Moot!’s frill-free tautness makes it anathema for casual listening, while repaying your commanded attention not with the spectacular structures of build-up, breakdown, or resolution, but with a sustained, flattening tension which would be dissatisfying were it not so completely gripping.

Modern Vampires quite often touches brilliance, and does so without audibly straining for 'maturity' or pushing hard to be some po-faced Great American Album.

Highway Songs is David Pajo’s protracted gasp for breath, his slammed fist on the table and his most resounding act of defiance. As we await certain brilliance, it will serve as a very fitting departure in the meantime.

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.

Things crunch, grunt, and whinny with much effort and abandon, the band’s gurning labours hitting a sweet spot somewhere between Mudhoney and The Groundhogs. Occasionally they stretch so far for Earthless-like levels of jam band transcendence that you might be able to hear their vertebrae pop – were it not, of course, all so frighteningly loud.

It's good to know that, like you and me, he's swimming hard against the ever increasing tide of shit and still, in the main, coming up smelling of roses and refusing to back down.

There is great life and verve in these songs, teeming, irrepressible. Listen closely and you can hear the record breathing.

Much as Wolf himself has moved on from his string of tragedies to create something beautiful, what fuels this record is the belief that this is possible on a grander scale.

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.

This album sneaks up on you. It swiftly moves from easy-listening to music to obsess over. If you listen to it through cheap earphones on a crowded train, the intricacy of the production behind this album could be missed. It’s only when you invest attention, time (and good speakers) that you truly begin to revel in its wonders. To be able to relate with the messiness of Gartland’s emotional journey is to feel at one with a talented artist.

Lily We Need to Talk Now is an unexpected piece of artwork that manages to reflect the liberating now of boundaryless music. With influences from decades of genres and artists – from 70s to 90s to 00s and from The Sugarcubes to Pixies to beabadoobee – this album pieces together the excitement of discovering fresh music, making for a rollercoaster of a listening session.

The sensation of Winterval's astral travel may be a familiar one for fans of Willis, but that feeling of being propelled there by a fellow living being, rather than the tools at his disposal, means it's one that's easy to embrace.

Whilst some may pine for the intense and explosive krautrock of their debut, the adventurous spirit with which they tackle post-rock, fusion and a universe of soundscapes ensures that this is the most exciting and volatile the group has ever sounded.

Carter Tutti has never seemed crippled into one genre, and now there's an authenticity tied to a gravitas that sounds instantly advanced.

This soundtrack creates an air of wonder and foreboding, that only very occasionally and briefly plunges you into the darkness. ... Working skilfully with a modest, mostly-stringed timbral palette, Krlic incorporates the traditional Swedish nyckelharpa (as did Mark Korven for The Witch) and the hurdy-gurdy to underpin the conventional themes and create an unsettling wheezing groan, characteristic of these ancient instruments.

Irisiri is an album that explores the concepts of femininity, technology and the how many non-conforming bodies end up falling between the cracks in the seemingly implacable poles of gender, sex and the human, all her songs display seemingly disparate contrasts of surrealist wordplay, with organic, fragile tones and cold, machinist grind, as she pieces and stitches them into idiosyncratic little monsters that at times bewilders, but ultimately beguiles you with their curiosity and playfulness.

These experimental techniques give Bachman's recordings a unique intimacy and a rare openness. His is a brave music of warmth, community and generosity.

Hushed and Grim is not only Mastodon’s longest, but also their most personal album to date. An impressive and brutal addition to the canon, even if making it to the other side can sometimes feel like a more unassailable task than traversing Blood Mountain itself.

Don’t Look Away is a supremely confident album from a songwriter who has found his place and knows his music. It completes a trilogy which is essential listening for anyone who wants to hear why the psychedelic lineage of the past 50 years is fresh and alive.

A project with little boundaries, 3+5 stands on its own two feet as a concoction of hyperactive releases weaving in disco, electronica, cyberpunk, metal and more.

These four songs are the antithesis of the gluttony of the “gifting” economy and they’re all the better for it.

Night Thoughts is a record that deals poetically and bravely with the shadows that start to grow as we age and life's responsibilities weigh heavier on our shoulders. Brett Anderson seems as comfortable writing about the aging process as he did chemical smiles in the backs of Volvos and bored suburban housewives done in on sleeping pills etc, something that bodes well indeed for the future.

So while the production isn’t as in-your-face as before, the flourishes that characterised those releases are here deployed to subtle effect on an album that’s only too happy to explore a variety of stylistic routes including blues, jazz, deep house and dub elements to make a surprisingly coherent and cohesive statement.

The Great Bailout is a hauntingly edifying experience born out of intergenerational trauma, political rage and suffering. Echoey vocals and experimental composition hold this album up as a house of mirrors – a forceful confrontation with an ugly past with no way out. Its counterpoint is a feeling of strength.

An album that has Blawan back and showing us why he matters to us techno heads.

Her distinct 2018 style isn’t lost at all. The dreamy synths, the soft vocal harmonies and the unhurried compositions are still there in several tracks on this record. Thanks to that, Orquideas is the perfect tracklist to introduce any newcomers into a more niche latin sound.

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.

In contrast to the usual free improvisation idiom and its tendency to meander between abstract figures and skronking freakouts, the four pieces here – each of them around twenty minutes long – are locked into steady, slowly shifting rhythms that give the music a funky, cosy feeling ... A lovely, warm album.