A Laughing Death In Meatspace is by no means easy listening: the playing is off-kilter, strange bursts of noise erupt from instruments, songs dissolve into a maelstrom of noises; the production, mixing and mastering bear traces of the album’s speedy composition and release; and the lyrics invite us to contemplate, without histrionics or self-deception, precisely how fucked we all are. It’s hot with anger and full of ugly truths about the ways we live our lives; and the effect is compelling.

There's no centerpiece and no massive reinvention. Much of the songs place on the drone-noise-ambient continuum. But the sheer scale of Chemical Flowers feels bigger than what came before. Recorded in solitude in the Essex countryside, Chemical Flowers is charmingly ambiguous, floating around in some galaxy between labelmates Lee Gamble and Yves Tumour.

Most importantly, as the band builds momentum on track after track, they never miss an opportunity to draw unexpected emotion from their grooves. Time and time again, they excel at finding and seizing every opportunity to fully capitalise on the underlying beauty of these compositions. Likewise, they never undervalue or underestimate the sheer power of gentleness.

With Wrecked, ZONAL and Moor Mother have made a joyously feel bad album whose grinding negativity and tidal heaviness provides a necessary form of catharsis, that sloughs or burns off the stench of ego and know-betterisms. It demands a form of humility from the listener both of their place in the world, and of the experience and position of others.

The album sounds like the process of ripping away at one’s own humanity in search of some kind of core; the music is colossal, destructive and all-consuming. ... Extraordinary, turbulent album.

While Murray's lyrics are consciously evoking images of old timey Americana – desolate arcades, voodoo rites, thunder in the mountains – your mileage will vary on whether you find it charming or cheesy. Regardless, The Last Exit is a road trip worth taking. Murray’s sultry croon is effortlessly affecting.

Abyss doesn’t chase innovation for its own sake – it chooses clarity over chaos, presence over posture. In doing so, Anika crafts a document that’s less about sound as spectacle and more about the quiet horror of being awake in the wreckage.

Throughout, Tobias balances the baroque, saturating instincts of chamber pop with urgent, to-the-point rock segments, the romantic swells of plucked and bowed strings on ‘Political Solution’ or ‘The Scam’ tempered by the almost post-punk gestures of ‘I Feel Hated’ that hug Tobias’s soulful cadence with hard-driven indietronica à la Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Requiem is unlikely to be an album that creates a new legion of converts, but for devotees of this true innovator it’s an incredibly rewarding one.

Still Trippin’ doesn’t have the crossover punch of DJ Rashad’s Double Cup, which definitely influenced it, but the potential is there just the same.

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything is the sound of a band prising an encouraging aesthetic edge from the sheer enjoyment of ageing. It bodes well for the future.

It's not the spartan techno of the early SCB records by any means, but the never-quite-convincing progressive window dressing has mostly been thankfully thrown out said window in favour of an approach that maintains big room impact without pandering to its more simplistic tropes.

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.

Very programmatic, AAI allows Mouse on Mars to fully flesh out their ever implicit techno-humanist sonic philosophy, a certain anarcho-progressivism with a tech-utopian bent. The record serves as a magnifying glass to their career-long preoccupations.

Over repeating ground bass figures, Barbieri builds and varies an increasingly complex architecture of melodies and harmonies in vaporous synth tones. Created using the Orthogonal 101 modular synthesizer, the means may possess degrees of randomness, but everything sounds precisely placed.

The poetry of Gruff’s lyricism is second to none. His ability to flit from language to language between projects, expressing himself with elegance and eloquence in either, is not only an enviable talent but a unique one.

The alchemy between the two musicians is palpable and electric. They couldn’t be further removed from the genres that made them famous – from pop’s gleaming, detached lights – and they fit in with confidence and raw honesty in this new environment. Finally, their long-desired quest for their true selves might have come to an end.

Dinosaur Jr. have succeeded in creating the ultimate gateway album, a perfect synthesis of all the ingredients that have made them one of the most intriguing and long-lasting guitar bands in recent history.

{Awayland} is a treasure trove of an album, brimming with ideas, most of which work and all of which, at the very least, prove that O'Brien is not simply another little-boy-lost lamenting the fact his parents wouldn't pass him the salt, but a songwriter of real note.

The result is a beautifully eerie song cycle whose pulsing analogue heart is even darker than the penumbral territories the band usually inhabit.

The Men's highly enjoyable chaos.

As ever with William Basinski, Cascade is deeply melancholic and subdued, music to embrace in the deep of a sleepless night. But it also unfurls to reveal layers of brightness that went undetected on 92982, as the increased pace of the loops blurs and breaks apart the piece's monotonous (in the best sense of the word) repetition to reveal the deep humanity at the work's core.

The world has changed, and, though bruised and broken, the sincere, generation-galvanising Sleater-Kinney have changed for the better.

Personal, moving, poetic, humorous, and engaging.

Musically, this is Anderson at her most assured: she has synthesised her various musical interests and influences--noise music, metal, grunge, folk and country--into an entirely idiosyncratic musical lexicon.

This is a new incarnation of The Julie Ruin, and it's still raising the goosebumps on my arms.

Due to Snaith’s decision to make music in situ, FabricLive 93 tends to veer and swerve all over the place in terms of a 'narrative'. ... You can hear that Snaith is clearly having fun letting his instincts take him where he feels the music needs to go. This rubs off on the mix--you do find yourself propelled by the energy, despite the missteps made on the way.

Regardless of whether you share the Manic's collective outlook on life, and if you're not forty plus you might not, you can only take Rewind The Film for exactly what it is: a band who know where they want to be and are comfortable with that. And, interestingly enough, this is maybe the closest we'll ever get to really knowing them.