You know those kids on campus who hate everything? Who delight in looking down their noses - when they can manage to see past their oh-so-artfully constructed fringes - at any band who more than three people listen to? You want to punch them, right? Well, hold your über-violent horses, for help is at hand.

Below is a list of the top ten albums that even the most snootily elitist art-rock hipster should have been listening to in halls over the last year. If you're quick, you'll be able to catch up on all the ones you haven't heard yet in time for the New Year, at which point you can casually drop a few names into conversation and BAM!, instant musical credibility and newfound respect from your painfully cool colleagues will be yours.

Even better, if they haven't been listening to them and don't know what you're talking about, you win - their elitist crown falls satisfyingly into your lap and you are the new king of music snobbery around uni. Huzzah! So, without further ado and in no particular order, I commend to you: The Best of 2007.

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Nothing less than a masterpiece, the second album from DFA records supremo James Murphy is topping best-of lists up and down the land at the moment - and with good reason. A glorious combination of poignancy and euphoria that only a 30-something seen-it-all-before New Yorker could conjure up, Sound of Silver is quite simply an electronic tour de force. And in 'All My Friends' and 'Someone Great' it contains two of the best songs to feature on any album of any genre this year, let alone one nominally described as 'dance'.

Battles - Mirrored

Like an neon and aluminium octopus, Battles' music grabs you with its gleaming tentacles and by the time the pounding glam rock beats of signature track 'Atlas' have wrapped around your brain, there's no escape. A mixture of technical guitar virtuosity, other-worldy Smurf-like vocals and complex yet irresistible rhythms, Mirrored was the surprise cross-over hit of the year. Math-rock has never been so cool, nor, somehow, so popular.

Maps - We Can Create

That much-mocked 1990s indie punch-bag 'shoegaze' has made something of a comeback this year, with Northampton's James Chapman aka Maps at its forefront. His Mercury-nominated debut is a beautifully lucid bedroom-constructed dream of an album. Sweeping waves of guitars and electronic beats contrast gorgeously with Chapman's barely-there hushed vocals. Lead single 'It Will Find You' was most critics' pick, but it is the simultaneous hopefulness and desolation of 'Elouise' that is the real highlight.

Gruff Rhys - Candylion

While Super Furry Animals' latest effort 'Hey Venus!' was yet another step in their sad descent into MOR mediocrity, lead Furry Gruff Rhys experienced no such difficulties with his second solo album. Who else could combine Spanish guitar work with cutting political comment and a King Arthur obsession, while still managing to include a 15 minute acoustic epic describing the dilemma of a bomb disposal expert named Skylon trapped on a doomed plane with an actress he despises? Now if only he would wrest back sole writing responsibility for the next SFA album...

Deerhunter - Cryptograms

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