There’s just enough instrumentation to add depth and texture to Vince’s characteristically excellent delivery, but the rapper still stands front and centre, allowing a less bombastic tone to shine. ... If you arrive looking for the hooks of ‘Norf Norf’ or the explosive chemistry of ‘BagBak’ you could be leaving half empty-handed. But if you’re here for Vince Staples, you might just see more of him than ever.

It’s the sound of meeting someone for the first time, pulses racing, love rising up --that’s not best expressed in pure formula. Caribou has successfully managed to see past sense, instead opting with an instinct that tends to produce dazzling results.

It might not hit with the sit-up-and-listen immediacy of previous albums, but make no mistake, Currents is just as accomplished.

The music never explodes into complete madness, but rather bubbles along slowly, suggesting that the violence is mere moments away. ... Horror fans take note. This is how you create terror.

As on her previous albums, what makes Eleanor’s songwriting feel magical are the stories she tells and the tiny details she drops in.

From start to finish, Julia has created a world entirely of her own - one which revels in representing her with unflinching honesty using a delicately-woven soundscape. Hers is a world where solace and solidarity are steeped into every brick.

‘Immunity’ was a shoulder to cry on, a promise that it will all be okay, eventually. ‘Sling’ feels like that “eventually” coming true.

On the likes of ‘Enough,’ the layers of electronica and muffled beats become oddly oppressive, competing against her--and winning the battle. It’s in moments like this where Take Me Apart proves to be frustrating. When it’s at its best though, it’s an album that invites the listener to do just what its title invites.

‘songs’ feels like unearthing an old puzzle a piece at a time. ‘instrumentals’, while texturally the same, focuses on pure ambience – the unspecific title is far more deserving. If anything, this feels more like a companion piece, a window into that cabin rather than its own separate record. If you wish you had been there, this is the best way to feel like you were.

‘Suddenly’ is a treat and continues Caribou's knack of releasing albums that are both accessible and explorative.

More than three decades on from the day the pair first met in an electronics shop on the King's Road the Pet Shop Boys still manage to pack more ideas in an album than many others do in a thirty year career.

It’s when they come together on closer ‘Ketchum, ID’, an ode to the state of Idaho and the detachment of constant touring, that boygenius really comes into its own and sees the project become more than the sum of its parts.

Full of heart and full of ideas, it’s big, clever and brilliantly odd.

With its high concepts and bold instrumentals the album feels a little heavy at times, but you really can’t fault its ambition.

It’s an honest and visceral look into more painful moments that come with processing past pain.

A witty, succinct debut album.

‘CrazyMad, For Me’ is a triumphant whirlwind of pain and self-preservation, which reveals more of itself with every listen.

It’s simultaneously euphoric and angsty.

This one does find itself running out of steam a little towards its conclusion without enough robust new ideas. For the most part, though, this bold experiment pays off, and Fucked Up can be admired for their ambition as much as they can for their enviable productivity.

It was already clear from his near-decade of huge DJ sets around the world, but this album cements Daniel Avery as one of the best.

By the album’s end - thanks, in part, to the droning noise and scuffed beats on closer ‘Dream Dollar’ - there’s a definite sense of the walls closing in. Here the distance Kim Gordon has forged, both across the album and throughout her career, is falling away - and the gap between music and art seems smaller than ever.

While Freedom’s Goblin doesn’t exactly blow the doors off of his usual sound, it’s a solid addition to the canon that rattles between all corners of this self-made niche.

A unique record that puts a contemporary spin on an era that modern music forgot.

It serves us like a well-bound photo album which we can flick through and see snapshots of the band at certain moments in their short, yet successful, life so far.

This is a collection of tracks that see the potent, unafraid icon that is Carter return to the forefront of British punk and he’s using it as an opportunity to really say something.

This is an album which very much belongs in 2016, and an expectedly assured debut from a band who are by no means redefining the sound of New York City rock ‘n’ roll, but are laying claim to being worthy flag bearers of it going forward.

Packed full of genius--with a few dips that promised more--for the most part, this does play a little like a Greatest Hits. An impressive achievement from such a new band.

A record that’s an unapologetic, brilliant melting pot like little else.