Abandon is quite short for a full-length album, but its physicality and intensity leaves the listener exhausted in a way that doesn't require further expansion.

Musically, UK Grim is stark and austere and without embellishment, but combines the melodic reach of their last album with the pulsing minimalism of the Austerity Dogs era. It angrily counters the corporate pop that forces us to be joyful, but it’s not without its own brand of optimism.

Upbeat, curious, and inquisitive, Cloudward makes for a great city walking album. It strikes the perfect balance between being jazz that’s not too impenetrable, while also being full of interesting surprises (primarily in terms of the language of Halvorson’s own playing).

Despite the inevitable ending, Amelia is an unexpectedly soothing record. This is largely down to Anderson having a calm, meditative quality to her voice that holds steady whether the arrangement is minimalist or intense. But much of the relaxing quality of the album is also related to Anderson’s ability to look at a figure frequently only cast in tragedy and mystery as a whole person.

Their fifteenth album Nonetheless doesn’t measure up to the friskier mid-’10 releases Electric and Super – the melodies are often wan and Neil Tennant’s delivery is uncharacteristically stilted – but the Boys are old friends. They amuse and move us. Their foibles are familiar.

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.

Tyler's latest album remains ambiguous and uncertain, however.

Gainsborough seems to be testing not only what his crude instrumentation can withstand, but also his listeners. For all the physical exertion though, the album sounds surprisingly sexless and apathetic at times.

R Plus Seven is music that's more programmed than performed. But behind that programming is a very human kind of agency, pushing the right buttons. Amidst an excess of prosumers, Lopatin proves here to be an actual pro.

Cave is always the first to give fulsome credit to his band, and they aim true here in the most explorative, coherent and well-realised Bad Seeds album in years.

Autumnal, witty, sad, lovely and very, very English The Violence is the high watermark of Hayman's career and one of the finest British releases of 2012, a record that neither floats, nor drowns, but soars.

Unlike most things that labour under an impression of being overly, scarily brainy, it is anything but difficult to love Lese Majesty.

The passive listener will find 11 slices of instant utter serenity on Sea Island, while a deeper listen reveals a starkly depicted, and often dramatic ocean voyage, haunted by memories from back on dry land.

This is a remarkable record--it is wildly experimental and as comforting as a soft embrace. The most interesting art almost always has a sense of duality, and Slowly Paradise is no different; where it radically differs is in the lack of combat between those opposing forces.

These compositions are haunting because Grouper gives them space to breathe.

Movement is one of those lovely surprises that makes you think, "Of course that's how music should sound right now".

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.

This album, then, is a gleeful surprise, and though it is debatable whether it would make the same sense for a listener coming to Perrett cold, for those who already know what to look for it is as gently persuasive as it is shyly moving.

With Redemption, Jay Rock elevates the level of his artistry while creating resonating tunes.

Most of the album sounds like a kaleidoscope of every “indie” rock archetype, to the point that, whilst it's never debatable that Monomania is a Deerhunter record, you still find yourself thinking of Silversun Pickups, The Black Keys, The Flaming Lips or Arcade Fire, not necessarily with positive comparisons in mind.

Short Movie stretches its cohesive motifs through all thirteen tracks, without sticking to a plot or forced narrative structure. Instead, the themes of self-reflection and search for belonging and identity move you wantonly through the album.

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.

If you’re welcoming another wired morning, indulging in orgiastic dance floor exploits, or simply want to lose your head, Decius have got you more than covered.

Hamdan stays true to her musical roots while capturing the anguish of our times. She balances grief with persistence, tempering pain and disappointment with the experimental grooviness she’s known for

Whatever the aural equivalent of a spectacle might be, that's Mutant, which firmly establishes its creator as an auteur.

The album is spacious yet claustrophobic, improvisatory yet focused. You find something new with each return visit.

The long tracks here are hard to experience or hold in memory as entireties-- too big, too detailed, too multiple.... Which makes what comes afterwards more genuine: the two shorter tracks (relegated to a dropped-in 7" on the vinyl version) each explore a moment that would have formed part of the succession of the longer pieces, probing atmospheres of breakdown, exhaustion and drift as if opening up the microcosmic heart of their work.

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

A bleakly beautiful collection of compelling brevity, and while it exercises several demons across its ten tracks, it remains very much possessed by a singular spirit: that of an artist continuing to rise, even if he has to dig down uncommonly deep before springing past his peers.

The sense of meticulous balance that dominates 'The Dream' permeates MSOTT.

Spread over four LPs, this Warm Leatherette box set is an exhaustive compilation that thankfully doesn’t dip in quality for the wealth of what’s on offer. For any Grace Jones fans this is as definitive as it gets, though it will take some serious powers of discernment to differentiate between LP one and LP two.

Tough Baby is dedicated to the idea that if you cut out the middleman and leave a group of people to their own devices – giving them uninhibited, creative freedom – it can yield profound results, and in the case of Crack Cloud, timely masterpieces rooted in hope rather than despair.

