It works to the strengths of each, allowing Negro and Barwick their own spaces to shine while sculpting an overall, engrossing ambience around the pair.

At times it is so minimal and skeletal, the songs are in need of intensive care. Yet it is unafraid to rock (Trick Pony, Dandelion) or be resolutely commercial.

Philip Larkin memorably once noted, "What will survive of us is love". Whilst that's undoubtedly true, in Martyn's case there are also these glorious songs to savour and celebrate.

For Fitz and Co, few if any post-60s developments in black dance music are acknowledged. Still, when it's good and exciting, as on the standout Don't Gotta Work It Out, with its simply thrilling keyboard coda, considerations of originality become irrelevant.

Cultdom seems assured at the very least, and How I Knew Her is less an album to yield all its myriad charms instantly, more one to slow-drip its way to adoration

Maybe it shouldn't be altogether surprising that Knoxville is brimming over with bravura displays of improvisational nous. Similarly, it would be hard to find a finer study of the suppression of the ego; each musician's signature sound serving to continually complement, but never saturate, the artistry of the others.

Throughout the album, Lamdin's production offers a sense of clarity and understated confidence.

It all clicks into gear by the end, and it perhaps bodes well that they appear to have worked out how to finish things on a high.

The album demands to be heard in a single sitting, in a contradiction of the digitally shuffling age.

Smith Westerns are that rare treat: an intelligent indie band with a love of a good tune and a good time.

On Shangri-La YACHT have proven that no matter what the concept is, it always comes down to the music.

Much advance word of Lou Reed and Metallica's excursion has been one of bewilderment and dismissal. It may well be, though, that in the fullness of time this is an album that is given the praise it deserves.

Glowing Mouth is a polished, well-arranged album that could find a happy home in countless collections.

A consistent second album of big choruses from the New Yorkers.

All three players are articulating a ceaseless stream of fresh ideas throughout this electrically energised session.

The strongest tracks here stand tall, ensuring Monch remains a powerful rap force.

Perhaps finding mass appeal has given Tim Smith and his band-mates the confidence to take their ideas into darker, brooding waters, and further harness the influence of classic British prog-folk. But whatever the motivation, it's a mood that suits.

A hugely entertaining dance-rock romp.

Never Trust a Happy Song is far from a cohesive album, but that actually works to its advantage--because it encapsulates the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, of this emotional rollercoaster known as life.

Across these varied tracks we hear Wretch 32 in all of his lyrical glory, making good on the promise he's shown since day one.

For any bootlegging rappers with cerebral ambitions, this could represent the greatest thinking man's beat tape of all time. To mere listeners, it's an enveloping temporary distraction, more than fulfilling its purpose of whetting anticipation for El-P's mic-wielding return.

Streten proves that potential mass appeal need not come at the expense of creative flair or fresh ideas.

It's a tight 40 minutes of compacted, runaway virtuosity.

If you are looking for a quick musical fix, Art Department may burn too slowly for you. But if nine-minute deep house edits infected by the spirit of Larry Levan, Virgo and Basic Channel are your bag, then you'll not be straying too far from the gaze of the mistress you call house music.

Loma Vista is a fine album of songs of love, longing and celebration that would sound at its best when cruising along a B road in a soft-top, or stumbled across while wandering around a free festival while a bit tipsy.

This is an airy (but not aerated) blend of ambience, indie pop and 80s synth music, delivered with a grace that ensures they're miles from lo-fi territory.

It meets expectations, and while surpassing them is something achieved only occasionally, this is a record that well complements a no-work state of mind.

EE are wilfully eccentric, and endlessly entertaining, but they know more than most how to craft a song, how to make an album.

Although there is much which doesn't automatically burn itself to the cerebral cortex, the standout sections are not found rooted in melody but in the less obvious aspects, like the siren-styled synth motifs of Goons.

These 11 tracks flow fantastically, sounding like products of a focused period of writing and recording, completed over a relatively short space of time.

Jiaolong is an effortless collection that just won't quit.

It's a comfortable masterclass, in short, from a songwriter in complete command of his aesthetic.

