Wide Awake still sounds like Parquet Courts, but it’s a far more colourful, warmer and bolder version of the band.

This is not as viscerally thrilling as many of his other releases; it is warm, it is something to quietly contemplate.

While there might be a pleasing inevitability to their sonic tryst--and even to its shagging-and-dying trajectory--there is nothing predictable about Here Lies The Body.

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

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.

This is a concise and clever record.

DNA Feelings is a beautiful follow-up to Of Matter And Spirit. Investigating what it is to be human, and how transcendency might happen today, Devi winds ideas together and crafts her own sonic spirituality.

Minus is a statement of intent from an artist who has found his voice and shaken off his past.

Every track on Grid Of Points is captivating.

Excellently crafted beats emerge throughout the album in tracks like ‘Neon Pattern Drum’, ‘Emerald Rush’--also released as a single--and most notably in the hefty ‘Everything Connected’, which Hopkins describes as a “massive techno bastard”.

Iceage’s efforts to expand their sound not only permeate this record, but make it their finest work to date. They have always been a more-than-capable band, but this album suggests they could one day be a great one.

With her third album Dirty Computer, that she’s truly achieved a tour-de-force. ... There are times though where Monáe’s feminism feels disappointingly cis- and vagina-focused--I wish she’d taken the time to explore the politics of non-cis women and non-binary people a little more. But Dirty Computer succeeds at what it came to do--it’s here to make you think, and it’s here to make you dance. It is the most clearly delivered result of Monáe’s vision so far.

Conquistador is recognisably cut from the same artistic mindset as Earth 2 or Primitive And Deadly but is as different from them as they are from each other. Each record Carlson releases, as Earth or under his own name, seems to both evolve from and react to the previous one.

Sleep are telling us they have been experimenting in the laboratory-studio on their rare strain of heavy music, turning the art of thundering stoner rock into a science. And with that fusion of the two cultures, this album delivers the monument to their craft they have long promised.

This a sensitively curated survey of Czukay’s many-splendoured oeuvre, and it makes a good case for Czukay as the OG granddaddy of modern German music.

An album that is dense, involving and rewarding.

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.

Where 2008’s Rubbed Out and 2014’s Await Barbarians saw him reconfiguring Hot Chip’s understated synth-soul with impressive results, Beautiful Thing bears the outline of transition rather than bold progress.

Hippo Lite is somehow softer, more palatable, indeed liter than DRINKS’s previous output, but not at the expense of the punchy attitude, the sense of humour, which has made them so captivating from the beginning.

This is not the Manics’ best album, but it is one of their most charming. As a document of where they stand it is endlessly fascinating.

The circular drum-like sculpture was intended to create an ever-changing architectural kaleidoscope of organic shapes and colours, but the 12 tracks do this on their own. They oscillate and breathe, melding in with the synapses of the listener and lulling them into a rapturous state.

Her delivery style at best gives delicious mile-a-minute tongue-twisters, enhanced by that distinctive New Yawhk-Latinx accent. The brash vitality of the way Cardi B spits is genuinely thrilling and potent.

With features like BIA, Jorja Smith, Reykon, Tyler The Creator and Bootsy Collins, Uchis’ debut is clearly meant to make a big impact, and her romantic-tragic persona complements it beautifully.

The record ends brilliantly with the superb one-two of ‘Trankil’, a truly brilliant pop track, and the immensely sympathetic ‘Aminiata’. The brisk, crisp, ‘that’s your lot’ ending on each of these two tracks somehow makes listening in so much more enjoyable.

There is nothing comfortable about these traditions, but the evident joy in each other’s skills pushes the three musicians to peaks of subtle innovation. What News is just the latest in a string of Alasdair Roberts albums which turn our idea of folk music upside down and give it back to us charged with a new potency.

McMahon examines masculinity, vulnerability and how cultural consumption converges with personal demons, and it has resulted in an album of immense integrity, defiance and beauty.

An immersive journey, to be sure, it’s one worth taking the time out for to experience in a single sitting.

Aside from sonics, the almost obsessive way in which the lyrical themes are fleshed out is another way in which this album is delightfully skewed.