This makes for what might be the most polished album in the Neubauten canon, though one band’s polish is another’s poison. There are still interjections of metal perc here (played by N U Unruh) or electric drill (played by Rudolph Moser) there, and if it’s a less dangerous record than some of its predecessors, that’s mainly in the health and safety sense.

Across 24 tracks, he meditates on the journey that has got him to where he is now, but also succeeds in looking ahead to a hopeful future, pointing to various chapters of his creative development along the way.

The entire album is a feast for the senses, its production DIY yet lush, kitsch yet rich.

Highly Deadly Black Tarantula has a strange unease to it, an air of what's almost unfinished-ness. Which is not to say that it doesn't function, successfully, as a complete whole; but much like movies made with incredibly strong first and final reels, it rather loses its direction around the midway point, necessitating commitment on the part of the listener to see the experience through.

When a partnership between such bold artists can endure for decades in spite of individual prerogatives, you can be assured it’s deep and real, and as Mazurek and Taylor each continue to expand their own practices, Chicago Underground Duo only gets richer.

Each track here has a distinct and complementary topography. Places to explore, spend time in, and marvel at. The Necks remain at the top of their game.

ATOMOS is certainly a sensitive and thoughtful piece of work on its own, but the ultimate success of the listening experience is in its ability to stir an emotional reaction, and impose a state of thoughtfulness on the listener--and presumably on the dancer too.

The album doesn’t feel like a compilation though and works well as a whole, even though it covers a lot of ground.

The voices are huskier, the music juicer, the innocence of yore starting to chip away as Paradise sees them explore the dark side of vice and life. They're are all the better for it.

A soup of electronic interference, exhausting percussion and smothering bass-cloud. It's stultifying like a bad case of screen fatigue; tangled and sparking - the sound of frazzled, short-fusing nerve ends.

Divide And Exit is a record that demands you sit up and pay attention, unable to do anything else while it's on, a ticker-tape of frustration and smart tension blocking out peripheral vision.

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.

Under the Sun is well crafted, interrogating the listener and experimental where it needs to be, gifting you with something to gain throughout.

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.

Yes, it really does nod towards Sound of Music and backs this cleverly with an illuminating barrage of steely industrial noise. Of course, the album will only truly explode into life when it surges into the live arena. A lavish and unique operatic gothic party that promises, as ever, to be a scream.

It's ambitious, personal, unusual and, crucially, touched with brilliance.

Although Blood Lust remains their crowning achievement to date, Mind Control's highlights shine just as true.

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.

One of their most rewardingly mysterious and perplexing releases in quite some time.

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

Although slightly more intricate, the artist’s second offering shows her boldly stepping further into the do-it-yourself territory where a sense of home plays a major role.

There is a dichotomy at play of denser, more distorted electronics at one pole and soft, minimalist arrangements at the other; gauzy sounds cut against metallic harshness within songs and across the album. But with this expansive approach, Afternoon X feels focused and cohesive.

Thematic and tonal dexterity accounted for, The New Sound is undeniably an entertaining body of work which highlights Greep’s strengths as a singular songwriter and performer. However, there are instances (the bizarre final minute of ‘Walk Up’) where Greep throws too many ideas at one song, resulting in misaligned structures.

For longstanding Mega Bog fans, Life, and Another immediately stands out as one of Birgy’s finest records from start to finish. There’s a maturation to the stylistic choices and general trajectory of the instrumentation.

It's a fine and enjoyable listen, and it's certainly Lone's most consistent album to date, but at times it can't help but feel slight.

I suspect that you'll be unlikely to come across a better mixed and more punchy summary of current underground dubstep this year.

Flatland feels perfectly formed out of the clay of a multitude of styles, and, with rhythms this tight, it's something of a triumph, even if it reflects nothing back but strobe lights.

Like all Zedek's music it leaves you reeling with questions, the perfect balance between the dead-ends of despair and the realisation that this turbid onward drift, eternally unresolved and unrequited, is perhaps our only option.

Their bravest and strongest work to date.

There’s an endearing earnestness permeating Tuttle’s amble through the various landmarks of his beloved Alexandra Hills. Along the way, his arrangements, in a stream-of-conscious flow, create a childlike wonderment depicted in Miyazaki’s films, providing a restorative portal of escapism.

Using mournful drones, haunting vocal arrangements and the judicious inclusion of foley-type sound effects, Cotton communicates not simply the details of the story but the emotional journey of its characters.

A Firmer Hand is such a thrilling listen because it eschews the platitudes of empowerment for something far more gritty, tough, self-critical – yet also unafraid to dish it out.

DePlume composed, arranged and recorded each of the songs on A Blade. The result of a departure from his usual method of siphoning off the best parts of long improvised sessions, is a meticulous, focused record.

In an era of genre-less music, it’s nice to hear an album that does one thing and does it well, capturing a landscape so old it never really gets old.

This Material Moment, is her most accomplished and inventive yet.

Once you allow it to sink in, WIXIW becomes a hushed collection of voices.

