A Pocket Of Wind Resistance combines powerful storytelling and songwriting to produce something special. Polwart and Murphy make Fala Flow seem unnervingly real, conjuring atmosphere through quiet incantation and simple but resonant instrumentation. They also deliver a strong political message in the best traditions of folk music, making health equality something to sing about.

It's the type of album you have to commit to completely, but for those seeking a glimpse of the numinous, it's worth the effort.

What all the songs on News From Nowhere have in common is a baffling, mystical elegance, both independently and, to an even greater extent, within the flow of the record.

The Get Up Sequences Part One has its moments of unrestrained incandescence, it is true. However, a tremendous melancholy comes gusting through too. ... And it confirms that, for those who wish to splice up their life, The Go! Team are still masters of cut ‘n paste heartache.

It stands on its own two feet and crucially employs a refinement of ideas that proves that space is indeed deep.

Words And Music By Saint Etienne is an album that reaffirms all that is glorious and brilliant about pop music.

For all the synthetic otherworldliness, this record is unflinchingly honest in its assessment of the United States as well as a very personal and raw portrait of Steven’s own humanity and fallibility. There’s no dogma, only equivocation.

The great joy of Agriculture’s music is the way they make these abrupt shifts flow naturally. On their second album they broaden the scope of their sound while integrating its many aspects more fluidly.

It’s refreshing then that their music comes without a prescribed meaning being spoon-fed to listeners. This allows the listener to come to their own conclusions.

Migratory is a beautiful listening experience that should hopefully bring some succour to you, wherever you might be.

With Archangel Hill, Collins continues to deliver on the title of that extraordinary record, Folk Roots, New Routes: finding old ways to look forward and new ways to look back.

Where in the past, Cave used artistic practice to escape "whatever it was that was pursuing me," on Carnage, he and Warren Ellis confront it head on. The result is a record that sometimes collapses under the weight of that task, but is nonetheless a remarkable demonstration of their artistic power.

Her deliberate, fully present process resulted in the sort of opulent, heady music that you’d actually expect mushrooms to make. From the very first notes of opener ‘Rewild’, the music betrays an intoxicatingly organic aura.

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.

There is something unsettling but ultimately compulsive about this record. From the opening moments of ‘Deep Six Textbook’, you feel compelled to listen attentively and follow the whole oddball affair to its conclusion.

La Femme’s second album Mystère continues where Psycho Tropical Berlin left off, though it is a more sophisticated affair, and perhaps more subdued too (though that’s no bad thing). There’s still room for the surf rock antics of the impossible catchy ‘Où va le monde’, but on tracks like ‘Septembre’, there’s a definite sense of foreboding as summer ends and the season changes.

A dash of extra variety, and an increasing ability to transform clever layers of sound into well-structured songs, make this his best contribution to date.

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.

An album that is assured, contemplative, and sometimes a bit sad.

Bursts of reggae wooziness, gnarled free-jazz atonality, and electronic noise afford the album a shock of modernity and adventurousness without feeling forced or awkward.

This is a gauzy and sometimes deceptively accessible album about falling all the way to the bottom and wondering if there’s any way back.

Part of the album's cunning is owed to the time allotted for disparate strands to develop and take form.

It’s good enough that you could even pitch it as the fitting finale for an entire era of rap, one whose greatest voices are now firmly approaching pension age. But the album actually creates the opposite problem: it’s too alive to be an ending, too rich with ideas and sonic pleasures.

They mix a palette of distinctive darkness, creating a work of remarkable richness and thematic consistency. While there are still full-throttle assaults that recall the face-chewing passages of The Apostacy (‘Angelvus XIII’ packs particular bite), vast swathes of the album exude a more sinister magnificence.

In places, when compared to their earlier works, it sometimes feels like songs don’t get the space to grow and unfold. Other than that, this is a sublime and beguiling record, and a milestone in the evolution of a unique creative voice.

The songs on Dare's debut album, Whelm ache with a sort of moody emotion that young and old can have in common--wide-eyed, reflective and besotted with the way the world makes us feel.

While Lazaretto occasionally hints at some of the excesses of the producer/songwriter genre, what's undeniable is the talent on display.

The first seconds of ‘Freestyle’ are a patchwork of samples giving way to a tight and propelling track that shares its dark allure with 90s alt-rockers Morphine. Punctuated by bass saxophone, the spoken-word vocals are articulate, bringing to mind Howard Devoto at his best.

Adept as Shaw is as a songwriter, these twists in tone would be harder to pull off were it not for the rest of the band, whose instrumental offerings have taken a noticeable leap forward since 2022’s Stumpwork album.

Fans of the band will find a lot to applaud on Dude Incredible and it's one of their more efficient, immediate LPs.

In Villalobos and Loderbauer's hands, then, the ECM catalogue becomes more than simply a stone set of recorded pieces of music (music as noun) but a further set of tools with which to music (music as verb). Which, although taking Villalobos some distance from his usual club-centric music, remains in spirit with both his and Loderbauer's usual ethos--pushing boundaries, breaking down barriers.

