Black Metal is an exceptional record. It is a stronger, more complete statement even than that seen on The Redeemer, primarily because it lays bare its own contradictions.

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

This is a Chinese whispers record, one that has been passed through enough cultural and aesthetic filters as to make it utterly meaningless.

This perpetual cycling through of ideas can be fascinating but also fatiguing, and it ultimately marks the record's most debilitating flaw.

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.

For the most part this is a composed, nourishing pop album.

Though Younge’s production may be the star here, Twelve Reasons To Die is the work of a rap game veteran who in the autumn of his career still has plenty to offer.

At the moment, it feels like he's clinging tenaciously to the edge of disco's seamy grandeur: held there by a certain stiffness, seriousness even.

It’s all genre-splicing and too little genre-defining, and I can’t help but think that Martyn, with both his musical knowledge and his production chops, is capable of something better.

There’s often a disconnect between the production and what’s going on vocally, the two elements at times even working at cross purposes.

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.

The theme of pining which was thread throughout her debut mixtape Cut 4 Me is still present here, but more pointed and poetic this time around. Each song beams with growth.

The Block Brochure is a daunting proposition and quite simply a difficult amount of music to process. This is unfortunate, though, given the sheer number and variety of gems strewn throughout.

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

His solo work tends to be more delicate--with Audience Of One capturing him at his most porcelain.

Blue Gardens something a bit more sonically vivid is touched upon in ‘At Sea’, when acoustic percussion samples and a less stable synth harmonium shiver and waver in a manner that subtly detaches the track from everything that preceded it.

It’s a creditable enough compilation as a whole, although a couple of relative oldies, Burial’s ‘Shell Of Light’ (from 2007’s Untrue) and DJ Rashad’s ‘Only One’ (from last year’s Double Cup) rather make me question the aims of the exercise.

It’s Too Late is a woozy, scattershot thing--Late Night Drake, if you will.

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

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

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.

Many of its strongest tracks are those that see Q take his foot off the gas, playing to more traditional communicative strengths in hip-hop.

An unobtrusively profound statement, cradled in soft-focus melancholy, it's a willowy but towering expression of disassociation, and deeply moving.

Having been born of time around Hot Chip's main activities, however, New Build's debut is not without the limitations that are likely of such an endeavour.

Honeymoon is by far Del Rey’s most beautifully made and cohesive album.

Seabed is the worst of all worlds, all fluff without substance and repetition without meaning.

4Eva and a Day is--modestly, but definitely--a triumph.

Even if How to destroy angels_ are simply tweaking a long-established formula, rather than clearing the chalkboard, An Omen_ still presents a band that has mastered the task at hand.