Fans of the man whose Brill Building work helped shape the pop landscape of the mid-60s can enjoy this interesting collection: 23 mono tracks from the period where Diamond was only beginning to make his name as an artist in his own right.

Peace take the past and swish it about with a bit of swagger, and the results are just dandy.

So wonderfully compelling is it all that it's easy to miss how seriously impassioned Maus can be.

Dear's fifth album sees the songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist, singer, producer, DJ and all-round clever dick making a bigger, more accessible sound.

Produced by ECM proprietor Manfred Eicher, Snakeoil sounds as good as any album from Berne, without conforming to stereotypes of "the ECM sound".

At their most stripped-back, Woods have always been arresting – but here they realize some of their most beautiful work yet.

These guys have defied the odds to deliver a collection that's all gold and no albatross.

The mood is what's irresistible. Sashaying through a bunch of tunes that showcase his craft, Haggard sounds laidback and happy. And the bounce spreads right through the band.

He's a pop artist of substance, and as such brings a touch of class and sufficient flavour of another genre to the mainstream to make music that's interesting and lasting.

Luck in the Valley finds him totally at home on the ranch, sat in his rocking chair and surrounded by friends gathered around the porch deck. It’s a fitting last hurrah from a true American primitive.

The duo has followed through admirably with Invariable Heartache, a record that seeps with clear-eyed hope, regret and wisdom.

A bewildering but fun bedlam seems to be their default setting, if the first half-dozen or so tracks are anything to go by.

Clearly, the reduction in volume and scale has lead to fantastic musical growth--a fine, accomplished and emotional album that ranks among his very best.

A compact and incredibly gratifying introduction to a new lo-fi talent.

Parton's 41st studio LP sparkles with the enthusiasm of a debut.

There’s no better way to shut out the din than by putting this record on.

It's just one eye-opening surge of splendour, like the first gasp of a newborn baby taking in the world for the very first time. The difference with this album: that sense of wonder never fades.

[An] impressive debut album.

La Voyage Dans La Lune is the 'most Air' thing this duo may ever craft, a perfect set with which to remind audiences of their continuing excellence.

Where that album [2008’s Supreme Balloon] over-extended a limited palette, this set bridles with impish imagination.

Psychedelic, kaleidoscopic pop... heady and brilliant.

There are many arguments for and against Tyler's mouth and mind, but once the language barrier is crossed and ears become numb, the real brilliance of Goblin can be heard.

Ambitious, and brilliant, fourth LP from the New York MC.

They continue to make music that sounds like it cares how you are.

This is the sound of pigeonhole-free ambition slowly being realised, and it's sounding great.

The pleasure in Beirut's music has always largely been in what it evokes – a kind of melancholy tempered with optimism and sometimes celebration. And it evokes marvellously here: whatever current Condon found himself caught up in that led to the creation of these songs, it's one you feel he's happy to coast a while yet.

Their most adventurous, confident and engaging record in years.

Remind[s] you just what a good singer the rocking knight can be. And after years of personal and professional earnestness, he sounds like he's having fun.

Hercules and Love Affair have vaulted over any second album worries with a jubilant and celebratory collection of large tunes.

So sublime are these ten spectral soundtracks to the minutiae of a modern lover's tribulations that their sorrow is translated into something more uplifting than unsettling.

Fly Zone is streamlined, its production consistently excellent despite numerous contributors.

Sure enough, complicated, esoteric and, yes, really quite bonkers, it turns out to be. By the same token, Tomorrow, In a Year is also a work of vaulting ambition whose ‘seriousness’ is written on its metaphorical sleeve and whose sense of gravity and ascetic rigour give Scott Walker’s Tilt or The Drift a run for their artily uncompromising money.

Her songs fall easily on the ear, her rhyming schemes are adroit and she writes intelligently on serious subjects.

If only all bands had the guts and honesty of The Maccabees, maybe they'd get round to making third records as good as this.

This is electro-pop with palpable emotion possessing its fizzing keys, guided by a vocal performance that underplays the fraught feelings found on the lyric sheet.

There are impressive experimental excursions here, too: take Never Say Never, a whirl of backwards beats, twinkling harps and discombobulated vocals that’s both utterly disorientating and quite delightful.

