Setting banjos and bonfires aside, the folk roots are now replaced by a rich baroque pop accompanying a dark ride inside Huebert's mind.

Man, It Feels Like Space Again is grandiose in the delivery, quixotic in the extreme, but, most of all, it's a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

What it also has is songs. Cracking ones.

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

This sense of place and space in Futures makes its suite of sumptuous love songs doubly poignant, turns them into glorious moments of both clarity and giddy disorientation amid the impending decay and desperation of time and events beyond the back door, the darkness glimpsed out on the horizon. The songs don't emerge as 'crafted' at all, rather you can't quite believe they didn't always exist in this form.

Even if fans of Pere Ubu take Pere Ubu seriously, it is clear that Pere Ubu aren't entirely serious about Pere Ubu. The quartet of LPs contained on Architecture Of Language highlight this more so than perhaps The Modern Dance and for this reason should not be left aside.

The really interesting stuff here is from those groups that barely scraped out an album before disappearing into obscurity or never even got to release a record at the time, many of them victims of being outside of what was still largely a London-centric scene.

Inevitably there’s nothing here to rival the dark majesty of Van der Graaf Generator’s classic 1970s work, and newcomers should start with Still Life, Godbluff or Pawn Hearts. But Do Not Disturb is a worthy addition to the group’s canon and--if this is indeed their last album--a fitting end to an illustrious career.

Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche have produced a record which is at once ambitiously progressive, admirably methodical and unassumingly joyous.

While Poison Season sounded like the kind of late-career ‘mature’ album that Bejar could be content to make for the rest of his life, ken shows that he is still full of the potential to surprise--and long may he continue to do so.

Park Jiha has composed, performed and produced an album that treats clarity with the utmost respect, in that it realises that with lucidity comes an understanding of calamity and disorder. The world she has created succeeds because of that understanding. So much music that tries to fuse the traditional with the contemporary fails because of an idolisation of its parts; Communion idolises nothing, and is all the more tangible and engaging for that.

The only, minor caveat is that the songs end a little too abruptly. But there’s enough good music here to listen to over and over and to get you giddy about what Sink Ya Teeth will do next.

When each song begins, you’re never quite sure where they’re taking it; each of the five tracks leads us through unfamiliar, pared-down disco landscapes.

Big Wows is a risky, but remarkable move for the trio--even the weaker songs in the lineup offer a buzzy dance break, densely layering up the punchy synths and calculated, sharp percussion.

Holy Spring is a mature and enthralling work that gives us real ritual. Ceremonies taken seriously that generate real power.

Howl is certainly at the more pop-oriented end of Foxx releases, and that is its strength.

There is a confidence in their songwriting here that was missing on their debut. More risks are taken – mostly lyrically – and it pays off. The downside to the album is that It’s all subtle shades of the same colour, without much variation. At thirty-two-minutes long this doesn’t grate too much, but the inclusion of a slower ballad or another upbeat instrumental would have been a nice addition.

Some of their most accelerating work across their career path thus far. ‘Forest of Your Problems (Outro)’ offers a friendly, until next time. A great third studio album.

As these final notes trail off, Leaving None But Small Birds instills a trembling sigh, which resonates long after the last notes die.

What is impressive about absent origin is that the sprawling album does have a focus. There are repeated themes — feminist and internationalist snippets as well as musical motifs. And the albums winds down in a logical way as the soothing string arrangements and bird song of ‘an infinite thrum (archipelago)’ give way to the piano and more operatic singing of album closer ‘the abandoned colony collapsed my world.’

In Free Fall often feels like floating, but it never really makes the crash-landing you’d expect from gravity’s pull. Rather, it stays in the atmosphere, lingering on the feeling of uncertainty of a jump, right before your feet touch the ground.

There’s plenty of intricacy in the intimacy of this record. In the end, though, The Age Of Pleasure is an easier ride. Less densely packed with ideas but it’s no bother.

The album is a gorgeous stew of musical openness and stylistic shape-shifting, without once abandoning the heritage that has birthed it.

The pop hooks in contrast to their previous two albums are more subliminal. The melodies don’t always go in places you expect, but this music is best left to stew in the background before the magic manifests.

While Stein’s arrangements are frequently simple, they are never sparse. Despite the minimalist approach to the songs, the production still sounds full, allowing distant echoing sounds to emphasise what’s there rather than imply what’s missing.

The earlier EP was impressive but they’ve noticeably pushed themselves further here, achieving something sharper, more their own.

A fearlessness in operating in obscurity is Black Noise, demonstrated in its abstract nature. ‘Art of Survival’ brings forth a mass of overwhelming sounds before dulling into inaudible speech that is both numbing and ominous, in amongst defiant lyricism. ‘Black Orpheus’ bares mystical unease, dominated by streaky violin chords intriguingly met with rhythmic drum patterns that create fanatical theatre.

However dark the underlying motives are, The Collapse Of Everything gives a sense of hope, rising from ashes.

In scratching their own itch, Xiu Xiu have made a brave record.

