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.

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

Especially during this first cut, there are glimpses of rawness in the playing of the group, moments when they seem unsure of which direction to take. But it’s exactly this unpredictability that makes the quartet’s evocative sounds thoroughly captivating.

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

Any fears that the band is skimping after such a delay between releases are soon allayed once the music starts, for what we have here is a high concentration of ideas that punch well above their supposed weight.

Only ‘It Will Never Be Simple’ (at 2:32) feels a little like padding. Overall though, this is the pinnacle so far of the current GBV reformation, reaching in parts the high calibre of classic era albums like Alien Lanes and Under The Bushes Under The Stars.

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.

The whole album wobbles with the uncertainty of potential. The composition tumbles between folk, pop, techno and computer music. Sometimes it’s unrefined like the untethered looping of ‘Bridge’ and sometimes dazzling and terrifying like ‘Crawler’, a track that builds toward the edge of sentience--but it’s never short on ideas.

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

His vocals never really gel with the music--he mutters and spouts over the top, as ever sounding like he’s having some difficulty keeping jaw attached to his skull while sucking on a gobstopper.

There are flourishes that hint the singer is still capable of reaching those heights in pop that few ever reach, moments when she still sounds like she’s actually having a good time recording the songs. Unfortunately, these moments are all too fleeting. When Hurts 2B Human works, its great. It reminds you why Pink is such a big star. When it doesn’t, it hurts.

Designer is both self-referential and evolutionary. ... There's more to chew on here than you'll find in many records released this year. It's with one eye staring into the past and the other firmly fixed on the future that Aldous Harding presents this mysterious, complex and intelligent work--a third essential in as many albums.

Musically speaking, radical reinvention isn't Oozing Wound's raison d'etre, so don't expect a new version of the wheel. Instead, there’s willful progression, incremental growth, and renewed focus. After the sprawling Whatever Forever, High Anxiety's comparatively concise seven-track, thirty-four-minute runtime feels super concentrated and highly potent, calling to mind the band's previous high-water mark, Earth Suck. But High Anxiety is no rehash.

Fearless and witty--an incredible album from start to finish, perfect for long days and ever longer nights.

It’s a bold claim to suggest No Geography with its reasonably brief (for them) 46 minutes is up there with the controlled chaos and warped psychedelia of their earlier work, but it is. With its unifying themes of freedom, unity and attack, channelled via the medium of boom and sirens, it really is. After the best part of 30 years, there’s still no one else like them. Amazing.

It is left to the listener to piece through these lyrical asides to find meanings of his or her own rather being led by the nose, which only makes Ancestor Boy all the more thrilling, especially when its driven by such an effective, powerful production.

Jones's second album with current outfit The Righteous Mind is driving, high-energy, distorted guitar music designed to shake 2019 out of its apathetic gloom and get it up and dancing, alive and ready to take on the world.

The lofty narrative brought to life by a collection of captivating soundscapes where visions of bliss are pockmarked by blotches of the quotidian. It rarely dips into the relentless optimism of utopian discourse but that makes this project all the more compelling; there's trouble in paradise but Efdemin's got it covered.

17 year-old Eilish has gone deeper into the weirdo-pop trench. Together with co-collaborator brother and producer Finneas O’Connell, she has drawn on trap and industrial pop to create a darkly humorous record about romance, rejection and addiction.

It's Real is a beefier, buffed-up expansion of the debut's rough-hewn sound, but the added polish doesn't nerf Ex Hex's powers as much as it re-energises them.

The tracklist, and the fleet-footed manner in which Halo mixes these selections, provides an excellent snapshot of 2019 dance music, one that is being propelled by a unrelenting tide of weirdness. It never quite reaches superlative highs or lows but it ticks along tirelessly, getting better with repeated listens.

What These New Puritans offer with Inside The Rose is something rich, deep and warm, constantly shifting, challenging. This is art for the head, for the heart, for the soul.

If you encounter this in a club and can pontificate, or even stay still, then you’re made of sterner stuff than I.

It's rich and hypnotic, but it's not an easy listen: the gloom of many of the tracks will feel oppressive to some.

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.

While some of the music drifts a little close to the milky reassurances of New Age music (‘Praying for Mother / Earth Part 1’ places seemingly random plinking notes over the top of rippling running water that challenges the listener to not run to the loo), other tracks, such as ‘Variation – III’ by Masashi Kitamura + Phonogenix, move gorgeous ambient chords around the sound of waves licking the shoreline, a peace punctured occasionally by a chū-daiko drum to wholly peaceful affect. Together, the twenty three tracks here promote a warmth that feels somewhere close to paradise.

