While certainly not the most sincere album around, nevertheless there is ingrained in its tireless activity a genuine passion to fight the loneliness of intelligence, of neurotic shyness--to fight an inability to connect with people, that condition exacerbated in the era of social media.

Unwanted Chris Brown presence aside, All Of Me is a coherent, concise album that--hearteningly--is most characterised by its creator's overflowing wells of confidence.

On 1989, she makes mountains out of molehills, but this approach feels one part the ironic distance of the digital generation, one part sincere embracing of the impact of life’s speedbumps. Nothing could be more 2014.

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

Untogether is a well executed record, but not a stunning one.

Silver Cloud may be unfocused at times, but itʼs also a terrific feat of conflicting textures and moods, marrying crackly scuzziness and poetic timbres with ease.

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.

As an artistic step forward, Les Sins certainly registers.

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

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.

Bestial Burden, remarkably, achieves exactly what it sets out to do: to turn the gory inner mechanics of the body outward, and lay bare its unpredictable capacity for self-destruction.

Whilst The North Borders is hardly a stylistic leap of faith into the unknown there’s definitely a more confident and varied use of textures and instrumentation than on Black Sands, and it marks a new, very much worthwhile chapter in Bonobo’s continuing story.

In its finished form, Miguel's Kaleidoscope Dream is a testament to his evolved songwriting, reverence to the past, and refusal to be pigeonholed.

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.

Vernon guest-spots aside, though, To See More Light matches its predecessor in terms of quality.

The combination of pop and EDM is nothing new, but rarely has it felt quite so enjoyable as it does here.

As an independently made pop album, the debut of a new project and, essentially, an experiment, Love and Devotion may have weaker moments, but is very well accomplished overall.

This is a fine collection of songs and although there is nothing here to dispel the feeling that even if this is no masterpiece, that doesn't mean that Ranaldo won't be producing one sometime in the near future.

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

Varying in density, direction and style, albeit with some less consistent territory, it’s a modest but powerful score, even when independent from its original setting.

It’s fair to say that Modern Worship is the fullest yet realisation of its creator’s distinctive vision, and it’s a rewarding album--but not quite a stunning one.

All things considered, this is a handsome, stately album.

While a large portion of the LP sounds like a continuation of his earlier work this year, these tracks point optimistically towards something a little different once again, while still managing to fit under that increasingly hard-to-define Bambounou umbrella.

Love, lust and longing are chronicled and dissected in True Romance through online relationships being gradually given tangible, tactile form, setting Charli up as a young pop star to be reckoned with.

The sounds that Dall brings to bear here are often gorgeous, a sun-dappled, analogue-soft electronica of rippling synths and glinting percussion that recalls--and sometimes strongly--the atmospheric IDM of the mid-90s.

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.

Kill For Love matures with each listen, and there's enough craftsmanship at work to more than compensate for the more listless moments.

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.

A Collection... isn't Maus' best record--played back to back with We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, it blanches in comparison--but it's a fine insight into the mind of an inspired Lord Of Misrule.

There are moments of sheer beauty and reckless fun all over this record, but there’s a looming question mark over whether or not listeners will feel motivated to pick their way through the expanse to enjoy them.

Neither spectacular or deflating, Coexist is simply the sound of the xx, more or less just as we left it: minimalist, intuitive, romantic and enchanting. Consequently it's a good album, for exactly the same qualities that made their debut likewise.

For an album that, at times, is beautiful, it doesn't hypnotise you, it doesn't entrance you, and even its best moments fail to stay in your head.

Although Gordian, as an album, doesn’t quite stun, the producer’s sensitivity to the form makes it a far more convincing prospect than most.

I Shall Die Here is a bracing listen, certainly no easier than The Body’s conventional albums, and in its application of intense studio treatment, at times perhaps even more intense. But it is also a whole lot better than The Body’s 2013 album for Thrill Jockey, Christ, Redeemers.

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.

Considering her career so far, this is super cool, contemporary grown-up R&B that shows just how far Rowland has come.

The self-awareness of this conflict makes Life Is Good a more compelling listen than Nas has delivered in a while.

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.

Banks continues to get away with her obnoxiousness--and while the quality of the music remains disproportionate to the hype, it does make her bratty rejection of the rap establishment feel that much more thrilling.

It's an ear-catching work, more immediate than anything Killer Mike has done since his brief commercial moment of glory in 2003.

Government Plates is sometimes just incoherent.... But in the end these are minor quibbles.

It is certainly a gorgeous production, and tracks will possibly come across differently in a mix, even if it is not quite what many will have been expecting.

