Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83

Above all else, it's the best M83 record yet.

It shows an artist at the top of his songwriting game, but perhaps without the thick and palatable sense of cohesion definitive and prevalent on past releases.

It’s a sweeping, expansive album, that covers a lot of ground and leaves the listener satisfied.

Although Dreaming sports slower, more introspective ballads, there’s also a pantry’s worth of interstellar jams, chock full of sounds you’ve probably never heard before.

It possesses some of M83's most varied material to date, yet still functions as a coherent body of work.

For an album of such impressive scale and nanoscopic attention to detail, Dreams leaves a surprisingly light impression.

Here the impulse is more towards the portentous, Fairlight-raddled, heart-on-sleeve vacuity of mainstream Eighties transatlantic rock-lite than the soaring-indie stylings of Saturdays

Easily boasted the best single of 2011, and while much of the album was admirable in scope and contained gorgeous hints of nostalgia, other tracks went weirdly over-the-top with the throwback (TOO MUCH wailing alto sax!)...and please don't get me started on the Child Doing Spoken Word / Tripping / Playing With a Bullfrog 'song.'

euphoric sounding expansive music, some lovely moments but some awful and pointless tracks too