The nature of this very premise could so easily have made for a messy and confused effort, but Africane 808 somehow manage to make a cohesive piece of work out of so many conflicting elements.

Perhaps pushing their relentless extremity of the music is not the best way forward: there’s a more nuanced, skilled band lurking in here and it will be interesting to see to what extent they are allowed to emerge.

With Many Colours, Tan proves that whatever happened over the past decade which meant we didn’t get any music from him, it only made Many Colours a stronger, and ultimately a more enjoyable record.

It’s not so much sidestepped the perils of the second album as trampled them, taking the sound that won the band all those packed festival tents and driving it forward, matted and bloodied like Miles Teller at the end of Whiplash, no longer weeping and withdrawn but pulsing and alive. And it’s genuinely exciting to hear.

The result is a more sober work than the group anticipated--sad, even (their words)--but an unexpectedly lovely one for being just so.

Blackstar sees him and his band nail a haunting mood.

This is a fine debut album.

Wells’s piano is still the most dominant instrument on display, and Moffat is still crafting haunting tales of ageing regret and frustration. There is, however, something bizarrely hopeful about The Most Important Place in the World at times.

The tracks themselves work if you can get past the contrast. That might even be what makes you love it rather than hate it. The problem is that if you’re going to have a deep concept behind your pop tracks then it really needs to be stronger or more current than something that has gone before.

This is a beyond-commendable comeback, so much better than it probably has any right to be.

These are strong songs. This is a coherent, mature piece of work.

A set of incredibly well put together takes on all of your favourite nursery rhymes.

Chorus serves to highlight what a vital band Lush were. Understated and underrated yet undeniably consistent throughout their tenure. And with new material set to surface next spring, their story hasn't reached its conclusion yet.

The head feels weighed down with unresolved torment, the smile forced and awkward, the colours garish and messily-applied.

There’s no doubt that Few More Days To Go is an intriguing record by a very promising band--but it also feels like this is just a taste of their true power.

Considered as a retelling of McCombs’s career thus far, A Folk Set Apart mostly agrees with the original tale, but adds some new aesthetic information.

Other than the production, Tell Me I’m Pretty sits very much in the same league as Melophobia--a confident, eclectic rock record with heaps of personality and charm.

Charm aside, it's an album by a cat.

Kannon, like Terrestrials, says its three-section piece in under 40 minutes, but is a more intense, punishing affair.

On Life, Friel doesn’t venture too far from his own post, but does prove himself yet again as more than a mere dial-twiddler, a virtual dungeon master that plots campaigns with sound instead of words.

In all, Rivers and Streams confirms that Melnyk is quite right to make the big claims of himself which he does.

This album suggests that there’s gas in the tank yet, especially when such pondering is matched to the spiky, inventive instrumentation on display.

Making Time has some really great tracks, but maybe with a little more time spent on a few less ideas it could perhaps have been a great album.

There’s nothing tacky or horrendous or artificial about It’s a Holiday Soul Party at all; it’s simply the sound of a band who understand all of these things, and have made a holiday soul party of an album in order to celebrate them.

Yes, Dark Sky Island’s mix of Irish folk, choral music, pianos, synths and vocals with more layers than a 50 foot gobstopper; but the music of Enya is impervious to outside influences: if she didn’t continue to make it, then nobody else would.

Adele’s repetition is anchored further by some of the least dynamic work of her career. There’s nothing here to rival the playful malice of ‘Rumour Has It’ or the instant hit of ‘Rolling In The Deep’.

Granted, there are a couple of by-numbers moments that elongate Pure Mood by a couple of songs too many but such instances of self-indulgence are kept to a minimum, and ultimately the album becomes much more rewarding as a result.

Delirum has the feel of a late-period Britney album, where production is prized above personality.

One of the most illuminating facets of The Cutting Edge is what an unequivocal testament it is, both to the layered ingenuity of the session musicians and Dylan’s self-ordained composing pursuits.

At times the sheer weirdness and creepiness of the record can be a bit much, but that’s also what makes CocoRosie so great.

Listening to Beings though makes one thing abundantly clear: Lanterns on the Lake are one of Britain's most crucial bands of the present moment.

Of course it’s not perfect, but it revels in that deficiency and harnesses aggression via discomfort to maybe eventually find peace. That amounts to a collection truly worth clutching tight.

There’s no slack on the album--from the starting gate to the finish line, Chorusgirl bristle with static and nerves.