While there has was never any doubting their psychedelic influences and their way with a groove, Wraith offers something more. Full of variety and unpredictability, like the best science fiction it maps out a dreamworld of our times, a tonic against the deathly thoughts of the small hours.

Little Simz' third studio album, Grey Area, sees her swing confidently through the duality of youth to harness the harshest of her vulnerable, raw moments, and the best savage, wisdom-weaponry, giving each reflection on herself pride and place on this record.

It is a record at once dark and joyous, fun and foreboding, gleeful and eerily apocalyptic. Curiously, it may also be the group’s most ‘organic’ record to date, an album whose every beat and every blip seems to question our sense of the real and the fake, the human and the alien.

In this time when dank edgelords across techno and industrial music are still flogging the dead SS cavalry charger of suspect aesthetics and prissy growling, it's refreshing to listen to a record where you've never a doubt that the sturm-und-drang is in aid of righteous causes. May the Test Dept cogs keep on grinding.

Death Becomes Her is an album from an artist who in now beginning to realise her possibilities, not just as a producer but as a performer, and as such she wants to get everything out there, squeezing every last idea into the album. And sometimes her take on pop music might be a little too abrasive to reach the playlists of many a commercial pop station… for now.

Sleaford Mods' eleventh album is a remarkable leap on from 2017's English Tapas, a record of consolidation that addressed the strange situation that the duo found themselves in--going from a niche concern more accustomed to playing alongside noise artists suddenly given column inches and selling out massive venues. This progress has come hand in hand with a keener knack for more fully developed tunes to bolster Williamson's hectoring. It is also, frequently, a hilarious record.

A masterpiece of sound design, that's no backhanded compliment. This album is the sort of sound design record that more sound artists should aspire to make.

There's nothing fetishistic, voyeuristic, or pathetically ambiguous here, more an outpouring of disgust that we seem to be in similarly horrendous times again. There are moments of beauty here too, of course, for that contrast has always been a hallmark of Jamie Stewart's songwriting, and what makes Xiu Xiu bleed where others merely pose.

It's not a perfect album by any means, but I don't think it wants to be. It just wants to, be. Musically it walks a proverbial tightrope and often loses balance. The beauty, however, is in the moments when it does fall. Because for every time Mazy Fly falls from the sky, there is always a safety net on standby briefly followed by the next enthusiastic trapeze flip in Chrystia Cabral's psychedelic circus of one.

This record is perhaps the first time we see Drenge exploiting the additions that were initially made to their live band, and exploring the expanded instrumentation to its full potential.

In Search Of The Miraculous is a new way of being for Desperate Journalist: a rangy and colourful artwork, less insular than what has come before, and testament to its creators' increasingly fearless outlook.

TUTTI feels retrospective in the sense that Cosey Fanni Tutti doesn't introduce anything strikingly unfamiliar to her sonic palette here, with its ambient closing tracks a retread back to Time To Tell. TUTTI though is essential in that it marks Cosey Fanni Tutti as the auteur of her own sound world, as well as being a strong facilitator, artist and collaborator.

State Of Run doesn’t reinvent the wheel: it touches on the arch grandeur of Varg, the trap-leaning stutter of Planet Mu labelmates Sinjin Hawke and Zora Jones, and the deconstructive spirit of 2013/14-era Goon Club Allstars. But the trio’s attention to detail shines through, and the full-length format gives them space and time to execute their rich visions.

It is the kind of album you can listen to 1000 times, and on every single play a new intricacy will be revealed. The mark of genius is that despite this it never feels overburdened or complex. It is, put simply, an extremely ace pop record.

Ideal Woman does one thing and it does it well; throbbing, furious guitars and unpretentious, fierce lyrics.

Quiet Signs, as sparse and subtle as its name suggests, shares its secrets only with those willing to give their complete and undivided attention in exchange.

Nothing feels hashed out in haste or haze; every beat, clatter and hiss is perfectly orchestrated. The recordings sound cavernous--this album envelops you, and everything is in its right place. The beauty of Sequence is how deftly Rattle guide you into a narrow slipstream that somehow ripples out into an infinity.

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.

This album isn’t a call-to-arms or doom merchantry, but rather a poetic statement of fact--short stories of and for the anthropocene, the product of a resignation to our inevitable demise.

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.

