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.