On paper Vapor City looked like Stewart’s descent into a sump of his own pompousness; in reality it’s anything but.

Ultimately the genius of Kiss Land‘s production lies in its ability to literalise Tesfaye’s fractured state of mind.

It may well appeal to those content with downtime after more forthright records. As an album, however, Evelyn’s good mood sits somewhere between decisive and whimsical.

R Plus Seven feels isolated and eerily post-human. Musically it may be Oneohtrix Point Never’s most accessible work yet, but the emotional pull it exerts is minimal.

Like much of the best music of recent times, Colonial Patterns sits outside of chronology, peering fascinatedly in.

It makes for an excellent debut in whatever style you want to call it.

MGMT is by some margin the New Yorker’s most intuitive, sincere and naturalistic record. The bad news is that it’s not at all musically interesting.

It just is: mindless, unfathomable--a little like the digital fracas of our online lives.

Although imperfect, The Electric Lady is a huge statement.

Considering the trio are relative newcomers to dance music, the programming throughout Factory Floor is acutely deft. Elegant, in fact; so much so that the sound can comfortably be described as chic.

Flop moments aside though, Rebellious Soul ticks the prerequisite boxes of classic r’n'b: confessional tales of love, loss and longing sung with passion and sincerity.

Hesitation Marks follows the musical lineage that began with The Fragile, but it surpasses recent NIN albums thanks to a deeply personal thematic core and a willingness to push the songwriting into territory that is often dancier and poppier than listeners have come to expect from the band.

Whether or not an attempt to be faithful to the original recordings (which kind of defeats the purpose), his compositions are, while lyrical, touching and impressively accomplished, fairly middle of the road.

No Better Time Than Now is both musically rich and emotionally open, and it’ll be interesting to see where Shigeto takes his sound next.

While the sense of humor that separates him from someone like Gucci Mane emerges at times, the brief grins are not quite enough to distract from the relentless, repetitive tropes that have come to define Juicy’s (and the rest of the rap game’s) lyrics over the past few years.

As an exhilarating listen and the perfect reflection of Black Jazz Records’ singular musicians, Black Jazz Signature is a record you will probably keep and return to for life.

Aerotropolis manages to navigate its concept without being crushed by the weight of it, and is a thoroughly enjoyable LP that--perhaps like Ikonika herself--will only mature with time.

The pacing is tentative, the tone one of suppressed pain, and the FX custom-designed to denote ‘meaningfulness’ or emotional sensitivity--all rustic organ sounds and tinkling guitar notes.

If Dagger Paths was a revelation, Engravings is a refinement, long to arrive but worth the wait.

Doris is miles ahead of 2010’s Earl, and on it, Earl surpasses nearly all of his contemporaries (save perhaps “King of New York” Kendrick Lamar, who is comparatively a grizzled veteran at 26).

Trap Lord’s such a tightly bound listen, however, that it jars when it misses the mark.

Minor issues like that [decision to release Stranger Than Fiction as a hybrid album/mixtape led to some questionable choices] make Stranger Than Fiction very good rather than great, but Gates hasn’t sacrificed any of the characteristics that garnered all this recent attention.

Holter may write stunning pop-tinged songs, but she’s an experimental artist through and through.

Nepenthe is more ambitious than its predecessors, more varied in style and execution and sonically richer.

Blue Gardens something a bit more sonically vivid is touched upon in ‘At Sea’, when acoustic percussion samples and a less stable synth harmonium shiver and waver in a manner that subtly detaches the track from everything that preceded it.

While the new forms forged from the genre manipulation here begets novelty and, yeah, interesting music, ultimately you’re left feeling unfulfilled.... In the end, though, it’s hard to begrudge adventurousness, especially when the end product is this pleasing.

Though the songs on Swisher are occasionally a little too long--even the shortest is more than five minutes, and ‘Andrew’ nearly 10--they’re mostly dynamic and varied enough that boredom never really has the chance to set in.

Body Music lacks both the pace and range required to sustain repeated listens, and rests too heavily on one--and even two-year old singles to bolster its overall quality.