So far as newcomers are concerned: hop on here, while Oneida are perhaps at their most accessible, and discover one of music’s most inspirationally inventive outfits.

Colin Stetson is matchless, his record glorious, and you’ll likely never experience silence as dramatically as the moment when All This I do for Glory concludes.

King of Cowards confirms it’s Pigs that deserve to have their cake and eat it. But it’s also an open invitation to join in the overindulgence with a complete lack of contrition. To gorge on the fruits of their labour is to feel utterly replete, that said, I’m not one to turn down thirds. More more more more more more more!

Here, the former Supergrass leader is so busy trying to prove something with his lofty themes and overreaching stylisation, that all of the magic is lost.

It’s the sound of Low passing up the opportunity for a twentieth-anniversary blow-out and opting instead for a quiet get-together with old friends.

Slow Focus isn’t alienating, it’s other, and it’s a pleasure to take a wander around its unfamiliar landscapes.

It might not be their best-ever album--Phrenology can still claim that title--but Rising Down finds The Roots reinvigorated, more passionate than ever.

On The Optimist, Anathema really do cement their title as one of the UK’s most revered rock bands, prog or otherwise: it’s a big jumble of ambitious ideas, executed near-perfectly--a mess, but a big, sprawling, dense, euphoric, beautiful one.

Furr is the work of an assured band that are in confident command of their craft.

Interpol have produced a soaring, inventive album that, while incorporating the deliciously dark atmosphere of ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, merely uses it as a base to create more ambitious, warmer soundscapes.

Paul's Tomb: A Triumph has two distinct modes – those slowburn instrumental passages, and the lyric driven, quicker, melodic segments. Frog Eyes succeed when the joins between the two really 'flow', when the segues work.

Okay, at times the journey might seem a little too long--Miss Tambourine Wrist' does grate with repetitive ideas--but for the most part, the pacing between the slow death like marches and the adrenaline injected thrash falls are executed brilliantly.

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.

Do yourself a favour and eschew fashion for something with real substance: Outside Closer is an album of the year, fact.

While a gradual refinement is noticeable from House Of Balloons to Echoes Of Silence, a lack of breathing space between the tracks does them no favours. You're better off dedicating yourself to each album's meaty serving of revelry and regret in turn.

It brings with it a deftly executed change in tone that we've only glimpsed in the past and a refreshing emotional honesty, which not only feels mature but enduring.

By consciously interrogating everything they do, they’ve created something that doesn’t need a condescending suffix to justify its existence. It’s a new high-water mark for the band, and one well worth the pain to reach.

What could so easily have been an obtuse exercise in wilful eccentricity actually ends up an engaging, focussed listen that’s deserving of a wider audience than its somewhat cliquey appeal might suggest.

This was written to be listened to, and to be lived. Don’t dream this away.

Ultimately, More Life does a terrific job creating a mood with its dancehall-flecked, atmospheric production (handled most impressively by the likes of Nineteen85 and Frank Dukes), and it certainly points to a fascinating fork in the road moment for the world’s biggest rapper.

Familiar themes still surface, with the natural world continuing to loom large in Antony's conscience, but much of Swanlights is ambiguous and less easy to decipher.

The lyrics’ meditations on transience and memory suit the sounds very nicely. And so the whole thing congeals into a brilliant whole.

Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural basically embodies that: an album that might take a chomp at your fingers if you reached for the pause button. II is a bit like that, just not all the time.

Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose is a success, in that it captures what Beth Jeans Houghton has been doing in her live shows for the past couple of years, without diluting or rushing it for the sake of a time-specific tag.

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 a proper album, in the sense that a divide is made at four of seven, the title track a segue between halves – its makers clearly bear download culture little respect, constructing their latest so that it’s best experienced as a whole, bridging arrangements as vital as the blustering bombast and constitutional inflections of grandly designed standout pieces.

Approach this record with an open mind and you'll be surprised at how easily you can get caught up in it.

Pieced together from bits of wreckage, this is music created in glorious isolation, drawing on its own influences to create something just as fresh and just as joyous; drifting out into the ocean on its own shonky raft.