With I Speak Because I Can, that argument may now end. Though just 20, it doesn't appear within her scope to make an outright bad album, and here we are shown a few more glimpses of her gift, but yet not an overwhelming outpouring of it.

File him beside Frank Ocean as an RnB star set to climb to new heights in 2012.

Berberian Sound Studio and Broadcast are a perfect match, and this soundtrack--something you may not want to listen to alone if you keep hearing a weird noise outside the window--gives you an idea of how magnificent this band can be.

This is a discernibly different beast from any aforementioned acts of convenient comparison – from a distance, sure, it has its similarities, but zoom in and it's an exquisite new breed to behold.

Barnett's blue-sky dreaming is actually a pretty accurate description of Hidden – heavily beat-driven, almost entirely absent of guitars, and laced with large amounts of elaborately arranged woodwind and brass. Does it work? Largely, yes.

Downtown Church is full of astonishing songs.

While The Bravest Man in the Universe may not be quite a masterpiece, it is unquestionably a great achievement in which weaknesses are so few and far between that they barely even register.

Combined with playing that soars so majestically from this band's fingers, the end result is a set that is both unusual yet immediate. If you only buy one album this month, in the opinion of these ears, this should be it.

A welcome return, then – let's hope they stick around for a bit longer this time.

A batty, compelling, smart and unusual soundtrack.

Fluid and at times utterly beautiful, few will grow tired of these songs living in their headphones.

Gorilla Manor is no classic – it's too indebted to its makers' influences for that. But it is a strong, striking debut that exceeds expectations and should open enough doors for the band to ensure that album two is immediately placed at the top of journalist must-listen-to piles and consumers' to-buy lists alike.

Le Noise remains reasonably accessible, Young's lyrics still as appealingly forthright as his playing, his melodies slowly rising through the unsettling, growling dirge.

[This album] makes one thing absolutely clear: whatever else they were up to, Goldfrapp have always delivered astonishing pop singles.

It is, as you'd expect, expertly played – but there's a vividness to Look Around the Corner that reaches some way beyond mere chops. It's an exceptional collaboration that proves there's life in the old soul yet.

This beat is where everything begins, with an essential simplicity that puts you in mind of Washington go-go, leaving enough space for delicate fill-ins and strong enough to support intricate arrangements.

Cancer Bats’ tendency to veer towards the metallic might shock those unaccustomed to having a sweaty Torontonian screaming blue murder in their faces. But persevere and it reveals itself as a selection of dark, enjoyably violent treats.

Californian duo's first LP for five years is a downbeat delight.

The latest Lamdin offering, billed as Nostaliga 77 and the Monster, is a thoroughly intriguing instrumental set, staffed with an impressive line-up of leading British jazz heads.

The Mosaic Project offers, simply, some of the best jazz around.

Throughout all this, though, lies a sense of warm experimentation that should feel familiar to fans of Deerhunter's unique brand of ambience-loving indie-rock. Halcyon Digest is simply another solid entry in the discography of a mighty band.

Super Furry Animals frontman's third solo LP captures his creative wanderlust.

This debut is all creepy, crawly kinds of fun, and we already want more.

It’s a breath of air... and, mostly, that air is crystalline fresh.

If You Leave is a damaged debut, then, but the way the hues of its bruises blend into each other is wholly hypnotic. It wants to love, again, but has chosen darkness.

The n’gonis are always upfront, but this is also an album of stunning vocals.

In a career of benchmark highs, he's made yet another; and by doing the unexpected, it shows that whatever the sound of his records, the punk inside Moore still lives.

With the most basic tools, the Stones build something lovely and lasting. Roll with them.

Old Dog New Tricks is hardly an overhaul--the likes of Don't Know Why She Love Me but She Do ensures there's plenty here for adherents to the tried and true. But it's clear that this old dog is stretching his legs more than on any previous album.

Black Up is far from a fuzzy, unfocused indie-rap document. Butler's rhymes remain lyrical and tight, musing on desire and motivation, artistic freedom and Afro-American identity, in a way that should appeal to the Talib Kweli fans out there.