Senyawa have consistently and carefully focused on ways to play and record their two sound sources to arrive at a fusion whose weight belies their minimal sonic elements; with Sujud they have made one of the heaviest and most seductive albums of the year.

Tender and defiant, it pays respect to its history while resolutely facing the future.

Powerhouse, is not solely a political statement. Instead, it is simply a story of queer existence. From childhood to present day, the album floats between chanting expressions of self-certainty, to intimate biographical snippets. Rather than looking for approval, Planningtorock, is laying out their experience and listeners can take it or leave it.

Although Cocoon Crush finds Hertz pushing in a more organic, expressive direction than on Flatland, it’s a record that is still stamped with his distinctive quirks--thanks no doubt to his studious self-editing--as he continues to chart a path as one of current electronic music’s most consistent producers.

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.

It doesn't have the polish of 2015’s La Vie Est Belle, but is more daring in its exploration of its diasporic soundscapes.

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.

It’s an album made for obsessives to dissect, component by component. But independent from the technical obsession, Ishibashi creates a clear narrative through the album.

TVAM’s debut album looks both backwards and forwards, drifting in a somnambulant hinterland of psychic anxiety. It conveys a disgust for our regurgitated culture while pilfering with abandon; it’s a cerebral endeavour, and it’s also a peach to dance to.

At times Soap&Skin recalls Fever Ray, not in sound but in essence: something dark, oblique and stinging lies at the core; both artists combine an emphatic sense of place with molten identity.

A Laughing Death In Meatspace is by no means easy listening: the playing is off-kilter, strange bursts of noise erupt from instruments, songs dissolve into a maelstrom of noises; the production, mixing and mastering bear traces of the album’s speedy composition and release; and the lyrics invite us to contemplate, without histrionics or self-deception, precisely how fucked we all are. It’s hot with anger and full of ugly truths about the ways we live our lives; and the effect is compelling.

In other hands an album as disparate and scattershot as this would fall flat, its moments of brilliance muddied by misfires. This is not one of those records.

Magus is fairly free of wild excess or brain-flaying drama. It is Thou’s most traditionally and accessible metal album so far, with a series of rewarding riffs scattered across the record.

Where Have You In My Wilderness faithfully stuck to pop structures and verse-chorus-verse dynamics, Aviary appears through-composed, as though its songs were written purely according to whatever felt like the right thing to do next, and not dictated by any of Holter’s more traditionalist habits. This doesn’t make it a difficult listen, though--this is an album steeped in beauty, a celebration of sound.

Polwart’s inventiveness is unfettered on Laws Of Motion, but the result is not only musically and instrumentally rich, but uncommonly focused. Music for our times.

This is her strongest album to date and one where “noise” is but a tool towards a much more expansive expression of music.

MITH is an insightful record, one that gives its listener pause and feels like a valuable artefact of our time.

Jassbusters is the first release where Mockasin is accompanied by a band--and it’s a revelation. His usual exaggeratedly washy, reverby sound is anchored and evolves into something fuller, groovier, twangier. ... Jassbusters deserves a big fat red marker pen A.

It’s a forward-thinking, innovative distillation of the zeitgeist that pushes things forward. Indeed, while he’s had a co-sign from Drake, in the Scorpion-era Octavian’s new mixtape Spaceman is the kind of vibe Aubrey wishes he could make.

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.

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

Throughout Fabriclive 100, Kode9 and Burial piece together their choices with little care for linearity or the kind of journey-led approach many might expect from a mix CD. Ambient interludes--many of them carrying Burial’s signature sound palette--weave in and out throughout the mix, perhaps bridging the gaps between the respective artists’ selections.

Wanderer, although not explicitly confrontational, subtly undermines this longstanding and limited perception of What Cat Power Is. Marshall herself sits in the producer’s seat, and gone is the gloss of 2012’s Sun; these 11 songs are stripped back to the sparse bones of piano, guitar and that distinctive, smoky, Southern States voice.

Mudhoney have released an astute, politically relevant and commendably fired-up garage punk belter of an LP. Aye, it blindsided me too.

The songs not only feel like they exist in a vacuum, but that they demand the listener create one too. It’s an important and serious album because it forces you to experience it as one, it asserts itself as the only thing you can concentrate on.

There is still a lightness of touch to Who Do You Love; however dense the writing gets, no matter how ludicrous and far-reaching in scope, it has enough of a knowing sense of its own bombast to prevent it from becoming po-faced.

The takeaway sensation of their epic and sprawling second record is quite simply one of pleasure. They embrace the ridiculous and the sublime in equal measure.

