The record activates a deeper form of listening and sonic perspective in a way that many field recordings do, without containing any direct or concrete sonic references. This is at the heart of what makes Even The Horizon one of English’s more compelling releases as of late.

Funeral Songs is neither the first nor last gloriously raw album to be laid down in such a state.

There is no being taken on a conceptual journey, or losing yourself in these tracks. They overwhelm and punish your ears and synapses, disappearing before you get a chance to acclimatise yourself. Asymmetric guerrilla dancefloor bangers in effect.

The combination of Diggs’s hyper-enunciated double-time flow, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes’s twisted industrial production, and high-concept albums strikes me as original.

As illustrated by Kunk, the band is a breath of originality in the often-hackneyed worlds of punk and hardcore. Play this album the next time you want your dance party to devolve into a cannibalistic orgy.

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.

[A] challenging but beautiful album.

Chapter 3… is a record that has their trademark sense of restless grandeur and tough tunefulness.

This album marks a continued evolution in a subtly different new direction for this most idiosyncratic of American alternative bands, one of the few "allowed" to deliver this most unsettled of musics in a quasi-mainstream setting. After repeated listens, I've come to the conclusion that it and No Answer: Lower Floors represent a welcome refinement of something Wolf Eyes have been articulating since their humble beginnings way back in 2000.

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.

Mayhem is both a satisfying return to form and also an unabashed revisiting of stylistic and thematic roots, even linguistic tropes and tics.

Butler shows that there is strength in numbers and in being able to amplify the skills of fellow collaborators.

It's a work of music that seismically shifts in front of your ears. Melodies form crystalline shapes that grow, morph and solidify under a haze of generative ambience. Some of those ideas laid down on Get Lost have taken shape as an LP, designed to play through from start to finish.

If Mason’s last album Boys Outside was a window on his struggles with mental ill-health, Monkey Minds moves from micro to macro as he harnesses his strong sense of social justice, while continuing to hone the crisp electronics that so perfectly soundtrack his ghostly, exhortatory vocals.

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.

With their fifth album, Artificial Sweeteners, Fujiya & Miyagi once again mine opposite ends of the lyrical spectrum whilst delivering their most musically satisfying collection to date.

A pleasing anachronism landing on a very different planet. Even though the band had reformed for some dates a decade ago, it’s a return that feels as unexpected as a reappearance from the ghost of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.

As the album comes to a close with reflective ballad 'A Long Time Ago', it becomes apparent that Stay Gold isn't much of a departure from their previous outings. It is however, more consistent and ambitious--both thematically and sonically--than The Lion's Roar, allowing First Aid Kit to gather a well-deserved period of buoyant momentum, flourishing beyond an element of pastiche.

To the wider rock world, Yellow/Green deserves to be regarded as a left of field classic, whilst to the metalheads who were perfectly content with the Baroness sound as it was, the record may seem something of a disappointment, its straightforward and melodic approach to songwriting the antithesis of the labyrinthine complexities and huge riffs of old.

As Flock Of Dimes, Wasner refuses to waste a second. Most tracks are pop hits waiting to happen in some daring universe, with verses as charming as the shimmering choruses, each a perfectly formed little jewel, Wasner's voice lush and warm.

Goat has distilled what could have so very easily become an overblown meandering jam fest into a punchy, forceful and infectious masterpiece of cosmic rock & roll – the will is palpable, nigh a trace of fat on these bleached bones.

To say this is a 'fans only' set is something of an understatement, but if you do have an interest and indeed if you can actually afford it, this is a lovingly put together and ridiculously detailed exploration of a record that has aged very well. For those whose interest is more casual the two-disc edition is well worth revisiting.

Atomic is a conceptual artwork that is overshadowed and at times overburdened by its subject matter. Yet taken in this context it holds a brutalist, otherworldly thrall all its own.

This is a record that reveals something new on each listen, a record that will secure Errors' place in the pack--part of a greater fraternity but with a formula distinctly their own.

Using just guitars, a 70s analog synth for bass, and drums (Ambarchi's first instrument), he has forged an exquisitely balanced and powerful sound whose apparent simplicity belies a multi-layered exercise in displacement and resolution.

Harris deploys silence and sound artfully and masterfully throughout Ruins. And the closer you listen, the more intimate it becomes.

Under the rule of Worden's powerful vocal these sophisticated compositions provide a gripping, melodramatic exploration of a mindset both childlike and brooding.

By fulfilling their dear friend's wishes, on Desertshore Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have paid him a glorious, beautiful tribute that, like Nico's original album, celebrates the glowing eddies of sex and life and death.