In its ability to appeal to so many listeners, while being as thrilling on its first spin as it is on its fifteenth, Art Angels is likely to emerge from 2015 as one of the most universally adored albums of the year.

Instead of making a One Direction farewell album, they made a Take That comeback album.

The standout pieces are the lengthier ones. Perhaps, if you are already aware of her work on Ceremony, then The Miraculous will not be a surprise to you. But if you have not, then it may well be a complete revelation.

Ultimately, Cheatahs haven't just upped the ante with Mythologies, they've created one of this year's most definitive albums and probably increased their own burden of expectation tenfold.

If viewed as a unique, and relatively unmediated collection of experimental tracks rather than an album, Collaborative Works is an enchanting listen. What it lacks in structural polish, it makes up for in quality.

Four-and-a-half decades on from the original band’s formation, Lynne’s voice is as warm and comforting as ever, his ear for a hook still sharp and his production is as shiny and gorgeous as a celebrity model’s hair from a shampoo advert. But still, there’s something missing.

This reinterpretation of Vulnicura is a success that also surprises, given the simplicity of the premise. This is both a joy to listen to and a chance to focus on Björk’s string arrangements and the frustration contained therein.

Highly Deadly Black Tarantula is, then, not quite the beast that its title suggests. It’s more elusive than that.

Seems Unfair not only trumps No One's Coming for Us lyrically, but musically too. Yes the comparisons for Waxahatchee are still there, but now Jones feels more comfortable and confident with his style of song writing and is starting to come into his own.

Florence isn’t Hayman’s most ambitious or thrilling work ever, but it’s not supposed to be. A moment’s rest can work wonders on a tired soul.

This 1989 may work wonderfully on its own terms (if Adams had written this himself it would be his best album) but its real strength is in highlighting Swift’s immaculate writing for those of us whose relationship to the original is intellectual rather than instinctive.

By providing himself with a narrow set of parameters, he’s discovering what he’s capable of in a less-than-optimal creative environment, and if Intermission is anything to go by, a protracted lay-off from Ghostly releases whilst he pursues other avenues would be a real shame--nobody’s capturing that midnight mood quite like Shigeto at the minute.

Each song on Adult is smashed into, torn apart and then scattered like feathers from a pillow. And there is nothing, nothing, better than hearing guitars being pummelled on a double down-stroke as a bass line tries frantically to keep up on sixteenths.

Weird, wonderful and moderately imposing.

The great strength of El Vy, by contrast, is that it brings forth both members’ strengths to create something that sounds like a proper polished debut from a 'real' band.

Many Moons then, proves that the 'bad front-man solo project' curse isn’t particularly watertight. En-debut, Martin Courtney comes through with a record that’s as good as any he’s made with his band.

This is the best album Garvey has worked on since The Seldom Seen Kid.

The Chills’ most compelling album yet.

It’s more that as a whole, Bizarster just feels a bit lazy and thrown together, and fails to have any real continuity which can hold your attention for the hour that it plays out.

Central Belters isn’t so much a practical collection of music, more a monument to an inspirational career.

Ephemeral, blissful, ambient.... It’s also a mess. But it chooses to be a mess. It tries to be a mess that’s smoothed over and therein genius should reside. But it hasn’t done that. Instead all that is presented is two overlong tracks of snippets of stuff.

The musicality on Pylon remains suitably elastic.

Radio Static High makes a perfect counterpart to In Black and Gold.

Not only a deftly realised, enchanting meditation on time and its vagaries, the record is effectively a celebration of what we, as time’s denizens, are able to accomplish within it.... Divers is a colossal achievement.

The real strength of the record comes in giving you that reason to come back to Nobody Wants To Be Here and Nobody Wants To Leave in a way that provides something new. If you loved that album, you’ll love this and probably prefer the original.

With its unfurled imaginativeness, Vega INTL. Night School is unimaginatively the album you would expect from Neon Indian by now--one that comfortably and sublimely manages to work inside and outside of the expectations set by their previous work.

It’s fun, bizarre and slightly derivative all rolled into one package and there aren’t many bands around in 2015 that could achieve that feat.

Ever changing and insightful, Arms Around A Vision never becomes staid or complacent.

Fading Frontier is another superlative achievement from a band who are, unfailingly, one of life’s great mysteries.

There’s enough growth here to accept the occasional stumble. Revival, like ‘Good For You’, is a damn fine, hook-laden surprise. Selena Gomez has found a voice worth paying serious attention to.