No era sólida travels to cavernous spaces, occupying an ethereal landscape that is deep inside an unknowable earth. Its final title track crystallises with Dalt singing in Spanish, moving out of her made-up language, the dissolution finally coming into sharp focus.

Each track is a universe of its own, doing what art should do: using its own virtual space as an experimental testing ground to try those limits of taboo and impossibility that remain limited IRL. ... Cavalcade may prove to be one of the most accomplished albums of 2021; future classic of a happily undefined now-core genre. Humanity, level up. If they are giving us any taste of the immediate future, let the roaring twenties roll.

Alasdair Roberts is not quite the equal of Spoils in terms of songwriting and is hardly as colourful as A Wonder Working Stone, but it is perhaps his most relaxed and effortless album to date.

It doesn't necessarily break down the boundaries of rock music, but it sure gives them a good kicking.

This is a brave album about how to move on from grief. It’s challenging but totally compelling.

If Learning was a private primal scream, Put Your Back N 2 It is Mike Hadreas' first public display of his escalating talent.

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.

This is an album that resists being the Other, but also resists even entering into a discourse that would consider that the only position. It is music innately of itself, and a privilege to hear, even at a considerable distance.

While not quite the gang of four of old, they are all pulling in the same direction and, even for the most casual Blur fan, that is a glorious thing.

As a whole, the record achieves something remarkable: a comeback record that overcomes the fractures and scars of its creation without trying to ignore them, a near-complete revival of the band’s former powers, and a bold delve into epic new territory.

Throughout these thirteen songs, Big Joanie leave no stone unturned sifting through fresh backdrops in which their ethos resonates. And for the larger part, they brandish vision and resourcefulness aplenty in this all-embracing quest.

Across seven songs, she builds an intimate ecosystem of sound: an act of re-inhabiting the body through vocal layering, breath and harmony.

I hated this kind of Lemonheads-lite, floral-dressed, clompety-booted, neurotic ninny inanity the first time round, I have absolutely no idea how anyone could be arsed to expend the (admittedly small) effort it takes to produce such a pointless photocopy ... [but] not even I can find it in my bitter heart to hate the Nickelodeon-Dinosaur Jr bounce of "Georgia" or the honey-toned amble of "Suicide Policeman".

Much like religious experience, the constellations of songs here (and their brethren on the two prior albums) rely on an intensely relatable core, a simple idea or feeling sizzling at the center that anyone can attach to. From there, the instrumentalists ripple out in meditative layers, never covering over or distracting from it, but rather reinforcing.

There's such a beautiful combination of elegance and exploration in this debut--Greenwood has created one of the best and most confident debuts in years, and you'd do well to bend your ears around it's intricate and delightfully planned out wonder.

From start to finish, A Common Turn takes you through Savage’s liberating highs, all whilst throwing you her turbulent lows – a raw and emotive album, to say the least.

On the whole, though, call Transcendental Youth a stumble and wait for the next Mountain Goats release next year.

Sleeping Through The War is a slow burning experience but once that fire is lit then there’s no putting it out.

The thirteen tracks that make up the album are wonderfully wonky. They are also incredibly catchy, with subtle sci-fi tinges to them. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the South London post-punk outfit. On All Fours is the strongest release to date.

Where acts like Grouper or Lee Noble seem to be deconstructing song altogether, Barnes seems to be engaged in a more subtle exercise, assembling strands of song formats into elliptical constructions with absolute precision.

The whole album is a cabinet of curiosities to discover and decipher.

A Wonder Working Stone is the work of a songwriter at the top of his game; inspired by tradition but equally inspired to break from it, fired by collaboration and freed to follow his muse wherever it may soar, like the ptarmigans that spread their wings through several of these songs.

Though they are very different albums, one way that Love carries on where Through Donkey Jaw left off is that it is deeply hypnotic.

Fabric 91 deserves to linger in the public consciousness: it feels like a statement, a carefully curated bridge between past and present that evokes atmosphere and emotion.

Everything here is distorted. Everything as resonant as it can possibly be. Sharpened, infinitely intensified and yet simultaneously blunted and blurred. There is just the right amount of detail.

Much like her previous work, the imperfections, leftfield leanings, and laidback nuances of the lo-fi aesthetic on Colourgrade demonstrate that modern love songs can hit places you never thought they had the integrity to ever reach.

Ultimately, a record is never going to change the world, but FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE might finally put an end to the fallacy of Eno as the “non-musician”.

Svengali is a seductive and playful accumulation of influences, interspersed with short interludes or skits that Cakes has said are real messages from lovers.

Opener ‘London’ carries the ethereal quality of a psychedelic haze, beckoning listeners into Gwenno’s world of underground campfires and whispered wizardry. ‘Dancing on Volcanoes’, the delightfully playful lead single.

It’s no Paris 1919, and it’s no Vintage Violence either. You, as the listener, will be required to do some work. To call Mercy a slog would be dismissive and unduly harsh; challenging would be more appropriate. Given that we are in the presence of the 80-year-old godfather of avant-rock, you know that persistence will be its own reward eventually.