It’s Album Time is an impressively balanced and varied record.

More of a step sideways, then, but one which keeps us very much interested in what comes next.

There are moments of dynamism, like the excellent quivering steppers’ bassline in ‘Time’, or ‘In’’s disemboweled grime-pulse sounds. But even these tracks feel weighed down by a relentless paranoiac mood that soon begins to tire, their gestures sparse and restrained in a manner that’s presumably meant to be evocative, but often just feels unadventurous.

On Mess, surface is meaning, with the album’s vacuous hedonism merely another expression of the theme of spiritual oblivion that Liars have explored ever since their debut.

The Soul of All Natural Things realises her intent wonderfully, its gorgeously crafted pastoral songs a gentle invocation to inner peace.

This may be Carla Bozulich’s take on pop music, but Boy is rarely anything short of cathartic.

Say Yes To Love feels like a purging, 20-odd minutes of urgent expulsion that leaves you feeling exhausted, elated and renewed.

Unfidelity stands out as a keeper.

If you dislike fidgetty edits and squealing high frequencies fine--go and listen to Eleh--but if you like dance music crashing into the most mainstream of the mainstream on a skateboard, being cheeky, rude, funny and giving you a massive rush when you listen to it, then here it is. Recess. Enjoy.

There’s more than enough in this album to keep her in that position--so, come for the gay brostep, stay for the songcraft and character.

While My Krazy Life is YG’s debut, it feels more like an album-length celebration of Mustard’s ratchet revolution, a sound distilled from LA G-Funk, Atlanta snap and Bay Area hyphy.

While Oxymoron is never dull, thanks to Q’s indisputable skills as a rapper and beat selector, by its conclusion you’ll wish he’d given less of its runtime over to his gangsta persona and more to exploring his own identity.

Yes, fine songs. But in part, though, a little of the success of July should be attributed to producer Randall Dunn.

It’s a very puzzling record, but the last thing you should do is try and puzzle it out: just go with it and you’ll find its strange charms working much more quickly than you might have thought at first.

The whole EP is terrifyingly accomplished, there is sick genius at work in every nanosecond of detail, and it definitely makes you feel like the 21st century as per 20th century sci-fi principles is finally well underway.

There are runs of tunes that are almost entirely textural, which might be part of the reason it’s so easy to drift into, but are not really ones you’d chuck on a playlist.

A delicate thing, and for all its studied complexity sometimes comes off a touch insubstantial.

The album’s electronic feel sharpens the idea of sterility and a frictionless modern life, while providing, as British electronica has done since the days of John Foxx, a lexicon for existential nothingness.

From the orchestral string intro of ‘Marilyn Monroe’ to the funk-rock jam session that ends ‘It Girl’, G I R L is 45 minutes of warmed-over retro-pop pastiche, cribbing from Michael Jackson and Chic, from disco and yacht rock.

In patten’s world the fizz of intellect is an end in itself, rather than a means to some sort of insight. Which is enjoyable in moderation, but mostly just frustrating.

A record whose main theme may be death, but whose power comes from Kozelek’s vivid celebration of life.

Unfortunately, dependable lounge ambience this ain’t; as the album progresses, any sense of cohesion or purpose is quickly lost to the sheer density and variety of ideas.

Herndon is quite unique, using her instrument to engage in a constant dialogue with her immediate environment in such a way that makes conventional divisions --between the natural and the synthetic, or between the everyday and the extraordinary--seem dated.

In short, this album holds together even better than On a Mission, and Katy B is still our best pop star.

Moodymann has inflated wildly, now standing at a monstrous 27 tracks in length through a generous stuffing of media samples and, in typical Kenny Dixon Jr fashion, a bunch of material that has already seen release.

Too True amounts to little more than a succession of cliches and wall-to-wall empty stylisation, with the femme four-piece seemingly unaware that mimicry is not art, and nor is seriousness the same as being a serious artist.

The production on Dirty Gold--generic, consistently uninspired, gauche--bears absolutely no relation to the album’s subject matter, and jars horribly with Haze’s dark forceful flow.

The problem is that the vocals sound generic.

Rather than the stunt-casting found in some dance-pop albums, the vocalists here exist intrinsically and organically in the songs, their vocals weaved into the fabric rather than simply wearing it.

In terms of compositional sophistication, Doyle struggles to compete with the Jon Hopkinses of this world, his emotional brushstrokes unambiguous and delineated. But considering he’s a 22 year old home producer, comparing Total Strife Forever to last year’s EP shows that he’s growing exponentially.

Ghettoville might chronicle a dark patch for Actress, but once it hits its stride it’s as good, and as full of life, as anything he has produced.

