City Sun Eater in the River of Light is also one of 2016’s most interesting and restrained records so far.

For all the remarkably fluid dialogue in Constant Image, none of that would matter if the songs didn’t connect in the first place. And reader, boy do they! Songs like 'Punching Up' and 'Pressure' sound like lost gems that popped up on your local college radio station.

A truly delectably odd album of archaic echoes and future-classic choruses.

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

It feels like a body of work that’s been carefully planned and thought-out, which is ironic, given so much of it was just 'a happy experiment'.

Whilst the exposure of O’Sullivan and Tucker’s pop heart has been more than welcome, one senses that there are many more sides to this complex, stubbornly esoteric collaboration that are yet to be revealed, and that’s an exciting thought indeed.

It's a little less brazen, a little more personal but it fits together as a listen-start-to-finish endeavor as well if not better than any of his previous works and that is testament indeed.

This is ageless music, and utterly, one hundred per cent essential.

Despite this run of two poor(ish) songs, the album is largely excellent--a record bridging the gap between country music and popular music’s less derided genres perfectly.

The great magic of this record is that while acclimatisation to Zombyland is taking place, there's so much depth to explore, be it the bizarrely effective tonal shifts, the diversity of musical style, the sense of simplicity that, no doubt, veils immense complexity.

As such, Limbo, Panto is shocking, funny, and above all irrevocable. Expect this lot to be around for the long haul.

While Aerial and Unbalance represented developments in Huismans' sound, Fever is more of a sidestep. If it is dubstep--which I'm not really sure it is--it is far more intriguing and individual than most releases I have heard in the last 12 months.

Let It All In is a tighter, more relaxed LP, full of beautifully restrained, crafted songs.

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.

A fun, but deeply human, record.

Seventy minutes for only eight tracks is excessive, be they remixes or not, and each track is suffocated and diluted until it proves to be just some noise, somewhere.

It is no coincidence that the moments when Dwyer’s writing strays furthest from the familiar format are the least satisfying. It is reasonable to assume that he is capable of far more intriguing and stimulating excursions than these.

Simply, it’s back to what it was all about in the first place; writing cracking tunes and just being boys in a band.

Broadcast and House have fashioned an artefact that could well work similar magic on future generations of wide-eyed sonic archaeologists.

What In Dust lacks in sonic breadth, it makes up for by bringing richness to its palette of oppressive mists and dread-filled shadows.

Ardor bides its time and it was made by a band brave enough to create music and a track listing that allows this spectacle of a record to satisfying inch towards a riveting pitch. It’s an album that evokes the ear blistering noise of Sunn O))) but it’s also emotionally charged music.

The band remain an excellent and vital act, still producing worthy music which is head and shoulders over many similar, lesser acts, the problem, it seems, is that their evolution is a slow one.

Yes, The Eternal is “Another Sonic Youth Record” but it’s also “Another Good Sonic Youth record”, revealing its finer details gradually, even if there’s no fundamentally new approach, arrangement, or message, in any of the songs.

Yak have nailed their debut album, and exceeded the high expectations put on them from the beginning. Don't let them pass you by.

Confident Music For Confident People is exactly what it says on the tin. It's also the most unashamedly addictive record you'll hear all year.

As was the case with Jinx, Days Are Gone benefits from limiting its affections to a single golden era of its genre. It gives the album a sense of cohesiveness when it would have been so easy to create a tangled mess (cf. Everything Everything), so it’s to the band’s great credit that they’ve made something so pleasantly easy to listen to.

Their fifth album continues the work done on their last, 2011’s Hello Sadness, the emotional context and sentiments much sharper, painfully so in some cases, with big, lovely pop hooks on even their starkest tracks.

This release strikes the perfect balance between pummelling the listener over the head with riffs and rewarding their shredded eardrums with hooks and honesty.