Zomby’s excellent recent single with grime touchstone Wiley obviously had an influence on the direction, peppering the collection’s R’n’B cut-ups and dubstep-powered techno. Some pieces here, as on previous selections, are miniatures, or riddles filled with strange edits.

Above all, Los Niños Sin Miedo is an album made to soundtrack youthful exuberance--knowingly dumb in places, chaotically enthusiastic all over.

Anderson seems content to allow the songs to unveil themselves like never before; it’s by far his most band-driven, expansive work.

Despite all the cosmic Englishness on display, Furfour also boasts a deeper side that offsets the saccharine.

Though Acoustic Recordings doesn’t quite offer a parallel discography, it is a reminder of some easily overlooked moments in White’s ever expanding discography.

The result is that each side cancels the other out, rendering it somewhat ineffective.

Their sound is now more stark and metronomic than ever before.

Boys Forever goes some way to making things alright, under or above ground.

My Woman is an odd, somewhat mismatched collection of good and then great songs that could have been more ghostly.

It’s experimental in a kitchen sink (including Chris Isaak) way rather than studied and arty à la Everything Everything. Too often, the results are a bit of a mess.

The feel that McCombs as an “artist at work”, given carte blanche, is prevalent. Dreaded jams are not cut back, verses sprawling and unpruned. And despite this, his usual delicious chaos seems absent.

Patience and resolve are required, for there are truly baffling abstractions. ... Yet when Davies knuckles down and crafts glorious, idiosyncratic pop such as Needle & Thread, the slow-burning Chills and vulnerable, Television Personalities-esque Beauty Queen Of Watts, he and his ad hoc Moles can burrow into the very deepest recesses of your heart.

The pretence of mental struggle can be artifice too and Bugger Me might be nothing more worrying than an eccentric art project. Either way, it’s a fascinating glimpse into an unusual mind.

Delt’s high voice and pretty 60s-harking melodies make even Phase Zero’s fastest-tempo track feel decidedly chilled. It’s not always clear what message these melodies intend to impart as many of them remain clouded in a fog of heady effects.

Sadly, Exploded View’s admirable commitment to spontaneity has resulted in a muggily-recorded LP which fails to match the usual high-quality post-punk output of the esteemed Sacred Bones label.

While Dâm-Funk’s singles and albums have established him as funk’s most forward thinking artist, his DJ sets have concentrated on classic 80s boogie gems. His entry into DJ Kick’s long-running mix series is less rigidly formatted.

He lends his delicate, soulful voice to just one track--a delightful cover of Paul Simon’s American Tune--and the rest of the time is heard on piano. There are several unaccompanied solo pieces, including his own composition, Delores Boyfriend, which is rendered in an ornate style that encapsulates the New Orleans sound.

Neatly produced and performed to sound slick and punchy, Far From Home remains true to the calypso traditions of reportage, wit and joy.

So the album remains a solo project, despite the welcome input from Robyn on Hang Me Out To Dry. The duet hints at how human Metronomy can sound when more life is squirted onto their palette.

There is perhaps a great album here. But amid this 17-track sprawl, it’s hard to find.

Boy King is too one-dimensional to be effective. It’s as if the band have taken their sound to army college to beef it up, but in the process forgot all the books they’d read, the ugly facets that made them such interesting wallflowers.

Overflowing with gnarled pop melodies and stuttering beats, Sweatbox Dynasty may be decidedly askew, but the manipulations and distortions simply add character to what is in fact a very listenable album.

In My Hour is a gorgeous prayer with gently plucked violin, and there are gospel and jazz tinges too, with rock adding bite to tracks like Lorelei. Indeed, one could wish for a little more of the latter, and some songs do sag a little under their own weight, but generally speaking, Carolina is a lovely thing.

As a whole it’s all rather wearing; it’s a space oddity that doesn’t quite have lift-off.

On this latest effort, Edwards conjures echoes of various esteemed mongers of sweet-melodied sadness but never manages to equal their miserable majesty. At the same time, he fails to stamp much of his own individuality on the collection.

Fellow musos will stroke their beards over this uncompromising pop compromise and devotees of the group’s collaborators will dig it up as a surprising bit of deep catalogue.

After the lengthy wait, at over 20 tracks and about an hour long, Wildflower doesn’t skimp on quantity even if it does resemble a pent-up outpouring of everything The Avalanches have completed (or at least legally cleared), rather than a meticulously curated collection.

At times it’s like the aural equivalent of wandering round a sparsely-attended fairground; there are echoes of a pop melody drifting alongside an eerie waltz, or the frenzy of a whispered lyric that cuts through somehow, despite its subtlety.