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 theme of pining which was thread throughout her debut mixtape Cut 4 Me is still present here, but more pointed and poetic this time around. Each song beams with growth.

Honeymoon is by far Del Rey’s most beautifully made and cohesive album.

Ultimately, Beauty Behind the Madness is a heftier House of Balloons. Its weight is carried in the access to better production and drugs, and what the album truly accomplishes is proving that The Weeknd has never been wretched.

DS2 is a relentless, dud-free hour that adds in most of his recent highlights to complete the story of his last year.

Thundercat sprung The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam on us unexpectedly, but in its surprise and brevity is the awakening of his voice.

At.Long.Last.A$AP is an unfocused, overlong slog of an album.

Prurient’s masterpiece.... Frozen Niagara Falls is also one of Prurient’s most accessible works, with Fernow’s arrangements constantly pulling you along.

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.

This is a Chinese whispers record, one that has been passed through enough cultural and aesthetic filters as to make it utterly meaningless.

Calling the album “ambitious” doesn’t capture the order of magnitude with which Lamar has expanded his scope, as he moves from the singular to the plural without ever straying from the personal.

13 Moons holds a broader appeal than some of his more abstract or challenging LPs. That said, there’s nothing particularly straightforward about the album.

This honest emotional core is something that Vincent has always put into his music, but rarely has it felt quite so effortless as it does here. It’s the kind of album you could imagine non-house and techno fans getting behind quite easily, and shows that his appeal shouldn’t just be limited to vinyl collectors.

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

It’s Too Late is a woozy, scattershot thing--Late Night Drake, if you will.

If Goldenheart was a monumental but monolithic edifice of an album, Blackheart is a shape-shifting house of mirrors in permanent flux, light where its predecessor was heavy, welcoming instead of forbidding.

James never really follows it through.

Björk’s most fully realised, accessible record in years.

Panda Bear’s fourth full-length is a mature album of peace and reckoning, one that weaves ghostly textures, plumbs watery depths, but ultimately happens on something comforting and tranquil.

The Pinkprint is ultimately Nicki’s most cohesive project.

Its complex web of emotion and sound make for one of the most confounding yet gripping albums made in 2014; while it isn’t without its flaws, it captures the zeitgeist in a way that few other albums have managed this year, and has both revelers and detractors speaking passionately.

In Visa, Ripatti has constructed an album evocative of one extremely specific place--and it’s a place which couldn’t have been accessed by anybody but him.

Drums are present, but they often function as little more than pensive timekeepers. All the better to frame those tunes – artful, delicate things, rarely saying more or less than they need to.

As its title suggests, Quixotism’s narrative arc is obscure, and as such the album contains no real highlights or low points; instead, each part maintains a discrete identity of its own, serving both as groundwork for each subsequent part and the basis for its counterpoint.

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.

Even if his chops as a producer aren’t in question, the writing on Xen is too patchy to fully realise Ghersi’s ambitions. Still, it’s hardly lacking in ideas.

Ruins is one of her finest works, full to the brim with emotion in spite of the aching space at its heart.

As an artistic step forward, Les Sins certainly registers.