Sama’a is the sound of a band at the peak of their powers, their spontaneous interplay, invention and commitment undimmed. In the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik they’ve found an infinite universe.

You might expect that pulling one part away from the whole would leave you with something solitary, but Weitz’s departure from his proverbial and literal ‘collective’ does not reduce him to a singularity. Instead, he emerges as a complex sum of parts all of his own.

In its moodier moments, the music can be as gorgeous and inherently moving as Rafael Toral’s explorations of sustained harmony on Traveling Light. Yet, a sense of disquiet follows like a shadow, haunting the melodies, ready to break the enchantment. .... When they finally culminate in the overpowering, elatedly bright ‘A New Morning Breaks’, Dorji’s music begins to feel truly necessary, a transmutation of current anxieties into a determination to move forward.

It’s the sound of joyous, playful experimentation squatting the rarefied worlds of chamber ensembles and concert halls. .... Even when Daniel steps furthest into abstraction it never feels like pretensions towards aloof, high art alienation.

Crisp, rich tones leave space for the imagination to flood in, and take us to a location that exists only in the mind. Sidings is Craven Faults’ best, most irresistible work to date.

That documentary ["All Junglists: A London Somet’ing Dis"] was the first thing I thought of when listening to this compilation, because while the medium is different, that fresh underground attitude is defiantly the same on this record as it is on that film.

No More Like This is intelligent but not chin-stroke music. It’s for the dance floor – and the after-party.

There’s humour present in the exuberant ‘Let There Be Shred’. This is Megadeth at their most Spinal Tap, and that is in no way a criticism. There are some mid-paced, albeit melodically snarled, numbers in the centre. For the Risk fans, perhaps? The aggression and guitar solo heroism re-erupt in the second half when Mustaine revisits his preoccupations with warfare.

In scratching their own itch, Xiu Xiu have made a brave record.

A glorious return from the off, III begins amidst a shocking cloud of fuzz with everything a little broken up around the edges.

As the album progresses, new textures arise in contrast with the previous tracks, keeping the sprawling 80-minute runtime unpredictable and intense.

It sometimes feels as if Sleaford Mods retreat a little too far on The Demise of Planet X – diagnosing collapse with sharp wit but leaving little in direction or galvanising force. In a Britain that could use art to provoke unity as much as amusement, that distance feels not just like an easy route, but a missed opportunity, no matter how enjoyable the chaos remains.

Adept as Shaw is as a songwriter, these twists in tone would be harder to pull off were it not for the rest of the band, whose instrumental offerings have taken a noticeable leap forward since 2022’s Stumpwork album.

Each creative filament feels fully charged, dancing across tides of mercurial water. Lattimore’s harp echoes and elevates a time that harks back to a more distant past and Barwick’s synths and siren-calls keeps us in the glass-edged moment.

‘‘Feet’ is probably the set highlight, a real mutant groover, whilst ‘Bobby’s Boyfriend’ actually becomes creepier for its more skeletal arrangements. .... However, straightened up versions of live favourites ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ and ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ suffer for lack of mania and a flatness that doesn’t tally with the memories of incendiary live shows.

The tracks are constantly in restless conversation, playfully sparring, casting light on new angles every listen. .... Implosion conjures a dystopian Ballardian skyline, but at times is able to point beyond it, offering a glimpse of how much more the genre has left to explore.

The bombast side of things is immensely powerful from the off. It’s the glue. Indeed, more than any other aspect of this live music, it is the choir – a triumphant icing of richly layered, though regularly in unison, often enormous, high quality backing vocals – that lends this concert both its sepulchral juggernaut energy and its sheer ‘open space’ rolling vastness. .... For me, the quietest moments work least well. Cave’s overwrought melodrama requires the back alley impoverished, addicted, outsider energy of his earlier eras, rather than this comfortable, even imperious, audience conducting showman.

If age and the rigours of the road can start to tell as a result, the energy level is still there, whether on a strong version of the Gore-sung late 90s highlight ‘Home’ or a lovely turn through Memento Mori’s striking lead single ‘Ghosts Again’. There’s a bit of a bonus this time out. Following the live cuts, four songs from the Memento Mori sessions are included. It’s understandable why they didn’t make the cut, feeling more like good enough album tracks at most.

The instrumentation fits perfectly with the otherworldly, thoroughly non-jazz sounds of Toral’s guitar pedal wizardry, and the absence of an expected dissonance between the two feels strangely hypnotic.

Changes In Air is subtle, almost ornate, but Coverdale whittles minute variations and intricate textures to discretely demand our attention. Encouraging us to actively notice rather than passively absorb.

Watch It Die will likely comfort those already on side, but it leaves you wondering whether well-intentioned decency is enough when the world they’re responding to demands more than sanitised anger and familiar sounds.

It’s good enough that you could even pitch it as the fitting finale for an entire era of rap, one whose greatest voices are now firmly approaching pension age. But the album actually creates the opposite problem: it’s too alive to be an ending, too rich with ideas and sonic pleasures.

Although some darkness is present, A Man For All Seasons delivers a sense of hope. The album’s charm is in its vulnerability.

Musically, it’s a travesty. .... Little glimmers of Mike Patton’s personality do, accidentally, seep in. His campy performance during ‘Heaven’s Breath’ lands somewhere between Alice Cooper and Nick Cave.

A vital artefact, 1985: The Miracle Year catches Hüsker Dü at their most inventive, straddling the line between hardcore ferocity and pop accessibility while revealing a potent mix of raw power, emotional maturity and musical ambition that helped pave the way for alternative rock’s emergence from the underground into the mainstream.

There are highlights, sure (twigs is too preternaturally talented to avoid those completely), like the gleeful ‘Sushi’ or gorgeous closer ‘Stereo Boy’, but even the more compelling tracks like ‘Cheap Hotel’ – a satisfyingly eerie piece of slow-garage – would rank towards the bottom of EUSEXUA’s track-list. What’s odd is that we know twigs can do this style justice – she has an album from early this same year to prove it – so its bewildering to hear her deliver one unrewarding song after another.

What you’ll know after listening to Vesper Sparrow, is an option for the album of the year.

Lopatin doesn’t just wring moments of grin-inducing audacity from the archive, though, but a startling degree of emotional range too. .... It’s a magic trick he pulls off again on Tranquilizer: sifting through the graveyard of our computers’ dreaming and conjuring something enchanting.