This is dance music for dance music's sake.

Take the time to squeeze inside, and you'll discover a startling, significant, endlessly inspiring album.

Scars is the strongest Basement Jaxx album since 2001's "Rooty".

While unlikely to ignite the zeitgeist as "Parklife" once did, "The Good, The Bad & The Queen" probably says just as much about Britain 13 years on.

LFO's gift is an ability to strip Detroit's electronic music of its soul, punishing any soft southern edges with a brutal attack of noise, while still managing moments of subtlety and consistently adventurous beat programming.

'Pole' is so minimal it's almost naked. But, by only including the things that matter, it's deceptively atmospheric.

You've heard this album before then, but it's never sounded quite this crazed and pressed for time.

The thundering beats, subdued vocals of indecipherable lyrics, and power packed riffs are all still there, but they've mellowed and everything is a bit softer around the edges.

Smoke pulls off the neat trick of seeming weightless and disassociated but never slight, playful, yet neither inconsequential nor silly.

The pair have opted for unfiltered analogue over cleaned-up digital, too, achieving a lush density with loops and textures and a warm wooziness overall that's a million miles removed from their last effort, 2002's dark and almost mathematically complex "Geogaddi".

All in, this is probably their best work.

A quirky lo-fi wonder or the best album the '70s never had, "The Garden" feels like a lost gem, discovered in a box in the attic; a forgotten masterpiece full of tantalising sounds, odd voices and tingling ideas.

Unlike his obvious contemporaries - David Gray and Tom McRae - Harcourt has produced an album that reaches out beyond the boundaries of the traditional songwriter, yet still comes packed with memorable melodies and robust songs.

YACHT don't aim to solve the puzzle of life; they just want you to know you're welcome to party round their house anytime you like.

This is a determined little bastard of a record by a band in a bug-eyed, rhythmic sweat, who know it’s time to come out with their guns blazing.

Think Giorgio Moroder, The Art of Noise and Michael Nyman with - if you like your reference points with less padded shoulders - a touch of New Order and Boards of Canada.

It's an intelligent, beguiling and charming record, from a man who has often seemed to lack all but the first of these qualities, and the first thing he's done since The Libertines' debut to make you feel genuine hope for his future.

"Late Registration" feels more comfortable in its own skin than its predecessor.

At every turn this record astonishes with its accomplishment.

A whole album as hyperactive would be exhausting, of course, but unlike the majority of indie plodders, The Feeling have real range.

This, like the last joint 'Stakes Is High', sees the crew making even more stylistic space between themselves and their very own creation of the late eighties, 'the daisy age'.

Not only have The Kills delivered a rock'n'roll album of note, it's one that achieves the rare trick of weaving timelines and timelessness with indecent ease.

A proper, fully formed record rather than a side-project doodle, Colonia is where artistic integrity meets pop conviction in a curious, deranged yet compelling sing-along.

A thoroughly engaging exercise in uneasy listening.

If "Neon Bible" doesn't quite dazzle as "Funeral" did, that's more a measure of the latter album's benchmark brilliance, rather than the inferiority of the former.

While there's nothing as irresistibly catchy as "Under Rug Swept"'s magnificent "Hands Clean", the overall impression, musically speaking, is one of freshness, optimism and energy. But better still, it's smart, and sussed, and frequently funny as hell.

If relationships were straightforward they’d be no need for albums like this. Thank god they aren’t.

On Dark Days/Light Years, their ninth album, The Furries consolidate their best ideas--electro leanings, hypnotic motorik excursions, catchy, hook-driven riffs and layers of vocal melodies.