Porpora has managed an album that is at points a tiny bit distressing, yet it offers sweet refuge from the uneasiness he himself creates.

Noctunes repeatedly feels like a homecoming of sorts. It isn't, however, without its shortcomings: it's a tad prolonged (three tracks here could easily go) and there's a tendency for Beal to get comfortable in his compositions.

With a discipline perhaps learnt from his extensive soundtrack work, Harvey has trimmed away the fat, so that every rhythmic or melodic touch serves a purpose.

There's lots of good guitar playing, but no flashy riffs and absolutely nothing you'd call a solo. It gives Monuments its greatest strength: a self contained identity.

For all that it created and shaped, of course, nothing entirely feels like it's simply planned out and fully structured--elements emerge in the mix, parts quietly but directly drop in, emphases shift from beats to swirling, quiet loops or the reverse.

Wolf is Tyler's album through and through, a mostly diverting document of juvenile delinquency that defines him better than any prior musical effort.

This is a cautious yet dignified return that allows the Reids and their associates to spend even more time together than they’d have expected to create something positive rather than engaging in an orgy of self-destruction.

More richly-nuanced than Mastermind and far trippier than 4-Way Diablo, Last Patrol sees the elder statesmen of stoner rock back at the very top of their game.

The guys at the centre of Dirtmusic have produced a lot of excellent tracks when making this album, and very successfully fused their own music with Malian styles, and truly collaborated rather than merely sampled or copied from native Malian traditions--but there's still the nagging feeling that it might have been even better had they left themselves out of the equation entirely.

Adrift is a simultaneously relaxing and arresting experience. It's headphone music that rewards encapsulated ears and enclosed eyes.

This is not as viscerally thrilling as many of his other releases; it is warm, it is something to quietly contemplate.

Coming Out Of The Fog is an album of light and shade and one that benefits more from what's not in it than is.

What it proves to be is an exhilarating, uneven, thought-provoking, over-egged, over-long, lucid, barnstorming, soul-infused hip-hop album of a type that, as I may have mentioned once or twice or five times, you just don't get any more. Except, of course, you do, and here it is.

Welcome to Condale is a refreshingly ambitious, variegated take on the 80s both conceptually and in its execution.

By embracing its influences with as much lithe confidence as it embraces the idea of endings, Woman's Hour avoid sounding derivative by making pop music that looks you in the eye. If you meet their gaze, you won't find any tears, but you will find understanding.

The arrangements are simple, often pretty ... but mostly they serve to support the delivery of some of Finn's most evocative and well observed lyrics.

His vision continues to be as expansive and eccentric as usual.

TUTTI feels retrospective in the sense that Cosey Fanni Tutti doesn't introduce anything strikingly unfamiliar to her sonic palette here, with its ambient closing tracks a retread back to Time To Tell. TUTTI though is essential in that it marks Cosey Fanni Tutti as the auteur of her own sound world, as well as being a strong facilitator, artist and collaborator.

An enticing, at times uncomfortable and intoxicating record.

Overall, this is a rewarding and captivating body of work. The Waves Pt.1 is a testament to Kele Okereke’s adaptability as an artist.

As well as command of the overall mood, Lipstate always demonstrates a steely command of her influences. But these mini homages don't swamp her sound--quite the reverse.

On The House, Maine is vulnerable, honest and strong--he soars on this, his best album yet.

This album's great strength lies in the rearguard action its brittleness mounts against kitsch accounts of authenticity.

Part of the potency in this music comes from the confusion it induces, the fascination only intensified by bewilderment. But it's extraordinarily elegant, too.

These songs will do very nicely, thanks, as reassurance that Gallagher can still deliver evocative and memorable tunes.

What all the songs on News From Nowhere have in common is a baffling, mystical elegance, both independently and, to an even greater extent, within the flow of the record.

Although it feels they've truly thrown the kitchen sink and their full repertoire of synth syncopation at it this time, it's truly a thrilling and spine chilling ride, one that leaves your bones shaken to the core.

Musique de France isn’t an indiscriminate smash and grab of appropriation, it’s a wonderfully organic and experimental and occasionally psychedelic record that will take you to interesting places if you’ll let it.