It is instrumental rock music that is experimental, emotional, colorful, and engaging, while skillfully blurring many musical boundaries.

Jay has stepped through the mirror to the other side to bring us Slow Dance, and he has triumphed like the best pop idols, engaging our imagination while being simultaneously cool and strange, tender and tough, arty and poppy, traditional and innovative.

Fortunately III is an aptly titled, continued sign of excellence from one of electronic techno music's prominent leaders.

Melodic post-punk rarely sounds as beautiful, exciting, or emotionally connected as it does on Two Thousand.

It's definitely worth checking out if you're into noisy, low-key rock and inventive guitar work.

It makes for some delightfully fetching quirk-rock when it’s all clicking, but there are also moments when the songs never quite develop this alchemy and fizzle into the mist, albeit a fine cool mist on a bright, sunshiny day.

The Only She Chapters is yet another confident addition to Scott-Herren's collection as Prefuse 73.

America Give Up is a fantastically-promising debut album full of charm and potential. So, until the Strokes release their next masterpiece or pack it in altogether, enjoy this bunch of upbeat, tousle-haired tunes.

There are so many female singer songwriters making their presences known but Emmy The Great has a niche entirely of her own today, and that is all down to her songwriting and an elusive personality that avoids overlaying her actual charm.

By eschewing the instrumental grandiosity and working into a clean cut sound of their own, Work moves you to great feelings of warmth and a feeling of great joy.

Suitcase 2 is a necessity for the hardcore Guided by Voices fan.

The music is consistently fresh, fascinating, and evocative... the band’s best album to date.

Malcolm Middleton's position as Scotland's premier musical prankster is more or less entirely cemented by the time the final notes of Human Don't Be Angry fade off into the ironically romanticised Caledonian sunset of Malcolm Middleton's wryly expressed musical imagination.

The Magician’s Private Library is Miranda’s personal baby but Sitek is the godfather, scavenging through all of the reading material. It’s a sincerely open recording and a true testament to what the human spirit is capable of--even when the odds are against it.

This is a matured and musical hip-hop duo and whether it is the fine contributions by Tom Waits and Tunde Adebimpe on separate songs, Ant’s soulful and majestic music, or Slug’s illustrious and poignant story-telling; it’s all superb.

Whilst at times Cool Planet could have benefitted from more of the cohesiveness that marked out Motivational Jumpsuit, its detours and greater collaborative ethos also give Pollard, Sprout and co. greater room for ongoing creativity.

Fortino has created an album that is easily one of the year’s most moving reflections. It’s that life is all but lost and Fortino’s take on things are spectacularly delivered.

This album is too good to dally over, because it's so good, jaw droppingly good, not a false note in the bunch kind of good.... Record of the year stuff.

While a few songs are leftovers from Angles and some were churned out “like the good old days” as they put it, Comedown Machine is a terrific release to The Strokes first five albums.

What they do best is produce exceptional electronica for people that don't have the patience for extended instrumental passages and require things like vocals on regular intervals. With that precursor, The Understanding is probably one of the better electronica records to come out this year that thankfully doesn't involve MCs from Def Jux or was composed on a laptop.

The members of Blitzen Trapper have a lot left in them and they’ve just hit their stride with their last two albums. Black River Killer EP is only further testament to their amazing talents as a band and of the kind of determined soul that prevails against all odds.

The brilliant new album Dark Light Daybreak sees Now It's Overhead mixing the smoldering and beautifully layered guitar sounds from 2001's self-titled debut with the haunting synth-pop beats from 2004's Fall Back Open and taking them a step further by including more intricate melodies, polished arrangements and even grander guitar-scapes.

Essentially one long postcard from the very edge of loneliness and sorrow.

This is an excellent release from an already accomplished band.

This album is not a quick or necessarily easy listen, but it is one of the better ones that I have had the pleasure of listening to this year.

This is big rock, powerful, aggressive, and impeccably played and produced.

Worlds Apart is easily the most accessible album for the band.

There is no shortage of experimentation here.