There are moments where Frost is clearly the architect and noise tamer, orchestrating becalmed undulations that offer repose, often of lament rather than of hope. ... Yet there are just as many moments when Frost lets his muse fuse with unadorned, unadulterated noise, creating arpeggios of tension that ratchet up steadily, the life raft tipping over, all feeling of equilibrium and control ripping away from the listener and composer both.

Saturation III is for the fans: their most abstract, their most experimental, and by far their weirdest.

Polygondwanaland is one of their strongest excursions yet, not just of this year but of any.

The songs are actually seven suites (on what is their seventh release) of kaleidoscopic, expansionist flailing and freedo(o)m, the only throughline being that they remain inherently odd and pleasurable.

Gallarais is a quiet album, but a deeply unsettling one.

This is Svenonius with just an electric guitar, a microphone, an analogue-sounding drum machine and a tape deck, creating the rawest and most stripped-back manifestation of his singular muse to date.

While the album itself falls short. The ambition is admirable, but what makes the songs commendable is their refusal to thrive. They are deeply melancholic. There's a focus on Rothman's drug addiction itself rather than the desire to resolve it, a resignation to dying rather than a desire to learn how to live.

A Pocket Of Wind Resistance combines powerful storytelling and songwriting to produce something special. Polwart and Murphy make Fala Flow seem unnervingly real, conjuring atmosphere through quiet incantation and simple but resonant instrumentation. They also deliver a strong political message in the best traditions of folk music, making health equality something to sing about.

Utopia is not just an album about intimacy, it also expresses a degree of intimacy that goes beyond words--especially in the sense that her voice sounds so detailed here, and in the ways she works with Arca.

This is Svenonius with just an electric guitar, a microphone, an analogue-sounding drum machine and a tape deck, creating the rawest and most stripped-back manifestation of his singular muse to date.

The tropes of romantic art are self-consciously manipulated, but the artifice is made plain, and the finished work feels more real as a result.

At their most free-floating and understated, Bitchin Bajas almost casually demonstrate how apparent serenity still provides room for subtle explorations, additions to the predominant flow heightening the overall mood.

Rest is still the most French record you’re likely to hear all century.

One of the great successes of If All I Was is that it has the same levity as the anthems of the civil rights era.

Like most bumper collections of this nature, Savage Young Dü is not a starting point. Sensibly, one should swot up on Hüsker Dü’s complete 1984-86 output first, then dig into this box and its wealth of eyewitness anecdotes and photos of puppy-fattened band members. Historical context suitably delivered, toast the lifespan of a great rock band and burn one for the guy who didn’t see this release hit the shelves.

Wizard Bloody Wizard still rocks hard enough to justify the occasional rebellious upward glance from the existential trudge down the long spiral into nothingness that they evoke so bleakly, and so well.

Some listeners are bound to find this repetitive too, and nowhere near different enough from his previous work. Yet To Syria, With Love is also Souleyman’s heaviest and hardest record since Leh Jani back in 2011.

There are moments in The Kid where Smith’s ability to meld the electronic and the organic into a symbiotic web of sound and music is comforting and soothing, the harshness of modern noise and atonality sublimated into something that provides a balming comfort.

While Poison Season sounded like the kind of late-career ‘mature’ album that Bejar could be content to make for the rest of his life, ken shows that he is still full of the potential to surprise--and long may he continue to do so.

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.

As a work that gathers up so much of what’s going on in modern dance and electronic music in 2017 and finds ways to make them click together, Mnestic Pressure feels like a game-changer, or at the very least a defining moment. Time will tell.

Eggleston cycles through separate fugue-like riffs, filling in transitions with electronic crescendos that lend the piece a cinematic energy.

A flame my love, a frequency is a modest, introspective album. It focuses on the small, the minute, turning inwards in the face of questions too large to grasp.

Love What Survives, with its seductive beats and incredible production, is a strong record that finally cuts Mount Kimbie’s ties with ‘post-dubstep’. If they can avoid falling into routine, their post-post-dubstep future looks exciting.

MASSEDUCTION defies expectation, defies definition and defies the very idea that definition can exist. It’s an album detailing the mess of identity politics and power structures, and yet it hits serious cohesive highs. There is no cookie-cutter remedy, no rallying cry, just a baker’s dozen viewpoints of the chasm where we once thought order, power, and meaning lived.

Aromanticism is an exquisitely well-crafted piece of work, which retains a delicate complexity despite its minimalism.

Despite the fact that listening to one of their albums in full feels like a 40-minute bludgeoning, there’s something oddly heart-warming at play here. Unsane are not chameleons or shapeshifters but rather stoic veterans unashamed to continue honing a sound many would argue they perfected decades ago.

The remastering job here is superb and the nine previously unheard tracks are an joy to discover--1992-2001 is nigh-on perfect as an introduction to one of pop's best ever kept secrets. Unlock it and wander all year long, then seek out what full-lengths you can find. In Acetone, you've got yourself a lifelong companion.