Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind play it straight and with a total conviction from a lineage that includes The Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Stooges and all the way back to those primal urges that fuelled that first generation of rock & rollers as much as they did the seekers of hidden knowledge.

Exemplifying the work of Joe Boyd (and of Gabrielle Drake, who has been rigorously loyal to her brother's legacy) it's a fascinating and charming example of creative curatorship.

Extra time has bred extra confidence, and everything’s bigger. Dreamer is a surrender to wide, blurry, technicolour horizons, as unreal and otherworldly as its name suggests. At its basic level, the elements are simple – indie-pop, a little more shoegaze, a lot more trance – but extra waves of electronic wash and vocals so multitracked they’re choral make it labyrinthine enough to get lost in.

A glorious return from the off, III begins amidst a shocking cloud of fuzz with everything a little broken up around the edges.

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.

One of their most rewardingly mysterious and perplexing releases in quite some time.

Bangs & Works Vol. 2 straddles a fine line between function and dysfunction, innocence and dissonance--and not once in its 26 track run does it ever get boring.

It could so easily have turned into a mess, but Mbongwana Star have made probably the most consistently listenable album to emerge from Kinshasa's rapidly evolving new genre.

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.

This is a revealing, thrilling album by an artist who took a very particular experience and used it to create a beautiful project.

Although slightly more intricate, the artist’s second offering shows her boldly stepping further into the do-it-yourself territory where a sense of home plays a major role.

With relative ease, What The World Needs Now... can be placed aside the likes of the 80s influenced 2012 release This Is PiL. The second half of the album is the most interesting musically; it displays a set of songs built around cluttered instruments, rhythms and animalistic noises, but cluttered only to the conditioned ears of the modern listener.

Fearless and witty--an incredible album from start to finish, perfect for long days and ever longer nights.

The bucolic folk-fingering on display gives the sense that he was gazing out upon the same grand vistas as Pan American.

Despite the heavy subject matter, the album feels optimistic and imbued with a belief in the potential for humanity’s transformation.

A dark heart beats at the core of this album, much as it did with all of the influential bands mentioned in this review, but its creators have proved themselves to be dabber hands at good time rock’n’roll than most of their previous ventures indicated.

The folk guitar rhythms and stray words are easy to catch, and that surface level listen is pleasant enough. But the immediate impression of gentleness is something of a bait and switch. Maria BC calls for you to be on your toes so that you are not caught off guard when the message finally breaks through.

The 20th anniversary edition of This Is My Truth… will by no means settle the long-standing war of attrition between its fans and it detractors, but it does provide a deep and rewarding dive into the band’s populist peak, an idiosyncratic era for one of the last two decades’ most idiosyncratic of rock bands.

Ultimately, this is a rather gorgeous and engrossing collection, that borrows stealthily from a rich history of sound effect and soundtrack to build a tender poem to the night time. It’s all big plate reverbs and shuffling drums.

Unlike most things that labour under an impression of being overly, scarily brainy, it is anything but difficult to love Lese Majesty.

In its moodier moments, the music can be as gorgeous and inherently moving as Rafael Toral’s explorations of sustained harmony on Traveling Light. Yet, a sense of disquiet follows like a shadow, haunting the melodies, ready to break the enchantment. .... When they finally culminate in the overpowering, elatedly bright ‘A New Morning Breaks’, Dorji’s music begins to feel truly necessary, a transmutation of current anxieties into a determination to move forward.

A stirring evocation of childhood, community and the nature of memory, The Silver Gymnasium suits being pored over as much as it does driving on a sunny day--and it suits both very well indeed.

From the glissandos and vertigo of 'Milk & Black Spiders' to the jounce and yawn of 'Providence', in every note and noteless space you can feel it: the physical unburdening, the personal reckoning, the fatigue and reprieve of letting go.

It's a piece of surrealism and absolutely beautiful to listen to.

Ultimately, a record is never going to change the world, but FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE might finally put an end to the fallacy of Eno as the “non-musician”.

Traversing minimal jazz, soulful R&B, edges of glitch, hip-hop sampling, voice modulation and ephemeral field recordings, Help is a welcome addition to Timothy’s growing body of work and forward-thinking alternative music in general.

There's little in the way of light and shade--certainly nowhere to relax--and that's probably the intention, but as a piece of heavy music--in a music industry where it would be very easy for Anselmo to play it a little safe--it's as daring and as experimental an album as you're likely to hear all year.

Developed over a rough couple of years for the band, with both singer Valentine Caulfield and drummer Alex Macdougall battling sickness and enduring multiple rounds of surgery, it nevertheless arrives sounding invigorated and defiant.