Science Fiction Dancehall Classics, with its blend of revamped urban dub and bizarre cybernetic aesthetics, proves the most suitable companion primer to Sherwood's own 2015 selective compilation, Sherwood At The Controls, Vol. 1: 1979-1984.

With Half Free, Remy has made a brilliant, accessible, edgy pop record without compromising her ideals one iota--and hopefully has surreptitiously brought her into a wider light.

Rub is an album of well-sheened extremes.

Each of the tracks on The Loud Silence pointedly, yet effortlessly, foregrounds the folk-y marranzano within the otherwise calm, techno-centric sonic context that Dozzy has outlined notably on Plays Bee Mask and with his group Voices From The Lake.

It's fair to say with such as varied collection of sounds from disparate sources, µ20 doesn't make it easy on the listener. After spending two hours of being buffeted by a dizzying array of beats and sound textures, listening to the third CD, with its wilful experimentalism, was almost too much on the first listen.

In its 58 minutes length, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure notches up fourteen masterful tracks with no down-swing, enchanting the listener until the very last words, "love never fails".

Forty-two minutes of profound pleasure all in all, which both challenges the clichés of guitar-based heaviness and mines them for their ore.

Del Rey plays a winning strike with Honeymoon's four opening songs: powerful ballads, lain on ethereal and soft arrangements made of smooth strings and jazzy winds.... If 'High By The Beach' still can sustain its four-minutes length, the same unfortunately cannot be said for the most of the following songs.

The artists on C-ORE complement one another in that they share a certain darkness and an interest in digital experimentation, but their voices and methods are distinct, ensuring the album is defiantly unpredictable.

Elegance and delicacy seem to be the intended effect, as well as intelligence, both innate and hard-won with time.

Whilst bands like Tame Impala made a quick buck imitating aspects of Dungen's sound, Allas Sak shows that Gustave Ejstes will continue to perfect and update his craft.

Wald nods towards electronic Kosmische music of bygone years while simultaneously reflecting and commenting upon Betke's own back catalogue.

It really does speak volumes about the groundswell of depth in his writing that a record with stakes this high don't feel like a step out of character, but rather a continuing stride through a storm.

The Frenchman leaves enough space for everything to live harmoniously together. Melodies and countermelodies run free, but nothing ever feels overblown or unnecessary.

It's not that the depth isn't there, it's just that the experience is multidimensional enough to bring forth a flatness; a sense of unity which discards dimensions.

Two or three more long jams in a double harmonic scale would have worked just fine. But the lack of closure, like the lack of polish, is entirely characteristic of this release, which to be honest is less of an 'album' than a longish EP.

These are cranky, abstracted journeys through texture, noise and rhythm with howling, gibbering singer Dara Kiely as our unreliable spirit guide. At their best, Girl Band manage to locate a sweet spot between chaos and precision, poise and frenzy, hysteria and logic.

It's a pleasure to hear the trio working in this way, especially given the sonic common ground they share with Fennesz, and it's also the most energised I've heard the latter sound for a while. Nonetheless, the lack of friction between their respective musical aesthetics can't help but make me wonder how King Midas would sound in collaboration with another, less likely, fellow traveller.

The exquisite nature of this slices of dappled pop genius is a joy to behold.

All in all, Sun Coming Down is a valuable step forward from its already very good predecessor. Despite all the past influences and references, the band succeed in not making the album sound derivative or shallow, rather adding an acquainted contemporary feel to the likely retromaniac taste of their music.

Pain: the quintessential Deaf Wish family album.

Although it doesn't quite live up to the greatness of Smoke Ring, it is a beautiful progression and subtle change in style and subject matter.

Their sound now possesses a withering, caustic wit instead of a joyous, ostentatious cackle, and the suspicion is that it's only the start of an enticing middle chapter. We'll see better still from them as they develop.

With their uncanny knack of still sounding like very few other bands before or since their early stirrings, faith in letting the "moment" loose has once more revealed Levi, Pell and Khan to be a strange and sorcerous triptych unto themselves.



