Prurient's Through The Window, a three-cut techno tour-de-force released this month on the Blackest Ever Black imprint, is at once limiting and liberating.

The sense of real guts that was missing on Zeroes is here all too present, on a record that feels messy, desperate and at the end of its tether--yet also ironically accomplished, impeccably crafted and resolutely forward-looking.

Granular Tales is not without its flaws, but perfection isn't necessarily what makes a good album.

Gorillaz helped re-unite both indie and pop with that most Paul Morley's jowl-wobbling of things: the abstract.

In Free Fall often feels like floating, but it never really makes the crash-landing you’d expect from gravity’s pull. Rather, it stays in the atmosphere, lingering on the feeling of uncertainty of a jump, right before your feet touch the ground.

The organising of Sun Ra's music here is more like a film with staggered yet complimentary scenes, than a coherent and fluid sequence of events. With this compilation being a hefty double LP, this'll be a fairly abridged take.

Ultimately it's the breaking of a cycle that leads to change and, on this record of both progression and recollection, Esben And The Witch suggest that they haven't yet quite achieved that.

I Know What Love Isn't turns out to be a graceful break-up album, one that eschews ugliness and rage.

For the most part, Unpatterns is slightly sinister, stretched out, anxious, fidgety house.

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.

The group has made their name by blurring the lines between genres, letting multiple ideas meld into one airy texture, and this album follows suit. But it’s in the spurts of tension, the swelling melancholy, the subtle melodies, that Monument feels its most compelling.

It's a pretty indulgent affair (Halstead has acknowledged this) with most songs clocking in close to or exceeding the five minute mark; the last couple of tracks are disposable.

If we were picking holes here, you might gently suggest Tied To A Star is not altogether captivating, but for serious fans of J Mascis' acoustic incline--it does deliver. His lack of clear narrative, comically dull song titles like 'And Then', 'Drifter', 'Heal The Star' and 'Come Down', still leaves J Mascis as something of a stranger to us.

Beautifully composed and beautifully produced.

Lioness: Hidden Treasures is an appropriately muted set, with Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi producing an honourable and moving tribute to the Amy Winehouse.

Return to Archive is a funny and unsettling trip through the past, to a time before we felt like we’d heard everything. But its greatest power is in forcing us to question what we should archive, given that any noise can capture the world it came from.

Their sound now possesses a withering, caustic wit instead of a joyous, ostentatious cackle, and the suspicion is that it's only the start of an enticing middle chapter. We'll see better still from them as they develop.

This is a solid pop album and Nayeon’s charms shine. Her voice, visuals, and sweet attitude deliver a feel-good tracklist full of fluffiness and catchy hooks, but it’s also clear that her own colour still waits to be found.

Even if Nocturne isn't going to shove Wild Nothing to the front of any groundbreaking movement, it's still a really good record, made by a guy who likes really good records and who seems really happy to share the refinement of his craft with us.

Insomnia is generally solid, with more peaks than troughs. All things considered, it probably isn’t groundbreaking, and doesn’t feel as vital or captivating as Dave’s Psychodrama or Headie One’s Music X Road. But it’s a welcome addition to the artists’ respective back catalogues.

All [tracks] are grand, and strong-hearted.

SD Laika compresses space to the point that That's Harakiri becomes constricted by its own sheer density; appropriately, the album is suggestive of inner space, one that is seemingly fraught with anxiety. As a result it's difficult to sustain such energy and tracks seem to be rapidly exhausted, most are less than three minutes. But such are the ideas and impact of them that they linger a lot longer.

Drenge is giddily goofy.

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.

For every instance on III set to give the listener an aural acid bath, there are nearly as many that might induce a snooze on the bus, and a dribble on your neighbouring passenger's shoulder.

While the album itself falls short. The ambition is admirable, but what makes the songs commendable is their refusal to thrive. They are deeply melancholic. There's a focus on Rothman's drug addiction itself rather than the desire to resolve it, a resignation to dying rather than a desire to learn how to live.

Pixies have played it straight and stayed in their lane, their once vital weirdness cast into the laundry basket like a vampire costume post Halloween. Head Carrier is 80% classic Pixies. But it turns out the missing 20% is as fundamental as oxygen is to air.