Ultimately Moonbuilding 2703 BC is an immersive, imaginative journey into the unknown that, unfortunately, won't end up being the space travel concept album of the year. Public Service Broadcasting have already locked that down. Top marks for effort though.

Devoid of the light and shade that had highlighted the many musical facets of the band, Led Zeppelin's seventh studio album remains a difficult album to take in a single sitting. For sure, it contains some incredible individual moments.... [Pod] A piano led instrumental dominated by the under-rated John Paul Jones and complete with some of Jimmy Page's most understated guitar playing, this is beautifully reflective music sharply at odds with what's contained on the parent album and worthy of investigation.

Missteps matter little on an album that proves a minimal tour de force, home to some of the most simply enjoyable music in Hood’s 20-plus-year production history.

To The Bone exposes and splinters insular communities and their ideas of elitism. But by observing the album through this prism alone, its real nature is obscured--that of a flawed and powerless homage.

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.

Concise and ambitious, delivering its poisonous punch with characteristic sweetness, the track and the album it concludes are inarguable proof of Deerhoof’s unerring genius.

The net result is a lack of texture and the element of surprise that made this album's predecessor so wonderfully seductive.

Threace possesses a wholly immersive sense of itself, and a free floating kinetic energy that is out of step with most contemporary riff-based music. Its command of sonic hypnosis is all the more impressive considering its brevity.

There was always a worry that Gamel might be too self-consciously studious and challenging for its own arty sake, but as it transpires, it's an unnecessary and unfounded thought.

What really works in Dilate's favour is that this is very much an album, an experience that's designed through its pacing and mastering to be taken in a single sitting. That's a bold ask in a digital age of playlists and single track downloads but the rewards in acquiescing to their request are manifold.

A Short History Of Decay is raw, honest and painful: listening to its 10 songs feels like intruding on someone’s personal grief.

An album that takes us through the gamut of human experience. As I say, Um never feels like the tentative steps of a debutante.

Whether acknowledging unfaithfulness, fretting over her advancing years or giddily professing undying love, Lewis creates songs and characters as compelling as they come. A couple of duds and some overzealous production aside, that is still very much the case on The Voyager.

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.

Glass Animals sound like they are on the cusp of everything. There's a gap between their vocabulary and their sound, their choruses and their intros, their obvious intelligence and what they've produced.

[On The Cherry Thing] the point in the middle where the two parties meet turns out to be a particularly sweet spot where jazz, punk, soul and even a hint of pop blend together beautifully in a dream come true.

In short, Watching Dead Empires In Decay is a wonderful enigma of an album.

The album is by no means horrible, just disappointing and repetitive, chock full of revamped old school rhythms that don’t have the gratifying content to match. A good handful of songs--‘When Cats Claw’, ‘Since C.A.Y.A’, ‘Fine Ass Hairdresser’, ‘Julian’s Dream’, ‘Moon Whip Quäz’ and ’30 Clip Extension’--deserve to be judged independently.

This is a vital debut that captures a dark, uncertain time, but counters displacement--in all its forms--with grace, nerve, and a spine-tingling call to arms, and perhaps just as importantly, a call to dance.

In Search Of The Miraculous is a new way of being for Desperate Journalist: a rangy and colourful artwork, less insular than what has come before, and testament to its creators' increasingly fearless outlook.

Silver Dollar Moment’s vibrancy is at odds with the current mood of the world, but it’s also a vital indication of where we’re at now in terms of indie music’s trajectory. It shakes off any negative connotations of modern indie, particularly in the ‘landfill’ sense of the word, and reclaims it.

Perhaps the finest distillation to date of the various elements that comprise the group's distinctive sound.

This album still contains some of the strongest pop songs of the past few years, plus evidence of a restless, experimental desire to keep moving on that makes you hungry to hear what they're going to do next.

With the soundtrack to Les Revenants, they have created a work of aural tension; a masterclass in how implied threat is far more effective than a million scary monsters.

The results are simply amazing, Ghil effectively standing as the premier noise album of 2013.

Tundra is a techno album as contemplation, not in in the sense that it is soft or gentle (it most certainly isn't), but in the way that it allows you to plug in with your surroundings, letting the earth and sky open up around you.

The album rolls at a constant low boil, the agitation poking and prodding under the skin, not unlike the lingering, uncertain love. The Far Field isn’t explosive in its emotion, nor is it wallowing; it’s just constantly rolling forward, the wheels propelling Future Islands onward to the horizon.

The latest iteration of Homme’s continuous project has come a long way since the epic jams of the late 90s, having evolved into more refined, and fully realised series of releases, never failing to inhabit the spirit of risk and adventure.