Seasonal Hire offers no grand statements and reveals no great mysteries. Ultimately, this is not a particularly ambitious record; no musician is stretched wildly beyond his or her limits. And yet, largely because of its off-hand quality and ease of execution, Seasonal Hire offers moments of intoxicating strangeness and beauty.

It's difficult to say Humor Risk is better than WIT'S END, but it is certainly its perfect counterpart.

They haven't quite carved out new territory here, but if the best moments of Nocturnal Koreans are anything to go by, the wheels have started turning.

Guzo is a strange album--it feels like the record label (or management) are calling too many shots, unable to decide whether Yirga should play the Ethio-jazz which we've come accustomed to through the Ethiopiques series, the cool Western jazz of Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, or a fusion in-between that also includes soul and Caribbean flavours.

There is much to savour in Caminiti's enthusiastic and emotional attempts to expand on his own musical lexicon.

Clocking in at 35 minutes it's a breezy listen, but one that stays with you. The musicianship is excellent, the production spot on and, despite its restless nature, the album hangs together nicely.

For anyone who has enjoyed the great guitar music coming out of Mali in recent years Albala is essential listening.

Despite its overall lighthearted, ebullient mood, E.m.m.a's music is almost unsettlingly weird at times, and laugh-out-loud bizarre at others.

If nothing else it's a fascinating document: a snapshot of a band slowly breaking out of the prison of their own aesthetic and bravely denying the tragedies that have marked their progress to define them any further.

Throughout its ten years as a label, Hyperdub has managed to establish and uphold a reputation for consistently on-point and challenging releases that has seen it become one of the most vital UK independent labels, and the range of sounds present on 10.2 is testament to that.

Setting banjos and bonfires aside, the folk roots are now replaced by a rich baroque pop accompanying a dark ride inside Huebert's mind.

Man, It Feels Like Space Again is grandiose in the delivery, quixotic in the extreme, but, most of all, it's a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

What it also has is songs. Cracking ones.

The Frenchman leaves enough space for everything to live harmoniously together. Melodies and countermelodies run free, but nothing ever feels overblown or unnecessary.

This sense of place and space in Futures makes its suite of sumptuous love songs doubly poignant, turns them into glorious moments of both clarity and giddy disorientation amid the impending decay and desperation of time and events beyond the back door, the darkness glimpsed out on the horizon. The songs don't emerge as 'crafted' at all, rather you can't quite believe they didn't always exist in this form.

Even if fans of Pere Ubu take Pere Ubu seriously, it is clear that Pere Ubu aren't entirely serious about Pere Ubu. The quartet of LPs contained on Architecture Of Language highlight this more so than perhaps The Modern Dance and for this reason should not be left aside.

The really interesting stuff here is from those groups that barely scraped out an album before disappearing into obscurity or never even got to release a record at the time, many of them victims of being outside of what was still largely a London-centric scene.

Inevitably there’s nothing here to rival the dark majesty of Van der Graaf Generator’s classic 1970s work, and newcomers should start with Still Life, Godbluff or Pawn Hearts. But Do Not Disturb is a worthy addition to the group’s canon and--if this is indeed their last album--a fitting end to an illustrious career.

Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche have produced a record which is at once ambitiously progressive, admirably methodical and unassumingly joyous.

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.

Park Jiha has composed, performed and produced an album that treats clarity with the utmost respect, in that it realises that with lucidity comes an understanding of calamity and disorder. The world she has created succeeds because of that understanding. So much music that tries to fuse the traditional with the contemporary fails because of an idolisation of its parts; Communion idolises nothing, and is all the more tangible and engaging for that.

The only, minor caveat is that the songs end a little too abruptly. But there’s enough good music here to listen to over and over and to get you giddy about what Sink Ya Teeth will do next.

When each song begins, you’re never quite sure where they’re taking it; each of the five tracks leads us through unfamiliar, pared-down disco landscapes.

Big Wows is a risky, but remarkable move for the trio--even the weaker songs in the lineup offer a buzzy dance break, densely layering up the punchy synths and calculated, sharp percussion.

Holy Spring is a mature and enthralling work that gives us real ritual. Ceremonies taken seriously that generate real power.

Howl is certainly at the more pop-oriented end of Foxx releases, and that is its strength.

There is a confidence in their songwriting here that was missing on their debut. More risks are taken – mostly lyrically – and it pays off. The downside to the album is that It’s all subtle shades of the same colour, without much variation. At thirty-two-minutes long this doesn’t grate too much, but the inclusion of a slower ballad or another upbeat instrumental would have been a nice addition.

Some of their most accelerating work across their career path thus far. ‘Forest of Your Problems (Outro)’ offers a friendly, until next time. A great third studio album.