If you're not interested in music that makes you feel reflective then perhaps steer clear, otherwise this is a stark, brutally honest exploration of the human psyche that is indeed special.

The positivity is never over the top, nor does the pure sincerity exhibited throughout ever feel excessively earnest. It’s this which sets this band apart from their indie-pop contemporaries, and makes Try To Be Hopeful a record which should be revered as a truly important piece of work.

Everything that made Transverse great is here on f (x). Carter Tutti Void are reimagining industrial music without the need for in-your-face defiant transgression.

As If is the album they’ve always hinted at, but never pulled off.

On Why Choose?, they sadly lose a lot of their manic, propulsive momentum.

Fantastic confections of noise and thunder.

Short, but very, very bittersweet.

Hutchcraft might be the real problem here: he’s good at what he does, but he only does one thing: big and sad and serious.

All Things Under Heaven is on another level.

Ultimately, it seems that the likes of Springsteen, Dylan, and the rest of the well-worn idols, call many more of the shots than Blitzen Trapper as an independent entity.

You’ve [Lana Del Rey] found your own style and run with it. It’s amazing to see someone so free and in control.

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is a rich, dense and rewarding album. Dig deep into it and watch it envelop you--decay and chaos has rarely sounded so seductive.

In spite of In Dream’s polite frills, big crowdpleasers, and abstract ideals, Editors still hold fast to a sense of self that throbs harder than ever.

Occasionally they over-indulge, and it’s certainly not their best LP, but it's easy to forgive them given the obvious love that’s contained within the tracks here.

Far from being disappointing, then, New Bermuda is comfortably good enough to blow even Deafheaven’s sceptics away.

Mothers is a good, enjoyable album. It isn’t the classic album that Swim Deep have been aiming for, but it feels like they’re tantalisingly close to reaching it come album #3.

It’s odd, yes, and quite, quite daft, but executed with some real charm.

What could have been a self-indulgent curiosity becomes yet another treasure chest waiting to be flung open amidst 2015's plentiful trove.

On Dodge and Burn, Mosshart really makes the album her own and consigns White to the shadows.

Perhaps it doesn’t thrill the same way his younger records thrilled with their wiliness and exuberance; but perhaps it was disillusioned by that type of thrill, and elected for something a little more reliable.

Each listener should find their own things to contemplate, relate to and enjoy in these thoughtful, ornamental and fantastic songs, and that’s exactly the way it should be.

Every Open Eye seems neutered, the rough edges sanded back on an album that fits a mould more than it breaks it--which given the band’s confrontational media stance seems something of a waste.

Senses pummelled and synapses shredded, Holding Hands With Jamie represents anything but an easy ride. But then reputations aren't earned lightly, and Girl Band have earned theirs as the most excitingly coarse noise rock outfit on the planet through sheer guts and tenacity.

New Order have made a really good album, one that easily justifies their soldiering on.

You’ll probably like this album if you’re a metal fan. But don’t expect it to enlighten you.

The instrumental and compositional mastery on show is staggering. Whether it will make a dent in the consciousness of those who don't spend their time watching at the edges of the prog-rock firmament is another question entirely.

A Raw Youth aims to sabotage meathead rock and succeeds. Le Butcherettes preserve all the best parts--the rush, the muscle, the vocalist as GOD--but expose the celebrated macho ego as a terrorising other.

It's so proud to be pop and hopefully this'll make others realise it's never a guilty pleasure to enjoy songs that make you happy; songs that make you wanna dance your ass off and songs that perfectly fit the criteria for pretending to be in a music video.

On La Di Da Di Battles feel like they are, slowly, finding their way in the right direction.

The Lawrence bros do pull some new tricks on Caracal. But the album marks the end of Disclosure as a band, and the beginning of Disclosure as a hit-dispensing enterprise that manufactures durable, no-stain, easy-to-clean products to please every audience.

An album that wouldn't be out of place if it had come out 30 years ago.

Crosseyed Heart will serve as proof that it ain’t Keef who’s over the hill.

The balance of the old and the truly new in instrumentation and song writing style is the bedrock of the composer’s own work and many of the artists on the albums track listing.

This is a seamless, and often glorious, album, one that showcases a profound peace and melancholia through a focus on ambient washes. Its lack of flourishes should, therefore, not be condemned but celebrated. Recommended.

For all Method’s moments of individual brilliance--“Rappers don’t really ride they piggy back/I’ll trade them all to have 2Pac and Biggy back”--clarity is lost in the sheer number of guest appearances.