Shah’s control of the narrative makes her songs sound more confidential than confessional. She exercises the same incisive observational skills that she applied to songs about social unease and toxic relationships when she turns the lens on herself, as willing to be cutting, critical and humorous when she is her own subject.

It is these three songs [MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA, Pool Hopping and Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism] that, in their hugeness, tend to overshadow the rest of the record on initial listens. Though the remaining tracks should not be missed or dismissed because of that.

Perhaps the main strength of 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s is that these songs rarely turn out to be what you thought they might be, which is a fairly on the nose metaphor for life itself – especially viewed 35 years later through the distorted prism of the 2020s.

The engagement with dance music and half-improvised feel lends it an irresistible forward momentum, something that picks up pace throughout the album to exhilarating effect; the album's second half in particular creates a disconcerting sensation of constant acceleration, until it finally collapses into its closing throes and falls away.

Where Hubbert goes musically from here he may not even know himself, but with Breaks & Bone he's managed to pull himself from the quicksand of grief and cement his latest work amongst the top Scottish albums of 2013.

The music is cryptic, otherworldly, and uncanny. The dislocation of Smith’s voice from The Fall is jarring and thrilling at times.

C Joynes and the Furlong Bray have produced music that is finely considered and full of energy, amply repaying multiple listens.

Its monomaniacal refinement might sometimes challenge you to commit to its worldview, but it's an album that both demands and rewards deep listening.

The album Cistern is thoughtful and meticulous, agile and artful.

The really interesting stuff here is from those groups that barely scraped out an album before disappearing into obscurity or never even got to release a record at the time, many of them victims of being outside of what was still largely a London-centric scene.

It's not that the depth isn't there, it's just that the experience is multidimensional enough to bring forth a flatness; a sense of unity which discards dimensions.

The Arctic Monkeys have comprehensively slaked off their PG-13 pretensions and gone full-on X-rated.

Eyeroll is organic and expansive, woven around the bouncy sounds of struck, scratched, and stretched rototoms, mutated voices, squiggly trumpet noises, and the ambient sounds of Ziúr’s flat in Berlin. The resulting music is restlessly rhythmic and capable of growing into a multitude of textural and structural directions.

Park Jiha has composed, performed and produced an album that treats clarity with the utmost respect, in that it realises that with lucidity comes an understanding of calamity and disorder. The world she has created succeeds because of that understanding. So much music that tries to fuse the traditional with the contemporary fails because of an idolisation of its parts; Communion idolises nothing, and is all the more tangible and engaging for that.

Tundra is a techno album as contemplation, not in in the sense that it is soft or gentle (it most certainly isn't), but in the way that it allows you to plug in with your surroundings, letting the earth and sky open up around you.

This is an album significantly more than what it seems to be, at first, on the surface. To some, it will sound like just another melodic punk album with a predilection for pop--an angry retort at the grievances of being in your twenties--but it’s the kind of record that will stir and inspire you during moments of existential crisis.

The Frenchman leaves enough space for everything to live harmoniously together. Melodies and countermelodies run free, but nothing ever feels overblown or unnecessary.

Much more the clenched fist than Gish, their second effort saw an increase in intensity, ballast, grit, ambition and sheer scale.

This is the pop we need; considered, vital, comforting, spiritual.

Mind Trap is a triumph of feelings over ideas, of making sounds bigger and more mobile than the spaces (or heads) that contain them.

A musical punch-up from start to finish, Goldblade choose their targets well as one blow is delivered after another. You might want to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.

From The Sea To The Land Beyond (whether encountered with or without the moving image) is a potent and poetic exploration of our own human mortality in contrast with the unyielding permanence of nature and the sea.

Man, It Feels Like Space Again is grandiose in the delivery, quixotic in the extreme, but, most of all, it's a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

Listening to Antigone, one can hear everything Ishibashi has achieved in these fruitful past few years coming to a head. It’s a risk-taking, ambitious album-length statement that further cements Ishibashi’s place in a rare pantheon of artists – one including O’Rourke, Scott Walker and Autechre – making some of their best work thirty-plus years into their career.

Perhaps the finest distillation to date of the various elements that comprise the group's distinctive sound.

Most importantly, as the band builds momentum on track after track, they never miss an opportunity to draw unexpected emotion from their grooves. Time and time again, they excel at finding and seizing every opportunity to fully capitalise on the underlying beauty of these compositions. Likewise, they never undervalue or underestimate the sheer power of gentleness.

It's a work that, while being their most accessible to date, is still dense enough to reward patience and repeated listens.

In sharing her experience of doing this, James’ most exploratory album also proves to be her most open-hearted.