These compositions are haunting because Grouper gives them space to breathe.

What Do We Now is a record of beautifully put-together songs played on an acoustic guitar then beefed up by a band (mostly Mascis himself on overdubs, plus a little piano from The B52s’ Ken Mauri and some slide guitar played by Toronto musician Matthew “Doc” Dunn).

This is perhaps Faust's most solid and coherent body of work since their 1990s resurrection. It roars with sadness and anger at a world's squandered opportunities.

Shade reviews different ways Grouper has approached her work over the years, but is also a unique look at the style that has emerged as a result, even if some of the stops along the way are less polished. If Grouper is normally minimalist in her recordings and performances, Shade is like having Harris perform in your living room: it isn’t always flawless, but it is absolutely special.

This is body music, sure, but not for crowds of people eager to move--this is music to spend the night in to.

While still destined to divide his audience, with the excruciating and brilliant NYC Hell, 3:00AM, James Ferraro has quietly and calmly made some of the most affecting and intoxicating music of his career.

This record is perhaps the first time we see Drenge exploiting the additions that were initially made to their live band, and exploring the expanded instrumentation to its full potential.

It's a boldly contemporary record whose wily 70s spirit isn't lost amid the fuzz.

Footworks remains the axis around which Jlin’s productions revolve, though her music transcends contemporary club trends, flirting with modern composition and theatre music.

It may not be as immediately sonically challenging as her earlier, more austere work, but it is no less valiant and genre-defying. In fact, it probably pushes the envelope quite a bit further.

Frusciante has given space for Maya to breathe, for the powerful breakbeats to push things forward to their full potential.

A Thing Called Divine Fits is a seemingly rare thing; a really good, life-affirming rock record that just works, and gets better and better the more time you spend with it.

Free Reign is an album finds Clinic pushing themselves in directions that wouldn't have been considered years ago and it's to their credit that they possess both the will and imagination to do so.

England is a Garden is a beautiful and well-worked project. The five years wait it induced is retrospectively more than worth it as it is one of the most thoughtful and listenable albums the band have unleashed for quite a stretch of time.

It’s one that may feel familiar to fans of his hard, unfussy, crisp-but-rugged production style but this vision of techno is deceptively idiosyncratic and contains within it a number of important clues to uncovering Child’s true relationship to the music that’s been his bread and butter for the last three decades.

It’s wonderful stuff, centred on Ayisoba’s signature instrument, a two-stringed lute-type contraption called a kologo. Obviously limited in its sonic scope, our dude provides rhythm and melody lines alike to hypnotic and strangely groovy effect.

Goddess doesn’t stick to one style, and though there are echoes of Gibbons, Del Rey and Sade, the album’s coherence comes from its themes and overall mood and not by remaining within a single niche.

Footwork, however, appears to have no shortage of peculiar, adaptable, and idiosyncratic producers that resist any such outcome. I’ll Tell You What is slippery, contrary, devious--to listen is to be seduced and mangled.

[Fingers is] fifteen tricksy, itchy, endlessly inventive footwork belters, which do little more than uphold the finest tenets of the genre, and are perfectly laudable for that.

With Weird Sister, attentiveness pays off, and rewards with deeper comprehension of what this band are about.

Here, you'll find a more focused version of mournful doom, no less emotive for its precision. Happily, even in their later years Paradise Lost sound hoary and venerable rather than wizened or dilapidated.

All shot through with the psychedelic heft of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, this is not a flash in the pan, a fumble in the dark or an album which loses its way but a cosmic paean to perfectionism that creates order out of the most beautiful chaos.

Wonky is Orbital's most pop album; it's supremely, relentlessly, even ruthlessly melodic, and laden with irresistible momentum throughout.

Twigs still finds ferocious power in her music, her femininity, and her sexuality. But on MAGDALENE, she tampers that ferocity with a radical sensitivity and vulnerability that indicate a broader maturation in her artistic development.

For Plastic Bouquet they’ve come together to make an album that is as relevant to modern ears as it is those more attuned to the old ways.

Natur stands out in that it is less about the conflict between the two and more about their mutual evolution. Nature and technology are not dueling forces to place against each other, but a continuum that needs to be reckoned with.

[A] satisfying compilation with its lugubrious and luxurious electronic introspection created by an artist once again near the height of his powers.

Partly through technology, of course, but owing much to the composer’s own ingenuity, A Separation Of Being was made by just one person and an acoustic sideman, and makes densely assembled music sound feather-light and, yes, joyful.