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Forget the cartoon characters. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated misfits have always been mainly interesting as a concept, and on much of the third Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, it feels like Albarn and co. are ditching the idea of writing pop songs a cartoon band might front anyway. The one-time Blur frontman has transcended some of the post-modern artifice of this project, and created the group’s most affecting and uniquely inviting album. Joke’s over, Gorillaz are real.

So why make this a Gorillaz album in the first place? It wasn’t meant to be one. Hewlett, the celebrated Tank Girl co-creator, told The Observer last July, “Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters anymore– it’s more like an organization of people doing new projects.” The project was to be called Carousel, presented by, but not performed by, Gorillaz. It never panned out. So Albarn devised Plastic Beach, a loose enviromental-song cycle warning against disposability. It’s a noble conceit, if a transient one.

Along with a typically diverse band of collaborators, Albarn dips into Krautrock, funk, and dubstep, as well as the weary, more melodic music he’s been perfecting for much of last decade– sort of an electronic take on baroque pop. Albarn also sounds more comfortable as a leader here than he has in some time. On the standout “On Melancholy Hill”, he recalls the swooning strains of one of his heroes, Scott Walker. And when he shares or cedes vocals, he has the good sense to turn things over to luminaries like Lou Reed (magnificently dry-throated on “Some Kind of Nature”) and Bobby Womack (good on first single “Stylo”, better on the twangy “Cloud of Unknowing”), while effortlessly integrating them into the sound.

Handling most of the production himself, Albarn has reversed the good fortune of the first two Gorillaz albums. With Dan the Automator on their 2001 self-titled debut and Danger Mouse on 2005’s Demon Days, the group was adept at fusing giddy pop with hip-hop, inserting De La Soul, Del the Funky Homosapien, or a yippy Miho Hatori into some of their best songs (“Clint Eastwood”, “Dirty Harry”, “Feel Good Inc.”, “19-2000”). Those songs crashed in from all places with little mind to sequence or balance, and the result was two fairly unfocused records saved by some decent alt-rap.

On Plastic Beach, things are the other way around. The rap moments here feel almost needlessly idiosyncratic amidst the lusher treatments. Snoop Dogg’s appearance on “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach” is an incongruous introduction to an album that has nothing to do with Snoop Dogg. De La repeat themselves on the faux jingle “Superfast Jellyfish”. Grime MCs Kano and Bashy compellingly play pass-the-baton on “White Flag”, but only after disrupting an absorbing intro and outro by the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. Only on “Sweepstakes” is Mos Def able to assimilate into the production.

Albarn is more natural when working in the kind of ornate Village Green Preservation Society-style pop that dominates Plastic Beach. His collaborations with Little Dragon, “Empire Ants” and “To Binge” are two of the most arresting things here– they’re airy, elusive, and amazingly beautiful. It’s been years since Albarn has written anything as blatantly gorgeous. If he had to work past the animated pretense to rediscover it, all the better. Why be a cartoon when you can be a real person?

Inspectah Deck was never the most commercially viable member of the Wu-Tang Clan, and 1999’s Uncontrolled Substance certainly wasn’t a five-mic classic. But during a worrisome stretch for the Wu-Tang Clan that year, he seemed among the most likely to survive and even thrive if the Clan ceased to exist as a functioning group. Largely self-produced and forgoing any A-listers (U-God doesn’t count), the album harbored no delusions about what it was meant to provide– Deck ripping through one simile-laden verse after another with beats that stayed out his way. But since then, his fall-off has been dramatic, as he’s rattled off increasingly less-noticed solo drops and sounded wholly uninspired on higher-profile Wu-related releases (remember “keep it fresh like Tupperware” from 8 Diagrams?). It was easy to view last year’s “House Nigga” as some sort of nadir, Deck spending five minutes dissing Joe Budden for his Internet fame. This was the guy whom even GZA was scared of following on “Triumph”?

