What was perfection has become even more perfect.

The guys at the centre of Dirtmusic have produced a lot of excellent tracks when making this album, and very successfully fused their own music with Malian styles, and truly collaborated rather than merely sampled or copied from native Malian traditions--but there's still the nagging feeling that it might have been even better had they left themselves out of the equation entirely.

Meteorites is still, on initial blush, like all those other albums from Evergreen onward, "the new album from," a reliable entry but not a jawdropper.

By the end, Upside Down Mountain sounds like a rejuvenation. In Wilson, Oberst has found an editor who will reward future collaborations.

A quiet brilliance beams throughout Wild Crush, its manifest qualities on display for all to see, if they would only look.

Tiersen is a master of the evocative, music you can see, and here he has succeeded in bringing to the fore the landscapes he sought out in the making of the album.

It isn't quite as lovely as 2012's Hotel Shampoo and it isn't as otherworldly as his 2005 solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, but it does manage to push his freewheeling spirit to the fore throughout and there truly is a sense that journeys long and important are being taken within and alongside the music

With their fifth album, Artificial Sweeteners, Fujiya & Miyagi once again mine opposite ends of the lyrical spectrum whilst delivering their most musically satisfying collection to date.

It's tempting to assume that the box--call it psychedelic rock, acid punk or what you may--is their base of operations, but it's really not that simple. Bo Ningen will take your labels and whirl their chaotic vortex right through it, leaving splinters and eviscerated expectations in their wake.

Chills On Glass has been sequenced, so that there are gaps between the songs big enough to drive a huge tour bus through, but each nugget is such an alien blast that you need a break to re-evaluate what just lubed past your lobes

Rather than concentrating on a single, memorable event, it takes the best bits to offer an idealised representation of the Howlin Rain live experience that's very much the aural equivalent of a Cameron Crowe movie.

At 11 tracks, Turn Blue doesn't quite fall prey to the late-album bloat of Brothers, but it is still one song too long.

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.

Their tracks rarely exceed the three-and-a-half minute mark and each indulgent no-wave-y/early Sonic Youth noise section is over before you can even begin to get bored by it, making way for the next freshly thrilling fragment of din.

Those who had their hearts set on another batch of coy, cloudy electro-pop from the Swedish singer/songwriter might consider the song [Gunshot!] a bummer, but for the rest of us, it and the other eight tracks that comprise I Never Learn make for a stirring, pristinely rendered expression of heartache.

For all their three-pronged power and musical fluidity, Unwound didn't, perhaps, quite make music which transcended the genres, styles and subcultures it was associated with.... If nothing else, this two-hour compendium of righteous, often superlative noise demonstrates that they could also cater to dancin' feet, and ears looking to be bled like radiators.

Despite clearly being intricately crafted down to the tiniest gestures--musical feats at this level of intensity and control don't emerge from half-arsed noodling--To Be Kind's songs also feel more fluid and open-ended than before, expressive and rich in possibility.

What really makes Sheezus so frustrating, though, is that among the dross there are some genuinely interesting tracks here.

The songs on Dare's debut album, Whelm ache with a sort of moody emotion that young and old can have in common--wide-eyed, reflective and besotted with the way the world makes us feel.

Luminous is a great record, but it's an awkward bugger at times, and I suspect that in the long run the album will prove all the more rewarding for just that reason.

Chain & The Gang are a band riven with appetites and desires--and, boy, do they let you know that--but on this record they vaunt a particular kind of self-discipline, and choices made with great care. Austerity can be hot.

As great and intriguing and perplexing as Krai is, the lack of a real performer-audience connection may keep fans from regarding it as a true classic.

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.

Divide And Exit is a record that demands you sit up and pay attention, unable to do anything else while it's on, a ticker-tape of frustration and smart tension blocking out peripheral vision.

Whilst the band's previous two releases, 2009's Sensible Shoes and 2011's Bring Your Own, both showed progression in this direction and were wonderful in their own right, TPIYN outdoes them both and pretty much everyone else currently making this kind of music.

If there's one problem with this pop/rap hybrid it is the skittish way she sometimes departs from the beat, losing her flow in EDM choruses or radio friendly R&B pop hooks. Iggy is strongest when she welds her words to a minimal yet delectable bass boom, spelling out her name with mischievous exaggeration.

Everyday Robots signals a sea change in Albarn's oeuvre because it is, ostensibly at least, a work that tackles its creator's origins with something close to sincerity. I say close to, because there are plenty of moments here when the familiar orientalism returns to produce slightly nauseating results.

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.