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.

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.

At moments, Byrne is rhapsodic, her vocals soaring above the fluttering electronics of ‘Summer Glass’. Later, she stares down the darkness, as on the deceptively gentle ‘Lightning Comes Up From The Ground’ or on closer ‘Death Is The Diamond’.

It is a gorgeous, masterly and strangely addictive album.

In musical terms, this is arguably more robust and structured than any of the previous Vatican Shadow releases, with a well-defined narrative arc from beginning to end.

It's the band's most mature work to date and perhaps the only one that feels like a true album.

Their best record to date, Ecstatic Arrow reminds us of the astonishing things you can do with pop music if you dare defy conventions.

A prayer of a record, despair turned into poetry.

For all the talk of madness, it would seem more than ever that Sebastien Tellier knows exactly what he's doing.

Musically, UK Grim is stark and austere and without embellishment, but combines the melodic reach of their last album with the pulsing minimalism of the Austerity Dogs era. It angrily counters the corporate pop that forces us to be joyful, but it’s not without its own brand of optimism.

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.

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.

It's the type of album you have to commit to completely, but for those seeking a glimpse of the numinous, it's worth the effort.

What all the songs on News From Nowhere have in common is a baffling, mystical elegance, both independently and, to an even greater extent, within the flow of the record.

The Get Up Sequences Part One has its moments of unrestrained incandescence, it is true. However, a tremendous melancholy comes gusting through too. ... And it confirms that, for those who wish to splice up their life, The Go! Team are still masters of cut ‘n paste heartache.

It stands on its own two feet and crucially employs a refinement of ideas that proves that space is indeed deep.

Words And Music By Saint Etienne is an album that reaffirms all that is glorious and brilliant about pop music.

For all the synthetic otherworldliness, this record is unflinchingly honest in its assessment of the United States as well as a very personal and raw portrait of Steven’s own humanity and fallibility. There’s no dogma, only equivocation.

The great joy of Agriculture’s music is the way they make these abrupt shifts flow naturally. On their second album they broaden the scope of their sound while integrating its many aspects more fluidly.

It’s refreshing then that their music comes without a prescribed meaning being spoon-fed to listeners. This allows the listener to come to their own conclusions.

Migratory is a beautiful listening experience that should hopefully bring some succour to you, wherever you might be.

With Archangel Hill, Collins continues to deliver on the title of that extraordinary record, Folk Roots, New Routes: finding old ways to look forward and new ways to look back.

Where in the past, Cave used artistic practice to escape "whatever it was that was pursuing me," on Carnage, he and Warren Ellis confront it head on. The result is a record that sometimes collapses under the weight of that task, but is nonetheless a remarkable demonstration of their artistic power.

Her deliberate, fully present process resulted in the sort of opulent, heady music that you’d actually expect mushrooms to make. From the very first notes of opener ‘Rewild’, the music betrays an intoxicatingly organic aura.

This is garage rock yes, but not teeth grindingly basic 4-4, it's four to the forest floor, bouncing off the superfuzz pedal and rebounding into space, and from their multifarious albums, Mutilator Defeated At Last is undeniably a star.

There is something unsettling but ultimately compulsive about this record. From the opening moments of ‘Deep Six Textbook’, you feel compelled to listen attentively and follow the whole oddball affair to its conclusion.

La Femme’s second album Mystère continues where Psycho Tropical Berlin left off, though it is a more sophisticated affair, and perhaps more subdued too (though that’s no bad thing). There’s still room for the surf rock antics of the impossible catchy ‘Où va le monde’, but on tracks like ‘Septembre’, there’s a definite sense of foreboding as summer ends and the season changes.

A dash of extra variety, and an increasing ability to transform clever layers of sound into well-structured songs, make this his best contribution to date.