Confession presents dal Forno’s music at its most lush and sensual, evoking 90s dream pop as much as 80s post-punk. It still has the chilly sensibilities of her previous work, but there’s a shimmering lightness there as well, like sunlight reflecting off the ice.

Requiem is unlikely to be an album that creates a new legion of converts, but for devotees of this true innovator it’s an incredibly rewarding one.

These four songs are the antithesis of the gluttony of the “gifting” economy and they’re all the better for it.

The music is satisfying for Nine Inch Nails longtime fans who get to hear old music replayed with energy – and is even fun at times – but there’s not that much to it beyond that. .... The project feels curiously unimaginative.

With Future Present Past, Irreversible Entanglements have delivered an album that matches the quality and creativity of its predecessors. At the same time, they’ve refined their vision – coupling familiar sonic elements with a new-found directness.

The centre is hard to hold and purposefully so. This is an album that exists in dream states, oneiric in its exploration of textures. And as soon as there’s something approaching a collage approach, like on ‘Crushing Realities’ or opener ‘Elemental Dream’, it is swept away in favour of something more liquid.

On the surface, My New Band Believe is a fully-acoustic singer-songwriter record, but whole strange worlds exist in every groove.

Kammerkonzert is cemented in the fundamentals of music creation, using orchestral music as its base camp. But of course, Jenkinson wouldn’t let you get away that easy, and as the music builds he washes his wonderful, abstract pigments all over those traditionalist forms – whilst maybe just hacking off a few musical purists along the way.

Dying Is The Internet is a different breed, boasting fully-fleshed, albeit unorthodox songs that impress with their serpentine arrangements.

It’s good to hear that 40 years in the game hasn’t jaded their urge for silliness. .... It’s all entertaining enough without breaking too much of a sweat.

It sounds, somehow, like a record from the 1960s that nobody made. Not because it sounds retro, but because it has the self-evidence of something that should always have existed.

Eisenberg manages to patch together not only personal memories but also their different musical routes into a stunning record that feels like an early contender for album of the year lists.

By the end of MIKE’S POMPEII, the rapper has shown a range of styles, flows and cadences that perhaps doubters wouldn’t have thought he was capable of on SURF GANG productions. Sweatshirt’s UTILITY, whilst treading new production ground, still feels quintessentially him.

Distracted feels like something rarer: a deeply human, painstakingly crafted album. Stephen Bruner has taken our collective exhaustion, our grief, and our hyper-connectivity, and transmuted them into a masterpiece of progressive R&B.

The enrobed duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson have produced a beguiling work that distils the overwhelming impact of nature on the human psyche into 80 minutes of utterly transcendent avant metal.

There is an eerie majesty threaded through this record that trickles through, burrows under the skin and then keeps going.

With just nine tightly constructed and sonically consistent songs, the record is a fleeting rush, but what keeps it from being slight is all the rich perspective and detail.

It shouldn’t work. But it does.

Densely packed, I Guess U Had To Be There contains nothing superfluous and no lines wasted – just impactful verses set against Bash’s cacophonous yet cinematic compositions.

This new music is carefully constructed, cerebral, intrinsically heavy, and has the quiet amazement of someone looking at their near-forgotten reflection. It’s not a complete transfiguration, but owns its corner of darkness, and shines precious shards of light on what might come.

Ladytron are back, and with Paradises, their danceable and thoughtful pop music seems to have gained new resolve.

It’s a confident evolution from her 2020 EP Character Development!, with Grey producing an utterly refined sound that encapsulates the highs of the 2010 pop, bro-step and bubblegum bass eras.

Full of ire and desire. .... Gordon is no luddite. She’s incorporating sounds and techniques that – and apologies for bringing age into it – most other septuagenarians would recoil from.

Saputjiji is a profoundly uncomfortable and rigid listen, stripped of easy melodies and devoid of false hope. .... She has built a towering work out of static, grief and unyielding resistance, proving once again that she is one of the most vital, terrifyingly brilliant artists operating in Canada today.

Remarkable record. .... Of The Earth is so much more than an expected next step, far greater and more expansive than a development of earlier themes and ideas. For all that Shabaka’s journey has already proved to be long, winding and singular, you leave this record convinced that he’s only just getting started.

The Pleasure Is Yours absolutely delivers on its title: it will surely make any room its in a sweeter place for playing it. But its proof, too, that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

As with all Callahan’s work, his immaculate comic timing, pathos and heart are intertwined – the strongly held centre of the maelstrom.

Mitski has a powerful voice, but the way she reins it in on Nothing’s About to Happen to Me creates some of the most affecting moments.