While each of these tracks runs together almost seamlessly, the record is almost in danger of becoming a background presence. But there is a refreshing honesty to this consistency, prioritising texture and narrative over conventional structure or dancefloor impact. Long invites us to tune in and be moved, or to drop out and continue on as ever.

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.

Mr Dynamite combines something genuinely sinister with a sense of fun, and far from being a whimsical side project for its members, it can be regarded as a landmark release for all of them.

It's a remarkable record, a reminder of that Reich, unlike many composers of his era, has not become archive material. He continues to speak to the cutting edge of music, to experiment with new compositional directions, to be vital.

This album is a career highpoint for Sweden’s Skull Defekts.

Belief is an album for repeated listening, offering consolation, delight and reward in generous portions.

The title track and the genuinely brilliant ‘MetaGoth’ Stripped to the bone and not so much sung as intoned by Josephine Wiggs, this is one of the creepiest yet compelling compositions The Breeders have ever put their name to. From there on in, the album goes through a variety of fits and starts before descending into anticlimax.

This, without question, is the most effervescent and creative album of his extraordinary career.

This is Eggland is a relentless, heartfelt statement of intent. You wouldn’t bet against them unearthing glory from the fringe for decades to come.

Lala Belu finds 2018 Hailu Mergia fired up by the prospect of playing with other talented musicians. The resulting sound is more wild, unpredictable cocktail of ideas that make his past solo releases sound like the demo tapes they were.

The collaboration works wonders for both artists, as the textural beauty of Poliça is expanded with the added depth that s t a r g a z e bring.

This album strays towards monotony at times, but a plum guitar solo or a sweet-sharp lyric will always hook you back in. Shannon & The Clams are a band of cult status, and this album should expand that cult--it is their most powerful and poignant work to date.

Silver Dollar Moment’s vibrancy is at odds with the current mood of the world, but it’s also a vital indication of where we’re at now in terms of indie music’s trajectory. It shakes off any negative connotations of modern indie, particularly in the ‘landfill’ sense of the word, and reclaims it.

You might not have thought to put Anderson and Kronos Quartet together, but they did think of it, and the results are, in both the philosophical and the colloquial senses, sublime.

It turns out that Transangelic Exodus is a fitting title, then, for an artist emerging from his early career and crafting a new project that’s satisfying and unique.

Brutal yet cathartic. ... Consisting of seven relatively short pieces across 36 minutes, The Hands plays like a succession of scenes or vignettes all attempting to communicate some opaque and unsayable knowledge.

It is by no means perfect, and at points misjudged, but for the first time since the early 2000s we have a record that runs the gamut of what makes Franz Ferdinand great: it is an album full of character, craft and flair all at once.

An album of sedative songs fading between each other, it feels more like a notebook than an album with a defining concept. It is easier to tackle Vision Songs Vol. 1 as if it were a continual chant.

This album is an excellent opening entry into what will hopefully be a new series of releases from Kaukolampi, one which rewards returning visits to the places beyond the restrictions of both gravity and mundanity.

Mother finds the band tremendous on all fronts, but the rabid, manic excitement of ‘Only Love’ overshadows everything else. There are no other moments on the record like it, nothing as intensely unhinged or exciting. However lovely and affecting the rest of the record is, as it drifts further and further into more serene climes, the spectre of this extraordinary early blast grows in the back of your mind, and you're willing them to let go of their beautiful refinement just one more time.

In the years to come we might turn to Plumb or Measure before Open Here to remind ourselves of the essential Field Music, yet this, their seventh record, is nevertheless a thing of immense songwriting charm and ideological strength, defined by its sardonic judgement of various seismic social shifts.

Love Jail is no masterpiece, but Wilson and his bandmates' instincts are most often good. There are far worse roadtrip companions.

Total Control have crafted a sonic scroll that is freer, weirder, and tighter than anything they have put together before.

On Change, Cindy Wilson finally shares her formidable pop intelligence, unmediated.

On The House, Maine is vulnerable, honest and strong--he soars on this, his best album yet.