Live At KCRW is a fine declaration of where The Bad Seeds are in the here and now. It would be a fool who would second-guess as to where they're headed to next but at this moment in time they sound as comfortable in their music as they do the fine suits they wear.

The daring, innovative breadth of his artistic imagination is given full licence in the sense of expansive space each track so effortlessly conjures--no doubt helped by his previous soundtrack work.

Matangi sounds like a mess on first, second and third listen--and it doesn't help that the album's worst missteps, the lumbering Britpop-worthy ballad 'Come Walk With Me' and the squeaky irritant 'aTENTion', weigh down its first half. But when it coheres, it's a thrill.

Dream A Garden is an album full of admirable ideas and clearly coloured by his past, but as a step towards his future, it falls in between its own ambition and true excellence.

In their pursuit of experimentation, Decisive Pink have accomplished a great deal with this expansive body of work.

Chance Of Rain sinks its hooks in deeper.

It's the slickest, spaciest project he's released since Honest (which was always underrated), and sits far left of the trap rigor mortis of the self-titled record.

They leave a lot of room for the listener to complete the work. A choose your own adventure where we stay safely this side of the page, sipping our coffee. ... Your mileage may vary but for me the second half of the album contains the better music.

What’s heartening about the first part of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost is that this formula has not become tired. Rather, the band are adding to it incrementally and progressing into ever more interesting territory.

It does feel like Enya's strongest effort in years, and that is not at the expense of previous records. Dark Sky Island is Enya operating at her most maximal and self-aware.

They are now making music that, thanks to its lack of grandiosity and ornateness, has a seeming air of distance. It could almost pass through you unnoticed. But they leave traces in your brain that linger and slowly burn inside of you, long after you’ve stopped listening.

The Budos Band are the real deal, and Burnt Offering is quite a ride. For connoisseurs of heavy sounds, I can't recommend this highly enough.

A Different Ship is another exciting chapter in the story of a band who continue to improve with every release.

Alexander Tucker may not make folk music, but he can weave a magic spell.

It is that expanded awareness of what is possible within his derivative style that makes Fanfare a fascinating album, and a significant step forward.

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.

Bloom is in part brilliant but maddeningly safe and, ultimately, is a decidedly unsatisfying listen.

Lyrically The House That Jack Built is a masterpiece.

A Little Death showcases Rousay’s ability to convey complex feelings of nostalgia, bringing to mind the themes of films such as Aftersun or Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind in their wistful approach to the portrayal of memories.

II tweaks the Metz formula just enough to stand as an improvement over the band's excellent 2012 self-titled debut.

Seeds is the most streamlined, most polished, most sharp-edged album of their career. And yet it manages to retain their trademark schizophrenia.

Still Smiling is a playful, intelligent album, a series of personal and observational sketches of a disquieting world.

Seabed never really gets out of first gear. The general vibe given off is that of a teenager moping about in his bedroom, albeit one with the skills to emote through slick, well-produced pop music.

Above all, it’s the melodies that stand out, whether in the wonderfully whacked out melodies of ’You Make Me Forget Myself’ or pacy ripples of ‘Sequence One’, all delivered with an insouciance that’s rather satisfying in these times.

The 20th anniversary edition of This Is My Truth… will by no means settle the long-standing war of attrition between its fans and it detractors, but it does provide a deep and rewarding dive into the band’s populist peak, an idiosyncratic era for one of the last two decades’ most idiosyncratic of rock bands.

This is an album of a depth and ambition that should, frankly, set a standard for contemporary art music.

Koloss runs the gamut of Meshuggah's craft and technical prowess.

[Wyatt's guitar work and his synths] manage to coalesce with his guitar on the album's strongest moments: as one becomes indistinguishable from the other. It is this coherency which arguably marks Lets… out as Wyatt's strongest work to date. He has created a rewarding sonic landscape that is consistently poignant, without ever being cloying.

Once More 'Round The Sun's many positives are consistently seen in the best possible light.

Terrestrials should first be seen as a meeting of chameleonic polyglots, and the result is most unexpectedly beautiful and luminescent.

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

Hood and Mike Cooley, the only original members left, handle all of the songwriting for the first time since the band's 1998 debut, and it makes for a unity of vision that prevents the grief from sounding gratuitous, that makes the uncertainties resonate with our own.

Mediation Of Ecstatic Energy is undoubtedly Wong's most fully realised, varied and intriguing set of compositions to date.

Keenly political, anti-fascist, and pro-immigrant, British Sea Power mine the past to give us what we need now.

For all this fitful odysseying around, Hukkelberg is never more than three paces from home.

Where Hubbert goes musically from here he may not even know himself, but with Breaks & Bone he's managed to pull himself from the quicksand of grief and cement his latest work amongst the top Scottish albums of 2013.

SD Laika compresses space to the point that That's Harakiri becomes constricted by its own sheer density; appropriately, the album is suggestive of inner space, one that is seemingly fraught with anxiety. As a result it's difficult to sustain such energy and tracks seem to be rapidly exhausted, most are less than three minutes. But such are the ideas and impact of them that they linger a lot longer.