Their music is about 40 per cent less exciting shorn from the lurid splatter of their videos, but music in 2014 is a more interesting place for their presence.

Nepenthe is more ambitious than its predecessors, more varied in style and execution and sonically richer.

Ultimately, the album’s electro-house elements feel like comparative cheap thrills placed amongst the wealth of knowledge and craftsmanship elsewhere on the EP.

While the new forms forged from the genre manipulation here begets novelty and, yeah, interesting music, ultimately you’re left feeling unfulfilled.... In the end, though, it’s hard to begrudge adventurousness, especially when the end product is this pleasing.

For the most part, it's content to lull the listener into a state of bliss.

In short, it's big, dumb, and a lot of fun, but the overriding feel to TNGHT is that it feels closer to being the start of something great than a great record in itself.

By and large, this is a downbeat record, one suggesting maybe Albarn recently had a listen to ‘Mr Robinson’s Quango’ and decided never to do ‘whimsical’ again. Still, there’s a couple of more upbeat numbers that work in neat counterpoint.

If someone compiles their favourite 12 tracks from it, they may well have their album of the year, but in its current state With Love is pretty far from a classic.

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

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

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

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.

Underpinning the shots White fires at the world has always been a deep-seated melancholy that she brings out effectively here.

An incredibly interesting debut album that's nearly as clever as its creators intended.

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.

Black Bananas manage that ridiculously difficult feat of changing your sound up pretty massively without the whole thing feeling like a jarring shift in aesthetic.

The meandering, incidental quality of their music works alternately in their favor and against them.

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.

Swing Lo Magellan features some of the Dirty Projectors' most straightforward pop songs to date.

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.

News From Nowhere marks a far more dramatic turn for them than North did in 2010.

It's playful and skittish, with equal time spent showcasing Black Milk's sample (and scratch!)-heavy beats and Brown's rhymes.

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

Their obvious musical talent and distinctive voice make Silence Yourself an uncompromising and very enjoyable paean to individual agency.

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.

I'm still waiting for the Tin Album that will bowl me over and convince me of his importance, but Vienna Blue is a loafered step in the right direction.

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.

Believe doesn't always live up to the standards of its best cuts.

For Years is very well made, especially for a debut, and has a lot of emotion--but it also feels applied to an existing context, and one that has dated quickly.

The result is a curious mix: a subtle and often beautiful record about not very much at all.

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.

Galaxy Garden is ambitious, which is to be lauded, and Cutler also has a reassuringly realistic outlook when saying that he is still "chipping away at a big idea".

It’s solid, proficient, fun--not quite transcendent, but, the sort of left turn that feels natural and uncontrived.

When times are lean, Smalhans contains just the sort of shamelessly calorific dance music that we should be thankful for.

AMOK isn’t quite dazzling, but it’s a clear improvement on its predecessor, and more than enough to win over old fans--and perhaps a few new ones, too.

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

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.

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.

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.

While a demonstrable knack for narrative composition gives the album much of its immersive power, Kuopio isnʼt a huge departure from the blueprint.

Fernow takes a more sprawling, less finely textured approach, so that Through the Window strikes a fine balance between morbid gloom and its faintly cheesy reference points.

Possibly, some will leave Luminous disappointed that The Horrors haven’t pulled off another quantum leap, but by slowing down and bedding into their sound, they’ve made a record that feels both studied and instinctual, elevated and elemental, and that’s no mean feat.

It is satisfying--almost a relief--see potential in this record for something more from the group.

Booth and Brown are old hands these days, their territory firmly staked out. It’s gratifying to see, if only briefly, that they haven’t lost the element of surprise.

There's stacks to enjoy, but, for the most part, Release bares its bones and hides its heart.

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.

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.

Trap Lord’s such a tightly bound listen, however, that it jars when it misses the mark.

This is not the moment where he will become a superstar, but it’s a promising beginning to what should be a very long career.

The result is a strange paradox in typical Animal Collective style: a suite of songs that’s at times alien, other times sentimental; often cutesy, but a little too bristly to curl up with under a blanket.

This CD version has some outstanding moments, and at times is a masterful lesson in dream-like production.

You’re Dead! finds ways to keep things pumping.

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.

Its subtle nuances reveal themselves with repeated headphone listens, and though it could use a bit of a trim, there’s plenty here to entice the listener to just lay back, lose yourself, and float.

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.

The Flower Lane is arguably not as essential, nor quite as oddly memorable as previous collected Ducktails instalments, but it does appear to be a new phase of the band.