The percussion is low in the mix and the bass way up, giving the songs a molten, fluid quality. The parts themselves, however, are guided by an erratic intelligence.

Unfortunately, whichever way you try and dress it up, frippery and kitsch alone isn’t enough to carry this album.

In short: this is a techno mix--a really good one.

This album is not just exciting for its sound, but for what it promises too.

All in all, it’s as if the watery concoction of before has been distilled into a potent musical treacle--richer in atmosphere, sharper, artistically decisive and intoxicating.

Alternate/Endings is as bleak as it is imaginative, a drum ‘n’ bass opus from a producer who hasn’t quite turned his back on hip-hop.

Here’s an hour or so of music that’s cold as the cosmos and as unsentimental as physics, but something you can nonetheless gaze upon in awe.

These four tracks may cry out for proper soundsystems and bear many of dance music’s hallmarks, but their lengths (they add up to nearly half an hour), discordant layering and meandering structures render them more suited to body listening than the dancefloor.

It’s fair to say that, from a purely musical point of view, this is far from Herbert’s best work, but that’s hardly the point; The End Of Silence aims to unseat us and provoke a more profound engagement with the events around us, and to that end it’s a success.

Beyoncé is a stronger personal statement than Magna Carta… Holy Grail, less self-indulgent than The 20/20 Experience, and (in its own way) as dark and confrontational as Yeezus.

There is some meat here, but it’s difficult to suck it off the bone. Perhaps in his efforts to prevent his music being “reified,” Warwick has fallen short of saying anything much at all.

The hard-won fruits of this album have been worth it.

Rap Album One breaks away from rap conventions in an effortless manner.

Play this album from start to finish and it’s hard not to feel that at the core of its cheaply gratifying genealogy is nothing but misery.

Ultimately, it’s a failure of imagination--reflecting either a deficiency of talent and/or invention on Derulo’s part or his complete contempt for the listener.

Surrender to the Fantasy is undoubtedly good, but occasionally falls short of its potential.

Everything that is missing from [Lady Gaga's Artpop] is here, but everything that is good about it is spectacularly absent from Prism.

When the whole thing drops back to its kickdrum-hi-hat backbone in the closing minute, it’s as stringent, and as satisfying, as any techno moment of recent times.

Despite DeGraw’s earnestness and the many good ideas that are in there, SUM/ONE‘s sense of free rein results in something garishly over the top--a bit like reversing your cases when trying to write a serious point.

Though a marginally lesser album than predecessor MAYA, Matangi is nevertheless dynamite.

Nun is easily the most focussed and incisive record Teengirl have released to date.

That’s the achievement of Spaces: not simply to replicate the music of Frahm’s concerts, divine though it is, but to evoke the events’ communal intimacy.

Stealth Of Days is sonic candyfloss, delectable on the taste buds but fleeting too. Added to which, as with candyfloss, you might find yourself tiring of the flavour before long.

This is two albums in a row now that were basically a bit boring, and she needs to sort it out soonish please.

As anyone who’s spent a night lurking by the subwoofers knows, these tracks have the power to rearrange internal organs. Uncomfortable though that may sound, it’s a pleasure to experience.

Remember Your Black Day is about that feeling of grim portent, the cold fear that leaks in through your TV screen, the dread that hunts you down, even as you sprawl on a sun lounger and sip your cocktail and stare out at the sea.

This timid spike ['Afterlife'] in urgency is short-lived, swallowed whole by closer ‘Supersymmetry’ and its 11 genteel minutes of caressing synth-loops and mental nothingness, completing perfectly what is an utterly tangential statement.

Cupid Deluxe starts strongly with ‘Chamakay’, ‘You’re Not Good Enough’, and ‘Uncle ACE’, but sadly loses focus.

Spun out over a sometimes painful hour, NYC, Hell 3:00AM is a mess of an album that, despite a questionable concept, still has plenty of genuine highs.

Considering that Ferreira is a twenty-one-year-old major label pop artist exploring indie rock on a highly-anticipated debut, songs born of manifold frustration and uncertainty, Night Time, My Time is a defiant and assured listen.

The journey bounds from emotional high to low and back again: ecstasy and agony can both cause tearful eyes and heart palpitations.

Chance of Rain hinges on uncertainty and fluctuating pressure, not outpouring. It’s impersonal, then, but never inhuman.

Aside from anything, the album’s glut of southern coke-rap cuts are plain mundane; partly because trap is so horribly over-exposed right now, and partly because footwork sounds unordinary next to any genre you could name.

It’s huge fun and sounds just as big.

Only ‘The Seasons Won’t Change (And Neither Will You)’ feels slightly extraneous. Otherwise, Restless Idylls is all we might have hoped for in a Tropic Of Cancer LP.

