While Talib's Quality and The Roots' Phrenology break new ground for both acts, Electric Circus is clearly the most adventurous of the trio of releases.

One of the best buys you'll ever make.

In the end, Happy Songs might sound like Mogwai's earlier work or be unapproachable to the listener who spends his time chilling in Sam Goody, but that doesn't mean it's not one of the most amazing albums of the year.

A perfect album of gorgeous dance music.

Each album, from the White Stripes to De Stijl to White Blood Cells, has shown their evolution from Blind Willie McTell cover band with a pop sensibility to full-fledged, honest-to-goodness rock 'n' roll gods, a status finally reached on their latest disc.

"Love and Theft" sees Dylan roaring back from Highway 61 at full bore, reminding us -- as he did on Blonde on Blonde, The Basement Tapes, and Blood on the Tracks -- that, like him or not, there isn't anybody else who can do his job.

This is exactly 40 minutes of transcendent music by someone who we always knew was one of the best singers and songwriters on the scene, but someone who we were afraid was never going to make the music she should be making. Well, she's done it.

Brilliant, shimmering and wonderfully composed, Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn is one of the best albums of year, and the best album GY!BE have never released.

The production is crystal clear and the soundstage huge, but the true achievement here stems from the huge difficulty in being able to tell where musical mastery has become studio wizardry, as the recording has the vitality and sensitivity of a live recording as well as the flawless sound and power of the synthetic.

This is the kind of beautiful album that Reed knows he can make in his sleep yet seldom does.

Layering his idiosyncratic songs with elements of classical, jazz, Broadway and Disney movie scores, Barnes elevates Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies into the pantheon of seminal new pop masterpieces that test our very concepts of what modern pop should sound like.

Screw Wilco; In Our Gun is sounding very much like the Album of the Year.

Neon Golden is one of the most exquisite electronic albums to come out in ages.

World Without Tears is a complex, multifaceted album that musically highlights Williams's continued blurring of musical genres and poetic lyrics.

Some of the most euphoric, mind-blowingly beautiful music we have heard in years.

Skull Ring is not merely a testament to Iggy's staying power as an artist, but it is also an amazing feat in that it melds the past, present and future of punk/pop onto a single CD.

The best record to come out this year.

Meticulously choppy and frequently free of inherent genre boundaries, it's an askew masterpiece of brains, brawn, heart, and soul.

The three discs represent lightning captured in a bottle.

This fine, fine album (quite possibly the finest of year) signals that the White Stripes have arrived. Hype or no hype, this is a band of significance...

Geogaddi is successful as few other albums are. Whereas many artists and groups tend to released records composed of series of unrelated songs, songs based on single concepts, or songs written and recorded during single studio sessions, Boards of Canada's latest has done something exponentially spectacular and commendable.

The most prolific, beautiful, and vital statement of rock since the Stooges' Raw Power.

I can't stress enough how brilliant this record is, how pertinent and valuable its songs are to our lives.

Original Pirate Material, to put it plainly, is the most vivid evocation of life as a young person in the UK since Blur's Parklife, and yes, even The Clash's first album.

It is an album that can be loved as both an achievement and an experience, a document and a revelation; it is simultaneously a problem to be solved and a spectacle to simply witness.

With this record, Skinner is now in a class all his own; nobody else is making music like this.

Easily one of the best classic re-releases yet.

For fans of a certain kind of music, there is unlikely to be a more significant release in 2006.