A radiant and eminently danceable album, it’s a necessary salve to put on this year.

What the album lacks in genuine surprises--it features fewer floor-filling basslines than its makers’ previous LP ‘proper’, 2010’s dance-designed ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’--it more than makes up for in comprehensive consistency.

It’s less Nick Drake-y than Lay’s last effort, and it feels more self-assured and hopeful.

The anthems are still here, rest assured; they’re less obvious, but definitely no less compelling.

The album is full of anticipation. At times it’s ugly and overblown. But it’s a collective vision, one that reflects back on our own inputs into the dataset as well as at our folk stories of survival and resistance.

An arresting, astonishing experience, Schlagenheim is a vital, stunning, puzzling album, one that demands to be heard.

Front Row Seat To Earth strongly standing as one of the year's most affecting and luscious releases.

’Ignatius’ is the album the hip-hop scene didn’t know it needed, the raw voice and understanding Jadakiss delivers here offers much-needed respite from the shallow music we seem to be swamped in at the moment. What a way to make a comeback.

Injury Reserve’s new album is a truly dystopian impression of despair, smashing together polar opposite genres to create something wholly new.

Although 'Elephant In The Room' is not quite as diverse as his 2018 effort 'Pieces Of A Man' or as fresh as his breakout tape 'Wave[s]', there's a lot to love about the album, and it's likely to one that ages gracefully over time.

This is a messy, distracted record for messy, distracted times. Its creator has produced something studiously imperfect, a cracked vase that’s beauty you can’t help but admire while still wishing you could see it perfect and whole.

Like acid (which, again, he never touched) this record is illuminating, often inaccessible, often scary and most people would hate it. But it's still one hell of a trip.

The album tells its own superbly structured story, bathing in synthesis and heavily grounded in the contexts of lockdown, while allowing these very contexts to steer the process beyond angst and towards a utopian catharsis.

Freed from expectation, they can gleefully channel the melodic sheen of the Eighties without veering into needy bombast. There seems to be some tension at the heart of the band’s dynamic right now, but it has inspired a meticulous, strident and euphoric sounding record.

If you love the ambiguous crossover between half-step London sounds and crushed and warped 4/4 peddled by the likes of Martyn, Burial or Joy Orbison, then the love in you will find this album.

‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’, like most of their projects, has something for everyone, but this time does stay in one lane – and that’s for the better.

When you listen to the albums back-to-back you get a better idea of who Autechre are and how they see the world. Yes, it is a wonderful place full of natural beauty and hope, but it is also dank and skittering full of people who only care about their self- interest and petty squabbles. Both of which Autechre have captured in exquisite detail.

More Waitrose advert than classic Wrigley’s; the Black Keys’ raw power’s been polished. Some things are meant to stay rough around the edges.

Whilst the initial surprise felt on the original ‘Saturation’ may have subsided, the erratic excitement and experimentation on that album has been executed more confidently on each subsequent chapter. The LA group are everything progressive rap music should be; forward thinking, energetic and perhaps most importantly, exciting.

If you’re looking for an album to brighten your day, come enter the world of CHAI.

‘SIGN’ is an album that doesn’t just get under your skin, but in your head. If you give it enough time it will own, you and you will feel better for it. Autechre have returned and the wait was definitely worth it.

The criss-crossing sounds better than ever, and is everything you’d want from a FaltyDL opus.

Overall, the album--filled with as much theatrical swagger as great music--is much more than just a remake as Ferry’s baritone vocals and inventive arrangements make for an album that invokes a lot more than nostalgia; with the ability to attract new fans as well as hold the old.

Blood is a work that speaks for itself, an album that’s boundless, and restlessly pursues the ideas of its creator.

Picking up exactly where they left off, The Raconteurs’ denim-clad early ‘70s reference points are in check, delivered in gleeful, exuberant, electrifying fashion.

‘Fulton’ and ‘Morning River’ are early highlights, while ‘Circuit Rider’ seems to exude the characteristics of the album’s Los Angeles setting. Closing with the reflective ‘Ever Feel That Way’, Steve Gunn marvels with the lightest of touches.

With its mixture of wonky psych, fiery funk, and jazzy jams, this may stand as the label's most eclectic and enjoyable compilation of the year. If you love to groove, look no further than this set of scorching songs to keep you moving during the dark, cold nights.

A glittering gem amongst recent releases, ‘IRL’ sees Mahalia defining herself as a long-standing name within British RnB.