From the evocative title on down, there is nothing about Cut 4 Me that doesn’t challenge the listener’s expectations of what R&B can be in 2013 and beyond.

Silver may believe in the changeless beauty of his art, but he doesn’t quite succeed in convincing the rest of us.

Yes, it’s possible to read Soul Music as some kind of commentary on, or deconstruction of, jungle. More people will probably interpret it as a collection of straightforward, canon-savvy bangers. That’s fine, of course, but it’s difficult to shake the sense that Special Request could have been something more.

Kwes is a resourceful, competent producer and songwriter who’s not short on ideas; if anything, he’s overwhelmed by his own creativity.

As a pop-object, Interiors is far more convincing than its predecessor; as a musical experience it is still, regrettably, thin.

For a record that wears its retro influences so openly, Psychic is surprisingly forward-thinking.

There’s certainly nothing on Beautiful Rewind with a hook as memorable as ‘Locked’, from last year’s Pink. When Four Tet hits that sweet spot between fragile beauty and gritty pirate radio music (as on the aforementioned ‘Aerial’ and ‘Buchla’, for instance) however, you really feel as if he’s onto something.

The result, unexpectedly, is his most ambitious record yet.

Whilst My Name Is My Name has one of the best selections of beats on a major label rap album in years, and Pusha’s enunciations are still as sonically potent as a decade ago, his singularity largely comes across as a stubborn resistance to change in the face of how ambitious the LP (and so much new rap, frankly) sounds, and suffers from a tracklist too concerned with features to allow this singularity to reign supreme anyway.

The record is at its weakest when it’s more hoedown than hoes down.... Generally though, Cyrus’s fourth album is more--ahem--bangers than clangers.

It’s an album that feels measured and well timed and yet avoids sounding over-polished or awkwardly stage-managed.

Though it sounds like it couldn’t be by anybody else, it’s more sonically diverse and less dense than previous Jesu albums.

While it may take until the next album for these darker elements to be as rewardingly complex as Wilner can be, it’s still an immersive trip.

Generally though, The Fifth‘s “dance” tracks--‘Bassline Junkie’, ‘Something Really Bad’, et al--just seem too limp to succeed as radio hits, and they’re certainly not good or interesting songs in any other capacity.

On paper Vapor City looked like Stewart’s descent into a sump of his own pompousness; in reality it’s anything but.

Ultimately the genius of Kiss Land‘s production lies in its ability to literalise Tesfaye’s fractured state of mind.

It may well appeal to those content with downtime after more forthright records. As an album, however, Evelyn’s good mood sits somewhere between decisive and whimsical.

R Plus Seven feels isolated and eerily post-human. Musically it may be Oneohtrix Point Never’s most accessible work yet, but the emotional pull it exerts is minimal.

Like much of the best music of recent times, Colonial Patterns sits outside of chronology, peering fascinatedly in.

It makes for an excellent debut in whatever style you want to call it.

MGMT is by some margin the New Yorker’s most intuitive, sincere and naturalistic record. The bad news is that it’s not at all musically interesting.

It just is: mindless, unfathomable--a little like the digital fracas of our online lives.

Although imperfect, The Electric Lady is a huge statement.

Considering the trio are relative newcomers to dance music, the programming throughout Factory Floor is acutely deft. Elegant, in fact; so much so that the sound can comfortably be described as chic.

Flop moments aside though, Rebellious Soul ticks the prerequisite boxes of classic r’n'b: confessional tales of love, loss and longing sung with passion and sincerity.

Hesitation Marks follows the musical lineage that began with The Fragile, but it surpasses recent NIN albums thanks to a deeply personal thematic core and a willingness to push the songwriting into territory that is often dancier and poppier than listeners have come to expect from the band.

Whether or not an attempt to be faithful to the original recordings (which kind of defeats the purpose), his compositions are, while lyrical, touching and impressively accomplished, fairly middle of the road.

No Better Time Than Now is both musically rich and emotionally open, and it’ll be interesting to see where Shigeto takes his sound next.

While the sense of humor that separates him from someone like Gucci Mane emerges at times, the brief grins are not quite enough to distract from the relentless, repetitive tropes that have come to define Juicy’s (and the rest of the rap game’s) lyrics over the past few years.

As an exhilarating listen and the perfect reflection of Black Jazz Records’ singular musicians, Black Jazz Signature is a record you will probably keep and return to for life.

Aerotropolis manages to navigate its concept without being crushed by the weight of it, and is a thoroughly enjoyable LP that--perhaps like Ikonika herself--will only mature with time.

The pacing is tentative, the tone one of suppressed pain, and the FX custom-designed to denote ‘meaningfulness’ or emotional sensitivity--all rustic organ sounds and tinkling guitar notes.