some rough edges, the music is easier to swallow, which risks one missing some of the richness (and edginess) of flavour.