During the album's first half especially you therefore find yourself wishing for a more tangible emotional link to its maker. This arrives during Sport's last third, which closes the distance with the listener in a thrilling final run of tracks.

Khan has truly emerged as one of modern pop's most thrilling voices. Steeped in references? Perhaps, but Khan's own spirit of invention and emotional wisdom are through lines which make The Haunted Man a singular journey.

Rhetoric & Terror is a multi-textural album, constantly swinging in different directions, resulting in a less immersive time than Nonpareils’ debut. The album is constantly in flux, moving between different states like Hemphill’s mind.

Keely's is a singular mind that luxuriates in its own logic, but on Original Machines it luxuriates a little too much. Cheeringly, though, there are superb moments and doodles, the pace of which makes for an inventively utilitarian listen.

This album's great strength lies in the rearguard action its brittleness mounts against kitsch accounts of authenticity.

If something’s missing, it’s in production that can’t hide ageing spread; over separate sessions, with separate moods. None of it parlays a singular vision. It’s not meant to. So although the songs often hit the spot (it’s a fuck ton more enjoyable than Teeth Dreams) it’s not a follow-up to Stay Positive.

Its [Daydream Repeat’s] arrival as fourth track brings a welcome levity to proceedings and you sort of wish there was more of it. Nevertheless, if Three is predictable in its lack of surprises, in Hebden’s case, that can only mean what’s on offer is sturdy and assured.

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.

It's impressively focussed and musically adventurous, stirring elements of goth, post-punk, neo-folk and avant-noise into some perplexing shapes.

What we end up with is a fairly decent dubstep album with Cuban samples sprinkled on top.

The guys at the centre of Dirtmusic have produced a lot of excellent tracks when making this album, and very successfully fused their own music with Malian styles, and truly collaborated rather than merely sampled or copied from native Malian traditions--but there's still the nagging feeling that it might have been even better had they left themselves out of the equation entirely.

The charm of Growing Seeds is, in part, to be found in its naïvety. Norrvide approaches synth pop not as something that should be subverted or detourned, but wide-eyed and unjaded

Even if some of the album's humanism cloys slightly ... it's reassuring to hear the argument against corporate greed advanced with such forthrightness.

In an age of hyper-optionality these tracks are never festooned with excessive detail where a few stark gestures would do, and the results boil over with primitive playfulness.

Glass Animals sound like they are on the cusp of everything. There's a gap between their vocabulary and their sound, their choruses and their intros, their obvious intelligence and what they've produced.

Hell on Heels is one beautiful amble.

Despite the forcefulness of its concept, Brute thus often feels less like music of protest than music of exhaustion, confusion, and diffuse rage. This can make for an oppressive and tiring listen, but at best its effect is unsettling, and suggestive of traumatised detachment--a familiar enough reaction to the barrage of grim reports that make up the daily online news churn.

This debut is possessed, for good or ill, of the sort of radio-licking, high-glycemic-index polish (courtesy of Arctic Monkeys and Adele knobsman Jim Abbiss) that will instantly raise the hackles of those who still care about appearing to be underground or whatever. It glistens. But crucially, that light is dancing with fleeting magic off the bones of some bewitching tunes.

Overlook is not her best record, but is an encouraging return to a sensibility marked by deliberation and sensuousness in equal measure.

Despite the warts, This Machine Kills Artists is a solid outing. And, perhaps because of the all acoustic setting, it may be the most consistently accessible thing Buzzo has ever done.

As a general rule on New Brigade, the faster, shorter and more atonal the tracks, the more intriguing the Danes become.

Though it's not masterpiece by any means, the fifth installment in Slipknot career is praiseworthy overall, especially given the circumstances surrounding its creation.

Far from being self-proclaimed slack mothers their work ethic and life ethos is to be admired, if not from afar, but from the front row of a sweaty mosh pit as if your own existence depended on it.

For all the heroics on display here, though, it sometimes sounds as though these three hyper-prolific virtuosos are--believe it or not--resting in something of a comfort zone. They've increased their compositional and improvisational fortitude as a unit, but they're still wandering the same general aural territory as Rangda (or Sun City Girls or Chasny's Comets On Fire).

More vibrant and engaged with the world than they've sounded at any time since Whatever You Love, You Are.

Everything on Flamagra sounds amazing. The beats are crisp and crunchy, the synths and loops are tight and catchy, the basslines are deep and wobbly and the vocals floating above it all take centre stage, but because everything sounds so perfectly measured it’s hard to get excited about the next song, as it all merges into one long sixty-two minute listening experience.

It ain't no Raw Power. But once you get your head around the fact that it rightfully doesn't even attempt to imitate its antecedent, and really is more a belated sequel to Pop and Williamson's 1977 album Kill City, then this is, in places, a pretty damn good rock & roll record.

Although there's not much here to blow you away, it does seem that the Lay Llamas have stumbled upon a useful synthesis of those fashionable psych touchstones--repetitious afro, spacey synth kraut and churning fuzz guitar--which earns a rightful place amongst the rest of the crop.