While the Tinariwen formula may be familiar, Emmaar sees their sound refined without losing any of the group's rebel edge and defiant spirit.

So not an out and out album of doof dancefloor bangers, this is more the evolution of an artist, at comfort in her environment, and holding her own.

It’s the product of a chronic overthinker refining his teeming thoughts into crystalline song, forming an album that doesn't shy away from the gravitas of grand gestures, and, more importantly, the emptiness that follows when they prove to be futile.

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.

There’s a lot to unpick here. The Mars Volta may well be one to grow on you. This is a record that can make you think a thousand things at once. But if you’re willing to sit and savour the taste before digesting, you’ll understand why it took so long to ferment.

Even though the idea of listening to another quarantine-inspired ambient record might seem off-putting, the rewards are simply too tempting.

There is not a song on Build A Problem that does not deserve its place on the album. They all have the potential to be favourites, depending on the day, your mood and what you want from a song. Smoothly woven from dodie’s most intimate moments, Build a Problem has it all.

If the continuing relevance of this material was never seriously in doubt, in resurrecting a swath of the Cabs material that had unfairly languished in obscurity for far too long, Mute have done a service in recovering an important transitional period for the group and for dance music in general.

Bringing together the Def Jux man’s icy pen and instantly recognisable flow with a riff that bassist John-Michael Hedley had been playing with for a couple of years has resulted in arguably the most overtly political statement of Pigs’ career. It’s a hulking beast of chugged rhythms and swirling guitars.

For some Communion will be too discordant, too warlike, too brutal to their sensibilities, a direct threat to their notions of what is "beautiful" in their world. But the chrome plated harshness of Rabit's music brings out a different form of joy, a pleasure that comes from catharsis, frustration, and alienation.

‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ had so much going for it. Why couldn’t Wolf Alice apply that level of vision, skill, invention and audaciousness to the rest of The Clearing? As radio friendly as Fleetwood Mac usually were, they didn’t win the world’s respect by holding back timidly for 80 per cent of each album, or being content to let only the vocals do the talking.

While there has was never any doubting their psychedelic influences and their way with a groove, Wraith offers something more. Full of variety and unpredictability, like the best science fiction it maps out a dreamworld of our times, a tonic against the deathly thoughts of the small hours.

This is a lovely record. The motion of ‘Circle Line’, the charm of ‘Summer Places’. Comma is an exercise in taste, expertise and skill as much as anything else, and it’s evidence (if it were ever in doubt) that contemporary modular synths can be used to highly emotive and beautiful effect.

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

Tinariwen's Tassili may not have the distorted guitars of previous records, but the acoustic recordings suit the contemplative mood and makes for a powerful return to their roots, as the musicians' circumstances, like getting lost in the desert, go in circles.

After giving The Book Of Souls another few spins, the record revealed its many qualities in measured doses over time.

It's that mix of astral expensiveness and strict artistry that makes Thundercat's debut LP The Golden Age Of Apocalypse as grand and visionary as its title.

From the toughest moments are borne the most compelling work, and, in Evile's case, in crafting an album as assured as Five Serpent's Teeth they surely deserve to sit atop the modern thrash elite.

Wed 21 continues the intrigue, amplifies the obsession, and is 2013's most addictive and compelling album made by anyone anywhere. I have no end-of-year list. Just Wed 21.

Primitive And Deadly is imbued with an energy of its own: a bold, if flawed update on the Earth model.

The album is distinguished, therefore, not only by impressive vocal athleticism but also by an astonishing extra-human tenderness.

Everything you want from Richard Thompson is right here, right now, on Still. You wont notice Jeff Tweedy all that much, which is as big a compliment as one can make of any producer.

As it stands, Wake In Fright is a misanthropic social/personal/political blank cheque as bleak in outlook as it is righteously harrowing in sound. It’s 2017, and life’s a chasm. Uniform are staring right in.

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.

From first note to last, The Fiery Margin is a recording that exudes complete confidence.

With Mind Hive, the band continue to evolve, surprise and quietly inspire.

The creation of an ever restless and fecund talent, Massive Oscillations is a beautifully bold and powerful album that should bring Wacław Zimpel to the attention of a wider and deserved audience.

For all its conceptual maximalism, gen(r)e-splicing and densely irregular time layering, the compositions here are supremely considered pieces of continuously mutating gracefulness, spacious and expansive, stretched like a long fade-out into timelessness. Equally grounded and spaced out, on Seeing Through Sound Hassell has found an ideal balance of psychoacoustic and compositional values, the most sublime synthesis of tone magic and artistic craft.