From the base material of improvised music made in a situation of flux, his arrangements are incredibly dense and layered, linking intricate snippets and components together perfectly.

With relative ease, What The World Needs Now... can be placed aside the likes of the 80s influenced 2012 release This Is PiL. The second half of the album is the most interesting musically; it displays a set of songs built around cluttered instruments, rhythms and animalistic noises, but cluttered only to the conditioned ears of the modern listener.

Ones And Sixes is an album brimming with ideas, but with such a varied batch of songs, some work better than others.

While Sleep can be regarded as eight plus hours of ambient drift, it also grows into a piece of considerable emotional weight.

Poison Season is a luxurious creation, dappled in sunlight, and summoning all the redemptive power of pop.

Metal is a cradle-to-grave church of the outsider; birth occurring when you first heard Black Sabbath, Slayer or Metallica. On Abyss, however, Los Angeles' Chelsea Wolfe dabbles in it, owns it, then walks away.

What it also has is songs. Cracking ones.

After giving The Book Of Souls another few spins, the record revealed its many qualities in measured doses over time.

Mudflowers sees him reincarnating and embodying his city's passion for a soulful Americana that flourished half a century ago.

Their world might be lined by wrack and ruin, but it's a world that fits them like a studded glove.

If you've grown tired of the retro-metal sound of recent years, The Night Creeper is a good place to re-engage. Uncle Acid might not be sonic visionaries, but they're masters of their craft.

Its use of frayed tones and frequencies as the organising basis for movement and propulsion allows the music to seep into the cracks and pores of the space around you, extracting the anxiety and dread inherent hidden in our world around us. Embrace the abyss and enjoy.

As illustrated by Kunk, the band is a breath of originality in the often-hackneyed worlds of punk and hardcore. Play this album the next time you want your dance party to devolve into a cannibalistic orgy.

Noctunes repeatedly feels like a homecoming of sorts. It isn't, however, without its shortcomings: it's a tad prolonged (three tracks here could easily go) and there's a tendency for Beal to get comfortable in his compositions.

With only ten tracks, half of which are under three minutes long, Personal Computer feels just a few bits short of a byte and you may well find yourself moving straight onto Unknown Mortal Orchestra's back catalogue just to get some closure.

By conveying the masculine and feminine duality inherent in old musical traditions and modern musical developments, Bruun has composed a truly rewarding record that defies direct categorisation.

Under and alongside the invective, Key Markets has some newly complex and skilful beats.

Given the rigid stylistic direction of Meliora overall, Ghost seem to be writing for the expectations of the general metal community with songs like the stock metallic chugging of 'Absolution' and the AC/DC-baiting 'Majesty'. Such safe playing prevents Meliora from being something truly special.

Only the live recording, Manhattan is not essential here, given that, as is often the case with much archival material from the period, the sound quality is uneven, but it at least gives a glimpse of what the band was like onstage. Elitism For The People confirms two things, essentially: that Pere Ubu were possibly the most original band to emerge from the embers of America's punk scene and, more importantly, one of the best rock & roll bands to have ever spat out riffs, lyrics and noise.

Hidden Fields presents a binary world of pure noise set against the briefest interludes of silence between the tracks. It's only during the quiet moments that you can comprehend just how vast this album is.

From the unidentifiable and minimalist object on the cover to the track titles referencing interior design and architecture, via the very makeup of each track, Body Complex feels like a journey through a space both public and internalised.

As Compton progresses, it rarely seems to shift out of second gear, evidently favouring laid back grooves and sparse production over aggressive break beats and G-Funk swagger. All the while an almost listless lyrical style on occasion provides a narrative, or lack thereof.... Cynicism aside, there are moments of brilliance here.

The one-paced nature of the album ensures that it fails to hold the attention throughout, with the mind frequently dipping in and out of the record, and the suspicion lingers that I Declare Nothing would work better as a pair of EPs and some judicious pruning.

Although not strikingly different from earlier work, I Am All Your Own appears more terrestrial and less transcendental. This being a refreshing new granting-of-access to his style.

As part of Berlin's Janus Collective, M.E.S.H.'s work is very much on the hardest edges of club culture to such an extent that it becomes hard to discern any humanity at work here.