Songs Of Praise is an ambitious, ferocious debut from a band who might just have something new to say about being a (load of white men in a) guitar band.

In this transition from experimental noise that revels in randomness and discomfort, the album layers sound into intense, hypnotic rhythms that reveal compositional prowess.

Her latest creative effort, Tommy on Hyperdub Records, is the darker, more mature, older sibling to Lagata, and another firm exposition of her unique and extensive vocal ability and her creative, DIY production style.

It’s Alright Between Us As It Is is an album of variation. ‘But Isn’t It’ and ‘Shinin’ are weak, but this is a miscalculation in production and uninspired lyric writing, as opposed to anything which puts any lasting worry in our mind about Lindstrøm’s abilities. The work is not his most creative, he’s not redrawing any of the lines of genre which he himself first traced with previous works.

The Saga Continues is lacklustre. At times it ventures into sellout territory. It’s not a terrible album (maybe I’ll add a few tracks to my ‘Chill’ playlist) but it never breaks new ground and it never touches the magic of 36 Chambers. Instead, it settles in a slightly anaemic midpoint between nostalgia and commercial compromise.

On Romaplasm, Wiesenfeld seems to have finally made something that could pass as a pop record, exuberant in both its content and execution.

There are moments where Frost is clearly the architect and noise tamer, orchestrating becalmed undulations that offer repose, often of lament rather than of hope. ... Yet there are just as many moments when Frost lets his muse fuse with unadorned, unadulterated noise, creating arpeggios of tension that ratchet up steadily, the life raft tipping over, all feeling of equilibrium and control ripping away from the listener and composer both.

Saturation III is for the fans: their most abstract, their most experimental, and by far their weirdest.

Polygondwanaland is one of their strongest excursions yet, not just of this year but of any.

The songs are actually seven suites (on what is their seventh release) of kaleidoscopic, expansionist flailing and freedo(o)m, the only throughline being that they remain inherently odd and pleasurable.

Gallarais is a quiet album, but a deeply unsettling one.

This is Svenonius with just an electric guitar, a microphone, an analogue-sounding drum machine and a tape deck, creating the rawest and most stripped-back manifestation of his singular muse to date.

While the album itself falls short. The ambition is admirable, but what makes the songs commendable is their refusal to thrive. They are deeply melancholic. There's a focus on Rothman's drug addiction itself rather than the desire to resolve it, a resignation to dying rather than a desire to learn how to live.

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.

Utopia is not just an album about intimacy, it also expresses a degree of intimacy that goes beyond words--especially in the sense that her voice sounds so detailed here, and in the ways she works with Arca.

This is Svenonius with just an electric guitar, a microphone, an analogue-sounding drum machine and a tape deck, creating the rawest and most stripped-back manifestation of his singular muse to date.

The tropes of romantic art are self-consciously manipulated, but the artifice is made plain, and the finished work feels more real as a result.

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.

Rest is still the most French record you’re likely to hear all century.

One of the great successes of If All I Was is that it has the same levity as the anthems of the civil rights era.

Like most bumper collections of this nature, Savage Young Dü is not a starting point. Sensibly, one should swot up on Hüsker Dü’s complete 1984-86 output first, then dig into this box and its wealth of eyewitness anecdotes and photos of puppy-fattened band members. Historical context suitably delivered, toast the lifespan of a great rock band and burn one for the guy who didn’t see this release hit the shelves.

Wizard Bloody Wizard still rocks hard enough to justify the occasional rebellious upward glance from the existential trudge down the long spiral into nothingness that they evoke so bleakly, and so well.

Some listeners are bound to find this repetitive too, and nowhere near different enough from his previous work. Yet To Syria, With Love is also Souleyman’s heaviest and hardest record since Leh Jani back in 2011.

There are moments in The Kid where Smith’s ability to meld the electronic and the organic into a symbiotic web of sound and music is comforting and soothing, the harshness of modern noise and atonality sublimated into something that provides a balming comfort.

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.