A powerful, impressively unconventional, predominantly instrumental suite, linking sludge and doom metal with a desolate reading of jazz.

This is the sound of a band once again setting a course for personal creative development and revelling in its every ambitious step.

A wonderful balance of melody and ferocity, their tunes tap into a wide-eyed joy at the heart of their rage. Serrated guitar noise and complex vocal parts mix with an adrenaline-rush rhythm section in concentrated blasts. It goes straight to your head.

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

At 34 minutes, The Foel Tower is a relatively brief window into the romantic and naturalistic world of Quade, but every second is made to count on this gorgeous record.

It’s the Arkestra’s second outing without their titular leader, who relocated to Saturn twenty-seven years ago, and like 2020’s Swirling, this does justice to his remarkable legacy and is a fine addition to an unfathomably vast discography.

Seven Steps Behind requires being listened to in a relaxed manner without anticipation, treating the whole as potent, highly dynamic background music.

Feel their energy flowing through your mind. Satisfaction guaranteed.

As ever with compilations of almost-lost treasures such as this, it is the certain out of time quality that is its greatest attribute.

It would be a stretch to say that this album is easy going, but it’s probably the most accessible of his records. It’s exciting to find such an artist trying out more populist forms.

With Safe, Visionist has created a work so forward-thinking it's positively post-modern.

Disappears are intent on creating rhythms and atmospheres that are endlessly claustrophobic, and Irreal proves to be an exercise that is as gruelling and exact on its audience as it is on the participants--an aural dystopia of shifting, unfathomable paradigms that seem to exist merely to paralyse, to captivate, to control--but the reward is hugely cathartic.

Even in its most unsettling moments, such as the silent gaps that punctuate the synth notes on closer ‘Bow of Perception’, Ecstatic Computation retains a sense of expanding horizons and joyful experiments.

Both a graceful tribute and a testament to these musicians’ questing vision.

This is unabashedly retro-stuff, cut from the same silken cloth as Timbaland and Noah Shebib. But that’s no bad thing. Rochelle makes the sound her own, effortlessly. Some music is just cool, plain and simple.

While seeing any bit of vulnerability in Friday’s work does make her more relatable, it’s the woman who titled her debut EP Bitchpunk that dominates Good Luck, and her attitude is a lot of fun. ... Friday attacked her debut like she was born ready, and it’s fully convincing that she was.

An album that ought to be regarded as a creative peak for Suede, easily reaching the heights of their 90s best.

Hidden mysteries of not, it’s impossible to be anything but charmed by this record.

Coming Out Of The Fog is an album of light and shade and one that benefits more from what's not in it than is.

Malamore is an album full of standouts, and a step in the direction of greatness.

This is an album that knows just how toxically repellent it is and it's this self-assured ferocity that makes for such an enjoyable whirlwind of a listen.

Dead Channel Sky doesn’t introduce any radical new ideas and rather stays with the source material. However, in times when Gibson’s futures have already aged and some of his villains shape politics, Clipping revoke cyberpunk’s countercultural charge with extraordinary energy.

So what you have is an album that's very recognisably Ed; the Steve Gullick photography, the tipsy melancholy and romance, the ballads... but without the need for too many frills it sounds complete, nine gorgeous songs that sit beautifully together.

The result of this apparent simplicity far exceeds expectation: The pop-informed songwriting of Quasi oozes among creepy, distorted noises, feedback and hypnotising pulses in long, composite songs, at times made of two different parts.

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.

Some might feel that at 55 minutes and 17 tracks and with so much going on, Shook is perhaps a little long. Yet to these ears it never feels bloated and it’s hard to see what might be pruned without losing some of the record’s impact.

Crash Recoil is as taut and sinewy as anything he’s done, yet there’s a certain looseness here too, a contemporary, accessible feel that suggests that by trying new things to break out of a creative rut, Surgeon is once again pushing the genre forward.

As the album progresses, new textures arise in contrast with the previous tracks, keeping the sprawling 80-minute runtime unpredictable and intense.

Though a double album of 80 minutes, Reflektor feels shorter than The Suburbs, and better paced.

Of Desire is the duo's most widescreen statement to date and one that blends cinematic sweeps with the post-punk sensibilities of Joy Division at their most glacial and The Cure at the height of their early 80s lysergic anguish.

Building Something Beautiful For Me is a gentler listen by comparison [to 2019's For You and I], with some anger still there – just distilled into something more gleaming and triumphant.

Comradely Objects is, in Horse Lords’ telling, a more studio-assembled record than late-2020 predecessor The Common Task, but the result is less ‘digital’ in sound. ... Horse Lords’ interest in “rural American guitar and banjo styles” is a matter of record, but this deployment of them is a fine new horizon.

Where Bridges felt like extensions of his legendary freeform live set, Reeling Skullways is far tighter in focus and execution.

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.