Like Tyler and Brooks, Sheppard unveils his pleasure in what he sees around us gradually, his final destination ultimately unimportant so long as the quest is enriching. This is a trip that comes seriously recommended.

Music For Drifters is another fine showcase for the prodigious talents of this Sunderland twosome.

Indeed, on both of Lost Time's pieces, Fox and Millions make good use of non-drum instruments to further their percussive investigations. And although the steadiness of 'Post Encounter Effect' threatens to make it a little tougher to sit through than the more immediate, thrilling 'Telegy/Time Lapse', its implication--a renewal of our relationship with time, wherein we find agency--arguably renders it more satisfying.

Devoid of the light and shade that had highlighted the many musical facets of the band, Led Zeppelin's seventh studio album remains a difficult album to take in a single sitting. For sure, it contains some incredible individual moments.... [Pod] A piano led instrumental dominated by the under-rated John Paul Jones and complete with some of Jimmy Page's most understated guitar playing, this is beautifully reflective music sharply at odds with what's contained on the parent album and worthy of investigation.

Though Plant and Jones kept their ears to the ground with what was happening on the musical landscape, some of the efforts on the album have dated horribly.... But there are documents of true greatness contained here.

While the first disc replicates the original album, the real meat is to be found on the remaining discs.

As ever with William Basinski, Cascade is deeply melancholic and subdued, music to embrace in the deep of a sleepless night. But it also unfurls to reveal layers of brightness that went undetected on 92982, as the increased pace of the loops blurs and breaks apart the piece's monotonous (in the best sense of the word) repetition to reveal the deep humanity at the work's core.

The composer with the Radio 6Music soul has constructed something elegant, thought-provoking and comforting that will genuinely make you wish it was October.

You'd think that a tried and tested method of the same old thing would have a shelf life that its novelty would wear off. But when the buzzsaw, ear-piercing keyboards and thumps of the drum machine hit your eardrums, all rationale is rendered futile.

This might be their most enjoyable release since 1991's Lived To Tell.

It is sparkling and wistful, and it's quite lovely.

Universes is not quite grasping the heights of the Horsehead Nebula, but the novelty of Seven's poly-genred bravura certainly leaves it reaching in that direction. If you're looking for a happy medium between well-crafted house and happy-go-lucky slur-along songs, take some direction from this man, because he does it with serious panache.

It's a work that, while being their most accessible to date, is still dense enough to reward patience and repeated listens.

It's the great triumph of this collection, one that goes beyond whether it hangs together as a body of work. In bringing together artists from around the world Shirley Inspired should help to ensure that these tales are not forgotten.

Born In The Echoes is another example of Rowlands and Simons' magic way of making machines sing.

There is no being taken on a conceptual journey, or losing yourself in these tracks. They overwhelm and punish your ears and synapses, disappearing before you get a chance to acclimatise yourself. Asymmetric guerrilla dancefloor bangers in effect.

All in all, Instrumentals 2015 is an admirable piece of work from a man who seems to take direction from few others.

With Grievances Rolo Tomassi truly have mastered the creation of such a hybrid, heightening their melodies and anthemic qualities whilst retaining their brutality and technical prowess within the contours of a finely honed album sequence.

With Homesick, Matrixxman has at last found a depth of exploration and expression that stands up to the ideas so visibly floating around the edges of his work.

It's infectious, a record and a band that don't shirk away from documenting the toil, but also offer some fight, some life and some colour in setting about taking on the challenges to cope with it.

Everything you want from Richard Thompson is right here, right now, on Still. You wont notice Jeff Tweedy all that much, which is as big a compliment as one can make of any producer.

Dark Matter/Dark Energy is the sound of a band that's acutely self-aware of its own legacy and where it fits in on the cultural landscape. Crucially, it doesn't attempt to be something that it's not and the honesty contained within is one of the album's greatest strengths.

[Fingers is] fifteen tricksy, itchy, endlessly inventive footwork belters, which do little more than uphold the finest tenets of the genre, and are perfectly laudable for that.

