Cosmogramma is dense and devotional, Ellison piloting his craft into the fading slipstream of his aunt Alice Coltrane's cosmic strain of jazz. Not that it's jazz, exactly. Well, no more than it is techno, dubstep, chiptune, P-funk, IDM and, by no means least, hip-hop.

This is widescreen alt-rock with an appropriately mammoth production, where euphoric choruses and crushing verses don't just sit alongside each other but ebb and flow to become inextricable entities.

It's a warm-blooded record, beholden to analogue gear and flawless mastering--one destined to fit snugly on a turntable rather than to live as ones and zeros on your iPod.

This album has five more absolutely brilliant tracks.

It might not be much in the way of a surprise for those who’ve listened to ‘Thrown’ or ‘Looped’, but working from divergent influences is rarely simple, and Kiasmos iterates on the ideas explored in these earlier tunes with serious skill, electronic and traditional influences so tightly woven together that the LP maintains a very definite sense of identity throughout, and is pretty much impossible to poke holes in.

Confidently frail and hesitant, LP1 is a refreshing reaction to, and a calm assault upon, the unfathomably fast-paced total noise of the current age.

Most impressively of all, it comfortably lives up to the promise that Auerbach apparently made to the Doctor that he would help him craft 'the best record you've made in a long time.'

There’s enough continental plate-shifting histrionics to keep any unsatisfied Godspeed! fans amused.

Overall, this at-first-shy but eventually overpowering record will make yer cheeks sting with wine and late-night gales; and, as I've already said but feel sort of compelled to reiterate, it's so refreshing to hear.

Empros is consistently epic and life-affirming without ever delving into over-emotional cliché.

Present Tense might lack the immediacy of both Smother and Two Dancers, but scratch away at the surface and its a record oozing with the precision and maturity we've come to expect from its creators. And in all honesty, it would be churlish to ask for anything more.

Unfortunately, however, no matter how listenable the latter half of this compilation is, it’s hard not to feel that it’s a shame Cabaret Voltaire abandoned their early abrasiveness as quickly as they did.

The music is extraordinary, but the format is yer basic pre-Chrimbo best of (and the same goes for the 20-track 2LP).

There is much to enjoy here and if you have the slightest interest in contemporary classical music or you’re a soundtrack buff, give this a whirl. Jonny Greenwood may be one of those scruffy oiks in a pop group, but he’s proved once again that there is an incredibly musical mind under the haircut.

It is the subtle orchestral aspect to the record that stands out, with the same washed arrangements that Grizzly Bear and close cohorts Clogs manage to incorporate so casually.

Altogether, Popular Problems is another very good record from someone who many thought might not have such a thing in him, a concise collection of nine tracks curated by a man who has rediscovered his musical spark.

While they still don’t do hits, no-one does brooding, slow-burn magnificence quite like Murphy. He builds everything from the ground up, solid foundations augmented by neat details and flourishes. More than ever, American Dream demonstrates how rhythm is central to LCD Soundsystem.

Acid Rap succeeds for all the right reasons a mixtape should, finely balancing an idiosyncratic style, taught rhymes, emotional sincerity and rich production.

Musically speaking, it's a perfectly logical progression from Fucked Up's second album, 2008's The Chemistry Of Common Life, which itself strode recognisably onwards from their 2006 studio debut Hidden World.

An album that would sound as though it could have been made anytime in the last five decades were it not so immaculately produced, recalling Dylan and Springsteen and pretty much all of Almost Famous without ever descending into pastiche or mere homage.

It’s disarming, actually, how an album this heavy can be so kinetic, so compulsive, so--the word seems wrong, but funky.

There’s an ever-so-slight lack of the precariously raw noise that made Ugly so thrilling, but the crisp, imaginative songwriting redresses the balance.

Nerrisimo is indeed a dark piece of work, but it’s all the more sublime for it.

Halo expertly shuffles musical microclimates like a card shark elbow greasing a three card molly hustle.

Sure, a lot of this has been done before, but not often with this level of assurance and class on a debut album.

For all of its discordance, there is both the degree of palpable cohesion belying To Pimp A Butterfly and the unorthodox narrative of GKMC that lures the listener close.

There’s enough allure in Poison Season’s oddities to make it highly listenable.

Shaking the Habitual is an entity entirely unto itself; a warm chaos that drinks you in.