Metal, Meat & Bone manages to be both a hypnotic and focussed listen, despite its length. For all its otherworldliness this is certainly one of their most powerful efforts and, for my money, up there with early classics such as Meet The Residents or Third Reich ‘N’ Roll, other brilliant subversions of sacred cows and taboos.

Although occasionally straying a bit too close to generic Afro-rock, the group still manage to keep it all on the right side of the classic sungura sound before mixing it up a bit on the final track.

The album is at its best when the margins are jammed full--tinny tambourine here, guitar feedback there, a wash of cellos dipping into the mix.

This album will certainly tick a lot of boxes for Super Furry acolytes, but for those who couldn't take to the SFA brand of avant-pop, Gulp should provide you with a nerdgasm or ten. Library electronics, jangly loftiness and enough in the way of melodies and choruses to soundtrack your summer.

Belle And Sebastian fans have long ago learned to take the rough with the smooth and the quality control on The Third Eye Centre is all over the shop. The odd flashes of wonder within show they're still not a lost cause though.

Inter Alia is a disappointing return to the saddle, expressed with awkward confidence and bravado by the band seemingly misremembering itself.

A marvelous record packed with charm.

When It Comes is a very balanced record that shows the artist standing on solid ground, in comfort with herself, and ready for a further creative take-off. A soothing and pleasant listen.

Overall, Madonna’s fourteenth album Madame X feels as if Mirwais had mostly completed a decent run-of-the-mill modern pop record, albeit with a cool hotch-potch global feel; hip nods in place to fado, dub and other micro-genres dunked amongst the trap and retro disco. But then just before sign-off, Herself went through the top-lines with a sharpie. ... None of these carefully curated flourishes feel as if they truly live inside the ‘whole’ of this music. Instead it all feels plonked on top of a template.

Herrema and her group are obviously having a blast, and the fact that they have managed to blend so many disparate ingredients into a surprisingly potent brew is far more important than the supposition that they might not be taking themselves too seriously.

Porpora has managed an album that is at points a tiny bit distressing, yet it offers sweet refuge from the uneasiness he himself creates.

Noctunes repeatedly feels like a homecoming of sorts. It isn't, however, without its shortcomings: it's a tad prolonged (three tracks here could easily go) and there's a tendency for Beal to get comfortable in his compositions.

With a discipline perhaps learnt from his extensive soundtrack work, Harvey has trimmed away the fat, so that every rhythmic or melodic touch serves a purpose.

There's lots of good guitar playing, but no flashy riffs and absolutely nothing you'd call a solo. It gives Monuments its greatest strength: a self contained identity.

It is not even sprawling and directionless but just painstakingly mediocre throughout.

For all that it created and shaped, of course, nothing entirely feels like it's simply planned out and fully structured--elements emerge in the mix, parts quietly but directly drop in, emphases shift from beats to swirling, quiet loops or the reverse.

Wolf is Tyler's album through and through, a mostly diverting document of juvenile delinquency that defines him better than any prior musical effort.

Lantern still shows clear signs of the producer attempting to find his feet, if at times faltering.

This is a cautious yet dignified return that allows the Reids and their associates to spend even more time together than they’d have expected to create something positive rather than engaging in an orgy of self-destruction.

More richly-nuanced than Mastermind and far trippier than 4-Way Diablo, Last Patrol sees the elder statesmen of stoner rock back at the very top of their game.

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.

Adrift is a simultaneously relaxing and arresting experience. It's headphone music that rewards encapsulated ears and enclosed eyes.

This is not as viscerally thrilling as many of his other releases; it is warm, it is something to quietly contemplate.

‘‘Feet’ is probably the set highlight, a real mutant groover, whilst ‘Bobby’s Boyfriend’ actually becomes creepier for its more skeletal arrangements. .... However, straightened up versions of live favourites ‘Whitest Boy On The Beach’ and ‘Tinfoil Deathstar’ suffer for lack of mania and a flatness that doesn’t tally with the memories of incendiary live shows.

Anything In Return feels again like the work of an artist still exploring his sound and yet to pin it down to something concrete.

Coming Out Of The Fog is an album of light and shade and one that benefits more from what's not in it than is.

What it proves to be is an exhilarating, uneven, thought-provoking, over-egged, over-long, lucid, barnstorming, soul-infused hip-hop album of a type that, as I may have mentioned once or twice or five times, you just don't get any more. Except, of course, you do, and here it is.

Welcome to Condale is a refreshingly ambitious, variegated take on the 80s both conceptually and in its execution.