The Body and Thou's collaboration, though at times coalescing into a perfect rumble (See: 'Lurking Free'), with its reverberations capable of rattling chest cavities (See: the pretentiously titled 'Beyond The Realms Of Dreams, That Fleeting Shade Under The Corpus Of Vanity'), lacks the desired cohesion from beginning to end to impart the feeling of a complete album.

The nine tracks on Frontera isolate Fly Pan Am’s part in the project, yet taking the multi- out of multimedia doesn’t dilute the themes seared into the music.

The immersion of oneself in I<3UQTINVU allows you to reacquaint yourself with their vast electronically-led arrangements and also appreciate Jockstrap’s endlessly adventurous spirit.

Shades of The Herbaliser's Something Wicked This Way Comes abound, and the sensation that there's some kind of malevolent presence woven through the eight songs that make up Sold Out never fully escapes you.

Take Her Up to Monto is the schizophrenic underbelly of Toys’ teary composure, and its much less interested in working through earthly lived experience than it is in traversing it.

There are no crescendos or sections that wrestle for attention, but rather, an ever-shifting soundscape that swirls and swims like a starling murmuration. The shapes it makes in the air are often wounding, but also graceful. And like all of his work, it is devastating in the best way possible.

A good album, but one better suited to a former time.

A Thing Called Divine Fits is a seemingly rare thing; a really good, life-affirming rock record that just works, and gets better and better the more time you spend with it.

There are plenty of nicely recorded aural treats dotted across 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, but they're swimming in a sea of dull mediocrity.

From Out Here is another beautifully crafted voyage into electronic music's substrata.

There is great life and verve in these songs, teeming, irrepressible. Listen closely and you can hear the record breathing.

Haiku Salut could be a curious fit for this – certainly, anyone looking for an evocation of the honky tonk contemporary to that era of silent film will be disappointed. Instead, Haiku Salut have delivered one of their strongest works to date.

Traversing minimal jazz, soulful R&B, edges of glitch, hip-hop sampling, voice modulation and ephemeral field recordings, Help is a welcome addition to Timothy’s growing body of work and forward-thinking alternative music in general.

For open ears the recordings on Pakistan Is For The Peaceful offer immersive ever-spiralling tracks that reach ecstatic heights as they open up endless waves of spiritual harmonies, beyond the drone and into the unknown.

Wilds feels like a homecoming for a band that was doing the 60s-influenced, boot-fair futurist thing long before it was cool. What a treat to have them back.

Air feels like a swan song for a gorgeous world in peril.

The album is by no means horrible, just disappointing and repetitive, chock full of revamped old school rhythms that don’t have the gratifying content to match. A good handful of songs--‘When Cats Claw’, ‘Since C.A.Y.A’, ‘Fine Ass Hairdresser’, ‘Julian’s Dream’, ‘Moon Whip Quäz’ and ’30 Clip Extension’--deserve to be judged independently.

Although a bit more polished sounding than past endeavours, Le Bon is blessed enough with both sound melodic sense and a strain of Welsh peculiarity that lends Mug Museum a singular sound.

The heartening, splendid news is that this first album, a self-titled, seven-track whirlwind, is full-on brilliant all the way through.

This is not his best record. It's about sixth or seventh. But it's still a triumph of sorts--a curious, meandering journey that needs to be made a good few times.

Crime & The City Solution's sixth studio album is as much an elegy to the American Dream that's turned into a global nightmare as it is a damn fine rock & roll album.

Plug in and turn on, baby, surrender to its augmented charms.

Deeper Woods comes wholly recommended to fans of House And Land, likewise the reverse. While the two projects recall differing subsets of folk music history, they both sound relevant and vital, no matter how many decades back they reach.

Lily We Need to Talk Now is an unexpected piece of artwork that manages to reflect the liberating now of boundaryless music. With influences from decades of genres and artists – from 70s to 90s to 00s and from The Sugarcubes to Pixies to beabadoobee – this album pieces together the excitement of discovering fresh music, making for a rollercoaster of a listening session.

The songs on Rong Weicknes are also longer than the rapid-fire tracks of their previous two albums. Giving the songs space allows for tricks like the kaleidoscopic way instruments morph into each other. Without a frenetic pace to keep up with, singer Ma Clément also has more of a showcase for her vocals.

At their most free-floating and understated, Bitchin Bajas almost casually demonstrate how apparent serenity still provides room for subtle explorations, additions to the predominant flow heightening the overall mood.

Just 16 exceptional tracks full of glowing wordplay, instinctively catchy intonation, and effortless genre whisking.

Order Of Noise shows off Gainsborough's more accessible side--a good thing--but it's also a signpost marking a good place to start digging a little deeper, both into his own music and that surrounding him.

Insides mostly works pretty damn well, and will certainly appeal to fans yearning for the good times hinted at all those years ago.

Dear could have been the end of the trip. But a quarter of a century in, Boris remain alert at the controls as they pilot their craft into uncharted galaxies, boldly going where no group has gone before.

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.

With The Savage Heart, The Jim Jones Revue display a deft ability to move things forward whilst retaining firmly in place all the components that made them such a seductive proposition in the first place.