It’s really, really beautiful--beauty as it should be in music: something precious, elusive and exotic, or indeterminate, a little sad and more than a little elegant.

Rather than a portrait of Fuck Buttons’ time in the studio, Slow Focus is a hovering meditation on a distant, eerie landscape; a panorama with a sustained, totalising gaze that figures an expanse in perpetual decay and dis-ease.

With a few more such thoughtfully crafted moments The Big Dream might have been an entirely adequate sidenote in Lynch’s ever-growing oeuvre. As it stands, it is barely that.

Witchhouse appears unable to develop far beyond its basic origins, but Dexter instead hones, and in the process has produced something of a genre zenith--making slow-moving, essentially eventless music persistently compelling. No mean feat.

[Ciara sounds] blissfully triumphant and uncomplicated on a record from start to finish.

Magna Carta’s a mess, and not even an entertaining one--it’s simply a dull record by someone who’s in deep danger of going down as a dull human being.

Run the Jewels is savage and witty, rich in gritty truths and genuinely affecting wisdom. It may not be the best thing either artist has done, but fans of both will still find plenty to love.

For Years is very well made, especially for a debut, and has a lot of emotion--but it also feels applied to an existing context, and one that has dated quickly.

Considering her career so far, this is super cool, contemporary grown-up R&B that shows just how far Rowland has come.

If someone compiles their favourite 12 tracks from it, they may well have their album of the year, but in its current state With Love is pretty far from a classic.

If anything, they illuminate an increasingly formulaic approach that, in its attempt to express extremes of human emotion, ends up saying not very much at all.

This is Kanye’s record: a cornucopia of concepts and collaborators reduced to a singular vision. That vision is what makes Yeezus stand out as one of Kanye’s finest moments.

For all this record’s gesturing towards pop directness, it is sorely lacking in impact and in memorability.

A tedious album from an otherwise great talent.

It’s fair to say that Modern Worship is the fullest yet realisation of its creator’s distinctive vision, and it’s a rewarding album--but not quite a stunning one.

Sandison and Eoin have produced an album that, in spite of its considerable runtime, is genuinely absorbing and convincing in its narrative sweep.

As a portrait of a city, and a person, Acid Rap is about as good--and as honest--as they come.

It’s a shame that their debut album is so short on variety and surprises, and doesn’t capture the imagination past a couple of listens.

So, while ...Like Clockwork doesn’t have that many feel good hits of the summer, there are plenty of lullabies to paralyze.

It’s bleak and bittersweet, and it’s very well done.

By blending the conceptual drive of Post-Foetus and the organic songwriting of Baths, Wiesenfeld has delivered on the promise of Cerulean and found his place among contemporaneous pop experimenters like Grimes and Autre Ne Veut.

[IV Play revisits] Nash’s usual tropes through a more varied sound palette that demonstrates a willingness to experiment and, at rare and glorious points, a raw sense of urgency fuelled by his bitterness.

Lip Lock is exactly the kind of pop album that rappers set on crossover success should be making.

A creative leap forward doesn’t always have to mean changing your entire identity, and few albums show that as lucidly as The Weighing of the Heart.

Legacy’s most obviously rewarding moments, then, are when Space pushes this alien thrill to its limit.

Their obvious musical talent and distinctive voice make Silence Yourself an uncompromising and very enjoyable paean to individual agency.

This album is as life-affirming a piece of music as anything else you’ll hear this year: there’s nothing more uplifting than a good band getting better.

The result is unexpected; thick, major label-backed, acoustically driven independent pop songs with a folkish tinge, laced with soft electronics and David Bryne-like vocals. BBC Radio 2 beckons.