They don't make a better sound than your average bunch of Sonic Youth fanatics, but they make it feel better, make it seem more important, more romantic almost.

The 'world-music' excursions of the previous 'Global - A Go Go' album are less in evidence and 'Streetcore' is a sharper, leaner collection for it.

A fine writer, possessed of a honeyed, deep, richly expressive voice, Ice-T may have been the rapper of choice for white suburban teens in big shorts, but that doesn't mean he or his music have ever been anything less than grippingly authentic. He might not have always walked hip hop's artistic frontline, but 'The Evidence' proves he should always be ranked among the music's great practitioners.

Overall, Smother is brilliant, and a record by a band with a big brain, a generous heart, hungry ears and a permanent erection.

It may be epic, sprawling and too unwieldy a tool with which to prise open a place in the charts, but it's also nothing short of remarkable.

The quintessential much-loved cult band, they’ve yet to make an album their fans didn’t adore, but the good news is that “Oceans Apart” is one of their finest.

With such songs as 'Southern Point,' which builds from shuffling, folk-jazz grooves into a squelchy, winding fairytale, breathtaking piano-pop anthem 'Two Weeks' and the towering drama of 'I Live with You,' we join the consensus: this is a record to swoon over.

"Kicking Television" documents a band on fire and a frontman in clarion clear voice.

It will undoubtedly top some end of year lists this Christmas.

This is something unique, often flawed and often flooring, and as fine and fitting a memorial for its lyricist as could be imagined.

All in, this is probably their best work.

Whether forsaken or not, Fucked Up certainly do a fine job of making the political sound personal--a victory in itself when taken with a sonic ferocity so broad in its range and wide in scope.

A 93 minute-long nervous breakdown that offers few concessions to the needs of the listener to be entertained.

Not since Springsteen's "Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ" has an album carved poetry so successfully from the dirty streets of America's greatest cities, or has a lyricist dealt so skilfully with the themes of addiction, failure and snatching redemption a split second before passing out.

In a bid to make a startling epic work, she's concentrated on the form and neglected the content.

Three albums in and Basement Jaxx are still so far ahead of the pack that they're a barely visible dust cloud on the horizon.

It's dark but without employing the dull monotone formulas that have dragged drum and bass down.

The songs might be helmed by waves of guitar fuzz (their self-styled 'loose wool' sound) and dissonance, but the gentle orchestration provided by long-time collaborator Padma Newsome and the defiantly tough, robotic drumming of Bryan Devendorf give these songs a warm, phosphorescent glow.

A quietly timeless triumph.

The record's treasure is folded into layers which make it an endlessly rewarding place to invest a couple of months of your life.

This is music designed to fill arenas - possessed of a consistent quality and vision, a head, a heart and soul - that simply leaves the competition trailing in its wake. An utter triumph.

Be assured, this is a genuinely spectacular album: the most stunning aspect being that there's clearly better to come.

Represents a considerable stride in ambition, reaching into dark unchartered territories and repaying close listening with the kind of organic insights that great music excels in unearthing.

With this ramshackle spread of spiked beats and filthy-fingered funk he's produced easily his best work.... An intoxicating, headstorming brew of desire and despair 'Bow Down To The Exit Sign' is the first great album of the millennium.

'Mwng' or 'Mane' (as in horses) is a purely Welsh language album and is a theoretically disorientating and complex, but triumphantly audacious, experience.

'Old Ramon' is a slight affair cut from similar cloth to '...Blue Guitar', fuzzy with distortion, hampered by less than inspirational songwriting.

Everything, you suspect, that people hate about Björk is multiplied a thousandfold here. But by the same measure, to her fans, “Medulla” is an intimate, ecstatic wonder.

He's perhaps not very hopeful that 'This Is Happening' will capture the same number of ears and hearts as 2007's terrific 'Sound Of Silver' did, but it's a fine and thrilling epitaph nonetheless.