Savane stands out both as Ali Farka Touré’s masterpiece, and as one of contemporary African music’s finest achievements to date.

By trimming excess fat (read: R’n’B choruses), Madvilliany keeps a sense of spontaneity, cutting off unexpectedly and never allowing anything to get stale.

This is no cynical cash-in; every new track adds gestalt to an album which in its original incarnation was pretty damn great to begin with.

Not every classic song from the era is here, but yes, if you do choose to own only one Tropicália disc, then this should be the one.

Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.

Most of Boy in Da Corner's most compelling moments come from this uneasy interaction between irrational youth and ultra-rational mechanized society.

From its opening bars of stop/start low end, to the motivational tape samples, to the aforementioned multi-tracking, Elephant just screams and begs to be viewed as a departure from the Stripes’ well-known approach. The problem is that in between all this commotion lie the same vintage jams that the group has trafficked in for years.

Labor Days is a wonderfully complex piece of work.

You could of course, if you like, rip the best tracks from each album and burn them together into some kind of RIAA-baiting SuperLoveBoxxx CDR that creams all opposition with its x-ray vision, amazing strength and ability to leap multiple genres in a single bound, but that would be missing the point.

Mike Skinner’s taken a big risk in doing this, but he’s found the bizarre and beautiful meeting point of The Specials, Danny Rampling and Serge Gainsbourg. A Grand Don’t Come For Free is a remarkable record.

From Here We Go Sublime may not be an evolution for Willner, but it’s a singular distillation of his talents into one album. Mixing gauzy shoegaze, slippery ambient loops, and two-cheeks-on-the-floor bass drum bounce, the Field offers an idyllic work of startling novelty, and perhaps ‘techno’’s most widely appreciable offering in years.

It's a bit of Michigan redux, which works because it's so uniquely Stevens and so uniquely beautiful.

It’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.

It's hard to argue with any album that possesses the virtues Z does: James' voice, one of the most astonishing instruments in rock; a band who, turnover notwithstanding, play like they've been doing this for decades; a sense of delight that often eludes young men with guitars; and songs that let you use the descriptor “rocks” without fear or shame.

You may not get to sing along, but this is not ambient music; it is immersive and involving.

The Notwist are obviously talented enough to keep me guessing if they wanted to. They just don't. They are quite happy making simple pop songs, albeit with complex ingredients.

It’s an intriguing and thoughtful and occasionally lively record, but it’s not the rollicking, randy good time some folks would lead you to believe.

There seem to be enough ideas, stories, counter-melodies and references here for three albums worth of material - if for that reason alone, Hobo Sapiens ought to be one of the avant-pop templates for years to come.

Hayes’ performance on this album is so stellar one wonders why others don’t shoot this high.

There isn’t a single mis-step on Last Exit.

Queens Of The Stone Age are the greatest heavy rock band on the face of the planet and soon everyone will know it.

The genius of Wearemonster is that Mueller takes the clarity and mobility of house and synergizes it with the overabundance of melodies, textures, theories, and arrangement schemes found in IDM.

Fury is a twelve step sequence of poisonous, caustic, and lithe rap.

The quality level is almost inhumanly high, and the range of the tracks here gives you a better idea of what the band is like than any of their individual albums.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1414" TARGET="_blank">All the elements of timelessness are there, but the songs just don&#146;t seem to live beyond the last note. </A> [score=73] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1415" TARGET="_blank">The Shins&#146; music has grown by leaps and bounds. </A> [score=90]

The compressed, cleaned-up ferocity of Hypermagic Mountain is a leap of refinement in every way, a sign that the band, while lushly unripe, is ripening gracefully.

He has captured a sound that few current artists challenge, and none have mastered to such a degree. Quite simply, Ta det Lugnt is one of the best releases of this year.

TV on the Radio have crafted a work of immense, cataclysmic, almost overwhelming power and righteous fire.