As a whole, Viewfinder is Eisenberg’s most ambitious statement yet, and a testament to their range as an artist.

A History Of Every One deposits its listener right up close, and seemingly the improvisations are adapted to take that into account.

Evidence is an impressive addition to their existing body of work.

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.

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.

For all their compositional and audible dissimilarities, each group of tracks represents a strident argument for the place of the human and the instinctive even amid finished pieces which, at first exposure, may read as more electronic than organic. .... Throughout each EP there’s audible glimpses of the rooms the live performances took place in: shouts and applause being the obvious ones, the sense of space and warmth more felt than heard.

Sonic Citadel is Lightning Bolt at their most poppy and accessible.

While in lockdown, Bad Bunny decided to step out of the box and explore new music to mix with Latin trap, coming up with fresh sound narratives and reaffirming his ‘lawbreaker’ reputation in an otherwise rather boring reggaeton scene.

With Plainly Mistaken, Nathan Bowles has stepped out of the Black Twig Pickers’ shadow and demonstrated his vitality in forging new routes through old-timey music.

Luckily, the balance of ideas and effort that run throughout Surrender show a band back in top form after long spell off, perhaps the best of their decade plus existence.

Lyrically, Stumpwork triumphs over anything produced by their contemporaries, but that might have been to the detriment of the music, which bravely evades the instrumental vitality of their debut. But it is an album rooted in grief – specifically the grief that comes from losing a loved one – and with that knowledge, Stumpwork suddenly makes a lot more sense.

While it’s so clearly a record about loss, it’s not one that reverberates with grief. In fact there’s a joy in the bold, restless exploration – messing with the machines until something human came out. And there’s also a joy in treasuring Parker’s memory.

[Stott's] sound is so much more finely honed, well defined, better executed, yet left frayed around all the right edges.

WINK is CHAI’s most comforting listen to date, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left behind the fun or the bold, animated bite of it all. Instead, it’s a record that builds on everything they’ve done before, understanding their strengths together as a group and then growing something more immersive and insightful from it – all while remaining deliciously joyful.

Silence Yourself is the manifestation of a formidable spirit, a sense that everything they do is done with great purity of intent, and a brilliant sex, life and death album of a kind rarely seen these days.

Taylor is also creating epic pop from this mess, and the soundworld she has built with her producer, Johan Kalberg, is her lyrical support system. ... The uneasy stuff is louder this time around – beefier, darker – but Taylor has twisted it to become a solid component of her strength.

This is a progressive, accessible album that could take Tame Impala to the next level, or the mainstream, whichever comes first. Not bad work for a directionless layabout.

It’d be easy to assume the reason Every Bad sounds so vital is because its raw, agitated songs are the perfect soundtrack for these blighted times, built to be played while the world’s never-ending dumpster fire burns hotter and hotter. But it’s also got a slicker, more muscular sound than 2016’s home-recorded Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers.

The Gamble is an engaging opening salvo, which one hopes will become the first statement of an ongoing narrative.

The ground covered on Black to the Future is immense. The visceral passages really slash deep, the moments of unbridled energy are exhilarating, and the meditative moments reach crescendos of total beauty.

An album on which Underworld reestablish themselves as supreme dance music architects.

Over time, I found the album to be stickier than its first impression. The pensiveness of its approach is, after all, an effective rendering of the sense of crippling stillness which awaits in grief; periods of deep paralysis stirred only by sudden anguish or unexpected joy. Essex Honey isn’t about England, it’s about the mourning Hynes experienced there.

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

The overall impression is of a lamp shone directly into the darkened corners of Shackleton's music, casting all its hidden detail in sharp relief.

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

Ignoring the slight imperfections in the music itself – it strays into self-indulgence at times, as on ‘Honour’, which spends the second half needlessly stumbling around a relatively uninteresting rhythmic motif – Klein’s motivation for the record is deeply original, a fascinating example of what can happen when you shun precedent and subvert expectations. The result is truly compelling.

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.

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.

Although occasionally straying a bit too close to generic Afro-rock, the group still manage to keep it all on the right side of the classic sungura sound before mixing it up a bit on the final track.

A shining, distorted, expertly constructed, open-ended record, that might be Xiu Xiu’s best.

Heydarian’s approach in his second album is quite respectable. He makes no bold statements; and avoids falling into the trap of pseudo mysticism and over technicality. His music is subtle, mature, humble, and simple, yet worth exploring.

For all their three-pronged power and musical fluidity, Unwound didn't, perhaps, quite make music which transcended the genres, styles and subcultures it was associated with.... If nothing else, this two-hour compendium of righteous, often superlative noise demonstrates that they could also cater to dancin' feet, and ears looking to be bled like radiators.

Musically, Smith’s electronic extravaganza finds kinship with such auteurs as Fever Ray and Estonian producer Maria Minerva. From shimmering hypnagogic pop on ‘Both’ to playful 8-bit ‘What’s Between Us’, Gush is inventive and unpredictable.