It might be less daring than some of the other hankerings, but there’s no room for emotional snobbery on Plunge, no victory that’s not worth celebrating: those seized, stolen intimacies she’s grubbed around for, the flashes of desire and flushes of pleasure, are things to be savoured.

As a work that gathers up so much of what’s going on in modern dance and electronic music in 2017 and finds ways to make them click together, Mnestic Pressure feels like a game-changer, or at the very least a defining moment. Time will tell.

Eggleston cycles through separate fugue-like riffs, filling in transitions with electronic crescendos that lend the piece a cinematic energy.

A flame my love, a frequency is a modest, introspective album. It focuses on the small, the minute, turning inwards in the face of questions too large to grasp.

Love What Survives, with its seductive beats and incredible production, is a strong record that finally cuts Mount Kimbie’s ties with ‘post-dubstep’. If they can avoid falling into routine, their post-post-dubstep future looks exciting.

MASSEDUCTION defies expectation, defies definition and defies the very idea that definition can exist. It’s an album detailing the mess of identity politics and power structures, and yet it hits serious cohesive highs. There is no cookie-cutter remedy, no rallying cry, just a baker’s dozen viewpoints of the chasm where we once thought order, power, and meaning lived.

Aromanticism is an exquisitely well-crafted piece of work, which retains a delicate complexity despite its minimalism.

Despite the fact that listening to one of their albums in full feels like a 40-minute bludgeoning, there’s something oddly heart-warming at play here. Unsane are not chameleons or shapeshifters but rather stoic veterans unashamed to continue honing a sound many would argue they perfected decades ago.

The remastering job here is superb and the nine previously unheard tracks are an joy to discover--1992-2001 is nigh-on perfect as an introduction to one of pop's best ever kept secrets. Unlock it and wander all year long, then seek out what full-lengths you can find. In Acetone, you've got yourself a lifelong companion.

Wand are a special band, and the new emotional range suits them.

While it’s a release that might disengage fans of her more sub-rosa earlier material of yore, Zola Jesus has evolved into an artist where pop--born from a need to mend from trauma or otherwise--is no longer a recurrent secondary descriptor, but a primary one. Danilova has loosened the shackles that have made this remarkable metamorphosis possible.

1992 Deluxe is a powerful starting point from which the “New York aficionado” can further hone and refine her sound. For longtime Princess Nokia fans, is is also the climax of a five-year crescendo and satisfying evidence that she has retained her powerful sense of self.

For the most part Hiss Spun comprises what can be succinctly described as downtempo dirges with a handful of diversions. ... Whether this reliance on slow burners is a good thing will largely depend on your appetite for diversity. Arguably the weakest aspect of Hiss Spun is the hit-and-miss nature of its ability to land blows to your gut--a goal which tends to be fundamental to music of this stripe.

Multi-Task doesn’t rock the boat too much; if anything it is more streamlined, less abrasive, ready to be swallowed whole.

This album, more than any punk tune, is the sound of the suburbs; rather than being from the suburbs, it sounds like the suburbs. If you think that’s no recommendation, just hear it. There is beauty here, and sadness, and peril, and deep, deep soul.

The second half of the album lacks the spirit of its first two transcendent tracks. ... But, for those first 19 glorious minutes, Thrice Woven skirts the eye of the storm, flitting between untrammelled power and celestial beauty with a finesse that few can match.

With The Gradual Progression, one definitely gets the sense that Fox is making an unselfconscious attempt to forge forward with music, an unabashed statement for progression. Though it’s not entirely successful, one has to admire this kind of ambition. He’s made an album that’s hard to describe in both generic and theoretical terms.

Numan's appropriation of Arabic musical patterns, textures and instruments can make for mildly uncomfortable listening at first, but on repeated plays these are the moments that really stand out. His decision to directly incorporate these less familiar (to the western ear) musical mores into his already alien-sounding style pays off.

Remember Terry is deliriously memorable. Most albums of this ilk from the Australian underground will have a couple of standout tracks; this album is full of them.

Cornelius’s mastery of the mix is still evident, but the album as a whole comes strangely across as a throwback to former glories rather than an expansion of an idiosyncratic universe.