Strauss is going to continue heating up as an artist and Cheap Queen will add a whole lot of fuel to that fire.

Sudan radiates confidence on Athena, uniting distinct musical elements as if they belonged together all along. It’s an album that sounds like nothing else.

The context, the lyrical content, and the overwhelming volume of their sound kicks and crashes through traumatic themes, providing a cathartic burst of anxious freedom. It’s a record designed to bite chunks out of its listeners, and will probably have the same effect when heard live.

Resonating like a joyful shout in the distance, Four of Arrows draws you towards it, and you’d be a fool not to follow.

This is an exceptionally compelling, absorbing, rich, and genuinely human piece of work.

Fibs is thrilling because it doesn’t adhere to the usual. A freewheeling, freethinking treat for the senses which reveals a musician at the height of her powers.

The eleven songs here are tidy and self-contained but not sealed. The possibilities for Black Marble continue to open.

Rex’s true feelings have been told marvellously within this sonic journal. Through his own unique artistry, Rex has created an album that is wonderfully creative. This third album cements his status as a nascent national treasure.

Like recent releases by Robyn or Solange, this expansive and beautiful record shows Vagabon as an expert at creating pleasure and soulful reassurance from electronic pop – a surprising but welcome heelturn.

Pang is a remarkable debut album assured of its legitimacy and brilliance, one that should be celebrated for its shimmering beauty and the success of its authorial intent.

Somebody’s Knocking represents the point of no return – he's finally surpassed his past achievements, forgotten his past lives, cast off his old names and fully solidified his position as the pre-eminent ruler of the dark kingdom of gothic rock.

With There Existed An Addiction To Blood, Clipping have artfully seized upon the viscera of the horrorcore genre, creating an album which is both disheartening and sonically intriguing. It is yet another successful experiment for the group and one of the eeriest examples of modern hip-hop to date.

Juice B Crypts is an uncompromised, multi-faceted assault course for the brain, but one you won’t regret taking.

Old LP is so assured and confident, it’s easy to imagine another two decades of additional back catalogue we simply never heard. ... It’s a stunning success.

While most of the individual tracks dazzle, there's not much of a unifying theme the bind the pleasantly punishing beats, pastoral orchestral leanings and ambient drifts together. Even so, Crush may not be the album more recent converts to Floating Points may have hoped for, but it is worthy of our undivided attention regardless.

Two Hands is a great record, and a stunning artistic accomplishment – a reminder if you needed one that this is Lenker’s THIRD album in twelve months – but it’s also devilishly clever in that it isn’t a perfect album. If it was, they’d have nowhere to go on the next one.

It’s clear that they’re at their best when they’re drawing from the college rock/grunge well, and disappointing that they feel they have to include 36,000 different rock styles to be taken seriously.

Deceiver isn’t your Oshin or Is the Is Are, not by a longshot. Yet, while certain touchstones are present that give away that this is in fact DIIV, in a much larger sense we’re observing a band operating unlike they have before, and in the midst of that shift, they execute it stunningly.

No Home Record is heavy in its use of experimentation, yet it results in a vividly cutting and complex portrait of what it means to live in contemporary LA, and a superb introduction to the solo Kim Gordon.

From their dream-pop origins, through their psychedelic sophomore, they have arrived at a spiritual revolution with Emerald Classics. It's a development to be proud of, to feel good about.

Closer to Grey is the coldest, shiniest, most polished collection of songs released under the Chromatics banner. It’s chillier, darker and more sinister than anything else they’ve ever put out.

A rich, shifting tapestry of grief, beauty, tailspinning disorientation, and illuminating snatches of lucidity.

If you’re looking for an album with a coherent, tangible theme then perhaps this isn’t the one for you. Instead it’s a coagulation of the weird and the wonderful, and just a snapshot of the immense power of FEET. Complete madness, but so much fun.

Though it lacks in the experimentation of Atrocity Exhibition, it compensates with cohesion and undeniable quality. As a presentation of Brown as an exceptional rapper, it ticks all the right boxes.

It’s concise, it’s even, and it feels structured. Its main issue is that it’s nothing that new or inventive and on that basis alone is what essentially damns their efforts. But despite that gripe, Vivian Girls have always surrounded their LPs with charm.

Such moments of challenging, bold experimentation (which Wilco hasn't really bothered with off-stage on this scale for a while), coupled with a set of by turns desolate and uplifting, strange and sweet tunes, makes Ode to Joy mandatory listening for anyone interested in the enduring creative potential of rock - sorry, folk – music.

It’s all at once a whirlwind of colliding ideas both past and present, a bold stride into the future, a new sound pushed beyond expectation, an album that marks the passing of time and the changing of minds, a continued rebirth.

Stars Are The Light drifts unassumingly in a dreamlike state and although the key component of all of their albums up to this point is relegated to atmospherics, it’s a transition which has been made with ease.