Not only are the concepts themselves reductive and half-baked and the lyrics risibly clumsy, but the songs appear to have been composed in less time than it actually takes to perform them.

Tundra is a techno album as contemplation, not in in the sense that it is soft or gentle (it most certainly isn't), but in the way that it allows you to plug in with your surroundings, letting the earth and sky open up around you.

Ultimately Moonbuilding 2703 BC is an immersive, imaginative journey into the unknown that, unfortunately, won't end up being the space travel concept album of the year. Public Service Broadcasting have already locked that down. Top marks for effort though.

Lantern still shows clear signs of the producer attempting to find his feet, if at times faltering.

Though Phillips' lyrics are often chilly, abounding with images of freezing water and fallow fields, there's a genuine warmth here remarkably absent of pretense or the weepy e-bow heroics that post-rock has grown so fond of.

In moving away from the vestiges of full-on noise that defined his previous two albums, Luke Younger has paradoxically come up with a work that packs more punch than either.

Quarters! is also the band's most accessible album to date.... This in an album that caters to the listeners' self-indulgence rather than arresting their attention, which is a shame. But is what you've really been seeking all these years is Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain on wax, look no further.

Compared to 2013's Innocence Is Kinky, Apocalypse, Girl is less noisy and more thematically united.

Akin to scrolling down a Tumblr dashboard, A.L.L.A as a whole lacks coherence but features some impressive displays of aestheticism.

This is a great album, and it's incredible to see Fernow again broadening the scope of the noise genre.

Infinity Machines is a painful modern masterpiece, and it's urging us to listen to the voices in our heads.

Not only is Black Age Blues Goatsnake's best album, it is an instant classic of the stoner-doom hybrid and an earthy, electrifying endgame for rock & roll itself.

On paper, then, the concept of an album that comes so consummately out of this context may not be the most appealing. In reality, Herndon's second full-length proper, Platform, which does just that, is one of the best records you'll hear this year.

Algiers isn't incitement to revolution, it's a call to self-interrogation, to consider your reality and the reality of those around you.

In Colour is ultimately too tidy and, Young Thug features aside, afraid to take risks, and is therefore all the more beige for it.

Dalton famously believed that a singer shouldn't have to raise her voice to be heard. These minimalist arrangements, whether it's Isobel Campbell affecting a slight twang to match her guitar or Larkin Grimm legitimate twang (and the album's only banjo), are a fitting tribute in themselves.

In many ways Sub-Lingual Tablet is, like any Fall album will be, a stranger and superior record than most released in any given year. But by The Fall's own standards, this time that's just not good enough.

As musical accompaniment to Turnbull's visual imagery and bronze icons, 23 Skidoo's soundtrack juxtaposes perfectly in sparking off coloured patinas and twisted moulds to their mutual benefit.

Across the album, lyrics leap suddenly out like car lights in a dark tunnel, illuminating unpalatable truths with the sarcasm on full beam.

Dumb Flesh on the other hand feels like a direct continuation of the last superb Fuck Buttons album, Slow Focus, albeit a good deal warmer than its overpowering austere chilliness.

So not an out and out album of doof dancefloor bangers, this is more the evolution of an artist, at comfort in her environment, and holding her own.

Tal National's sound fabric on new album Zoy Zoy is intricate and colourful. The music turns in wild and unexpected directions as psychedelic hues emerge and patterns form that may not have previously seemed possible.

Simple Songs is the most emotionally direct of O'Rourke's pop-oriented releases for Drag City, and the least likely to distance the listener with a cruel joke or winking musical allusion.

With Sallows, Mayberry and Psutka have crafted something deeply human and eerily, beautifully contradictory, like meeting someone you already know for the very first time.

This is garage rock yes, but not teeth grindingly basic 4-4, it's four to the forest floor, bouncing off the superfuzz pedal and rebounding into space, and from their multifarious albums, Mutilator Defeated At Last is undeniably a star.

It could so easily have turned into a mess, but Mbongwana Star have made probably the most consistently listenable album to emerge from Kinshasa's rapidly evolving new genre.