Negro Swan feels like a collection of personal and cultural traumatic memories, and it also feels like an embrace--a call for young queer people of colour to have hope, feel beautiful, and be filled all the way up.

Pastoral may be an album of satire, but it’s not the cheery-pallid rural parody of Cold Comfort Farm, Five Go Mad In Dorset or even Hot Fuzz. Gazelle Twin’s Pastoral jester bares its teeth with glee; its smile is part Punch and part the grotesque little homunculus of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’.

>>> might cast an eye on the same mood-inspiration material of 70s avant rock and 80s chilled post-punk, but this album is no trite, bland replication.

Deaths is particularly, brazenly haphazard: it was written and recorded briskly, around full-time jobs, and the results are thrillingly erratic without ever feeling rushed.

This is an immersive listen, full of eerie familiarity and suspended body horror; a quasi-mystical sense of oneness gives Anticlines cohesion and a sense of spiritual comfort, and somehow reminds of of the vast indifferent universe as we descend into environmental disaster.

This Behavior jitters with energy and swells with smart touches, and if Kuperus and Miller are still as dedicated as this album indicates, then maybe they don’t need you rubes anyhow.

Yves Tumor has let assertiveness, assuredness and vulnerability run wild within him for Safe In The Hands Of Love and the result is magisterial and deeply engaging.

[The title track is] a challenging conclusion to a beautifully crafted, exploratory piece of work.

Grande’s new sound, the Williams-produced Not-Bangers, only make up half of the album. These standout tracks are interspersed between standard pop tracks. ... That’s not to say that the Bangers on Sweetener are bad--it’s more that they belong in previous era of Grande and they spoil the flow between songs. Sweetener may not be the dawning of a new age for Ariana but it could be a step towards somewhere weird and wonderful.

Mitski’s devotion to music has resulted in a tremendously earnest and endearing record.

Joy as an Act of Resistance is a feature-length confirmation of what many have long suspected: channelled via frontman Joe Talbot, the Bristol five-piece are striking a midpoint between polemical and impactful, the grit of which few contemporary guitar bands have any odds of outdoing.

Hunter is a tempestuous album full of haunting, unsettling vocals; it resonates with evocative power.

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.

Don’t Look Away is a supremely confident album from a songwriter who has found his place and knows his music. It completes a trilogy which is essential listening for anyone who wants to hear why the psychedelic lineage of the past 50 years is fresh and alive.

By the album’s end, they seem to be stuck in a cul-de-sac. The next album, one hopes, will come along soon and help them out.

Astroworld is no Rodeo or Birds In The Trap Singing McKnight, but it’s a beautiful creation of sonically striking sounds.

These experimental techniques give Bachman's recordings a unique intimacy and a rare openness. His is a brave music of warmth, community and generosity.

This is a vital debut that captures a dark, uncertain time, but counters displacement--in all its forms--with grace, nerve, and a spine-tingling call to arms, and perhaps just as importantly, a call to dance.

Too strident to be remotely ambient, and too thoroughly liquid to be pure post punk, Sleepless is the kind of album you simply fall for, in a way that you embrace something that sounds familiar but almost aggressively fresh and vibrant; and like seductive but unnerving classics by Pink Floyd, PiL, Roedelius, Riley or Eno, it wraps you in fur but never quite allows you to relax.

At many points the overall effect is hypnotizing with the way musical phrases interlock; the sounds are unpredictably stimulating, and the storytelling is relatable without coming off cheesy. Hive Mind, as the name suggests, presents The Internet as the tightest they’ve ever been.

Despite the surfeit of sounds and samples in Powers’ productions, he’s made an album that can still breathe with moments of serenity amongst the freneticism, one that provides moments where the antagonistic, alienating sounds of modern life can be reworked to make something pleasing, even joyful to the ear.

That Cowboy Junkies are still making music this far down the line is to be applauded. That it ranks with the very best of their material deserves nothing less than an ovation.

Irisiri is an album that explores the concepts of femininity, technology and the how many non-conforming bodies end up falling between the cracks in the seemingly implacable poles of gender, sex and the human, all her songs display seemingly disparate contrasts of surrealist wordplay, with organic, fragile tones and cold, machinist grind, as she pieces and stitches them into idiosyncratic little monsters that at times bewilders, but ultimately beguiles you with their curiosity and playfulness.

The Switch confirms Body/Head as the best post-Sonic Youth project by a country mile, but to merely classify them as an afterthought of that group does them a great disservice.