At the moment, the diversity on display here feels like something to be treasured rather than wished into oblivion.

It’s an album that abounds with details but feels perfectly homogenous, and one can only wonder where Laurel Halo goes from here. It could be very interesting indeed.

Every expansion is followed by certain randomisation of energy; some may object that album's sound is overcrowded, bringing together seemingly incompatible stylistic patterns. Too many new ideas that need to be quickly processed are restlessly thrown, but never scattered, in raw fluxus.

The sound design is absolutely phenomenal, rich in detail. New components, from the clanging of chimes to the rattling or chains, enter from moment to moment. It’s every bit the album Engravings was: a vast world of sound unfolding on a battlefield which exists between the ears.

Hell on Heels is one beautiful amble.

Perhaps his most assured and confident album.

The power of these long form works is the room afforded to imprint your own interpretations, feelings, and notions upon them like Rorschach tests or perceiving shapes in clouds. Will these drones imprint the same emotions and thoughts a thousand years from now? Only time will tell.

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

Dolphine’s songs are mystical, yes--but by no means are they not also tough, topical and profound.

Kate NV has probably made her most confident and colourful statement with Room for The Moon. It’s an all-encompassing record, packed with plenty of reassuring elements to those already familiar with her work, but with acres of room for the listener to disappear into.

The haunting nature of these stripped-down demo versions is reinforced by the spectral presence of the singer, whose persona has inevitably undergone mythologisation akin to other prematurely deceased artists.

Musically, Blood Bitch plays a lot with drone, feedback and white noise, while simultaneously handing huge portions of songs over to the most melodic and annoyingly catchy work Hval has ever made.

There are clear signs of the heights he’d soon reach on A Love Supreme five months later. Observing such incremental shifts is both fascinating and valuable, and while the performances are all deeply satisfying it remains a tad disappointing that archival projects like this one tend to blot out contemporary work that proves that jazz continues to push forward in the present.

Fortunately, It Is What It Is takes the listener’s needs into consideration by counteracting giddy one-liners heightened by energetic accompaniments with introspective ruminations coupled woven into sultry arrangements. In adjusting to the shifting sonic plains, the listener is presented with a gloriously rewarding stretch of tonal stability in the record’s third act.

Wyatt has sustained and continues to sustain himself with quality, idiosyncrasy, and integrity over so long a time, as these eight sides so amply demonstrate.

Simple orchestral riffs and warm west coast production are thickly glooped onto a collection of songs that otherwise may have been too mellow for his rock canon, yet too nice for a stripped-down solo Bruce record.

The last time West used the name Jerome in a rhyme (MBDTF’s 'Gorgeous'), it was a reference to racially disproportionate sentencing practices in drug cases. It’s that sort of doublespeak that makes Yeezus the zenith of West’s entire career.

In sharing her experience of doing this, James’ most exploratory album also proves to be her most open-hearted.

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.

As vital as the air that you breathe, you need this album in your life.

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.

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.

Elder have crafted a lush and carefully-orchestrated record, approaching from a different angle than their peers, or indeed their previous attempts.

Progression is a great thing to hear in any artist's work, and there's plenty of that to the largely excellent Burn Your Fire. Yet its louder moments at the minute seem mostly in place to provide contrast, with Olsen remaining at her most engaging when speaking to you in whispers.

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.

What makes Busy Guy extraordinary is its scorched-earth intimacy. Fretwell’s voice rarely rises above a whisper; his guitar playing consists largely of skeletal fugues so minimalistic it’s as if they are barely there at all. Yet oceans of pain and lifetimes of regret are packed into an LP that hooks a cable to the listener’s soul and cranks the voltage all the way up.

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”.

Bangs & Works Vol. 2 straddles a fine line between function and dysfunction, innocence and dissonance--and not once in its 26 track run does it ever get boring.