A more positive approach is to see the song as Deck’s attempt to find his place in a galaxy of faded NYC stars; the wise ones realize they’re not competing with Drake. At the outset, Deck seems aware of what could constitute a solid 2010 release on his part. Though the ringside samples of “The Champion” are beyond played, he still lets off rounds of impressively pugilistic internal rhyme. Meanwhile, the Obama-quoting “Born Survivor” continues the low-key revival of Cormega and reveals the image Deck wants to create for himself here, a grind-oriented street soldier not all that far removed from latter-day dead prez albums. They called it “revolutionary but gangsta,” while Inspectah boasts, “Still I’m quick to pop it off/ With the model broads or the Molotovs.”

But as Manifesto runs through its forbidding 20-track playlist, it unsurprisingly falters when it chases Hot 97 spins that are laughably out of reach. The aluminum hand-claps of “We Get Down” evoke a G-Unit beat so generic that even Tony Yayo would take pause, “T.R.U.E.” is a limp rap&B overture for empire states of mind, and “The Big Game” is saddled with a cornball hook of a non-metaphor that can’t fully commit to Auto-Tune. And while the relationship songs of Uncontrolled Substance offered an occasional glimpse behind Deck’s otherwise stoic veneer, “Luv Letter” comes awfully close to Murs at his most needy.

But worse than the blind fumbling for hits is hearing what sounds like an average MC doing an uncanny Inspectah Deck impersonation. It’s disorienting to hear him put such conviction behind subpar get-that-paper rhymes. And while Raekwon, Billy Danze, and Kurupt hold serve, “Brothaz Respect” houses quite possibly the most embarrassingly off-beat Cappadonna guest spot to date (and I’ve heard The Yin and the Yang), and too much of Manifesto is turned over to aggressively average foot soldiers like Fes Taylor and the indefensibly-named Carlton Fisk.

Look, it’s no fun to criticize Deck for reaching for that brass ring. You can’t help but think he realizes this disconnect during “This Is It”, where he counters those who think he’s slipped by boasting of “A million kids thinkin’ he rich/ A million bitches think he the shit.” Sadly, it shows how the dynamic’s been reversed for Inspectah Deck since Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)— you sit there and watch him play himself, knowing he’s lying.

After more than two decades of recording together as Autechre, Sean Booth and Rob Brown can still create the aural equivalent of whiplash if they want to, or showcase a deep knowledge of dance music. The production duo’s energetic 12-hour online radio broadcast from earlier this month– joyfully tweeted about and linked to by fans– was a massive, almost exhausting display of influences and favorites. Floating between Coil and Lord Quas, the mix inspired someone to crowdsource the track list on Google Docs.

Oversteps takes a much quieter approach, focusing on a smaller scale. Coming after 2008’s Quaristice, a varied collection of shorter tracks that originated during live jam sessions, Oversteps leans toward some of the slower, more atmospheric aspects of albums like Amber (minus the metered pulse). After the album’s initial 20 seconds of silence, the opener “r ess” slowly surfaces– cold, distant synths arc overhead while broken, incomplete rhythms clatter and collide– seemingly suggesting that steady beats aren’t the main focus here.

Many tracks, such as “O=0” and “d-sho qub”, do contain propulsive rhythms, and a slow funk and dull handclap seep through “Treale”. But the textures are where things get interesting. Whether it’s from tones floating in space or notes brushing up against each other in quiet but effective dischord, the ambience and atmospheres of Oversteps are haunting. “st epreo” expands and contorts with bass notes that seem bound to the rules of fluid dynamics. “Yuop” steadily builds and crests with ringing, grandiose synths. Sometimes, the lack of propulsion distracts, like on “pt2ph8”. But the overlapping round of notes in “see on see” points to a clear design within the synthetic ether.

Autechre have evoked heavy moods while pushing the possibilities of production technology forward and broadening the vocabulary of electronic music. The famous video for their track “Gantz Graf” suggests as much, that they harnessed the grating sounds of a machine in the middle of a grand mal seizure. Oversteps finds them working in a comparatively less rigid fashion, almost organic compared to something like Confield. Focusing on creating tension and release within their compositions, they’re still incorporating new designs, not merely repackaging the previous products.