There’s a few too many repeated melodies, and too few differing musical moods. Still, this is a reliably impressive package from a man who knows his business, and crucially still has something to say. It’s Prime Numan in his prime.

A gradual unfolding of creative consciousness in real-time, long evolving in a psychotropic loop of self-invention, her journey culminates on The Tunnel and the Clearing in hard-earned clarity.

The collaborations are abundant throughout Reflection too and mark some of James’ most assured offerings: her skills as a producer (particularly on drill tracks) are especially impressive. Through working with other creatives from afar, James starts to arrive at something that resembles peace.

‘Wited, Still and All…’ is a soft and broken, but strangely discordant cut, while ‘Of This Ilk’ and ‘Vital’ allow the more musically daring sides of the group to surface, with start-stop rhythms and razing riffs fencing the mass of metal aftershocks. As the album nears its end, there is a sense of something huge moving past just beyond the reach of senses, leaving a trail of subtle melodies behind. A way forward where there was none before.

Overall, this is a rewarding and captivating body of work. The Waves Pt.1 is a testament to Kele Okereke’s adaptability as an artist.

The nine tracks on Frontera isolate Fly Pan Am’s part in the project, yet taking the multi- out of multimedia doesn’t dilute the themes seared into the music.

Medieval Femme plays to its strengths, with only a couple of disjointed cuts amongst an excellent collection, and even those keeping a tight ship on runtime.

There is not a song on Build A Problem that does not deserve its place on the album. They all have the potential to be favourites, depending on the day, your mood and what you want from a song. Smoothly woven from dodie’s most intimate moments, Build a Problem has it all.

While at times Flat White Moon struggles to match the awe-striking levels of the album’s opening track, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

Made Out of Sound might be one of the finest things either Corsano or Orcutt has done, which is no mean feat.

If you want to think about grubby late mid-century New York, go and read Just Kids or something. If you want a high-production, catchy album that’s cheesy, fun, and occasionally a bit naff, buy Daddy’s Home.

A superhuman album celebratory to a soul very sad to have lost.

One of the finest debut albums this century. ... Bright Green Field is a brave and daring debut album that manages to mix experimental and avant-garde influences smack bang next to bouncy indie-disco post-punk motifs. I can’t get over how grand and great it is.

This record is full of deft brass lines, clever little melodies and memorable refrains. Because at the root of everything For Those I Love writes great pop songs.

It’s an exploratory, ebullient album from start to finish, and one that embodies the insatiable curiosity that led him to work with so many artists from so many different genres, a celebration of collective endeavour and of life itself.

Complex and sophisticated, if i could make it go quiet is one of the most enticing new albums I have heard in a long time.

The results just feel like a watering down of his vision, leaving the listener in a strange hinterland which doesn’t leave much of an impression either way.

In places, when compared to their earlier works, it sometimes feels like songs don’t get the space to grow and unfold. Other than that, this is a sublime and beguiling record, and a milestone in the evolution of a unique creative voice.

Very programmatic, AAI allows Mouse on Mars to fully flesh out their ever implicit techno-humanist sonic philosophy, a certain anarcho-progressivism with a tech-utopian bent. The record serves as a magnifying glass to their career-long preoccupations.

a softer focus feels like a breakthrough: simultaneously freer and more composed, closer and more abstract, sweeter and more caustic.

The constant sense of apnoea and claustrophobia saturating all his previous work is gone, leaving space for a rediscovered breathing. Sprouting, springing, beaming, the lyrics follow the course of the seasons, paralleling the introspective thoughts of a man’s healing and the ever-beguiling cycle of nature. There is a light that filters through the notes, irradiating the sonic landscape like sun rays at dawn.

Make no mistake, this is gloriously hypnotic stuff, a fall into a rhythmic vortex that unscrews your head so it can pop your brain in the fridge. And, as the album progresses – most notably on the seductive ‘One Two’ – the realisation creeps in that what was originally considered abrasive has become a soothing form of chaos. An odd mix, for sure, but one that comes as sharp relief to the trying tedium of lockdown life.

It’s sombre, yes, but it’s also calm and reflective – a moment to pause and consider where those of us opposed to the systems that have created our current crises go from here.

With Deep England, she drills into the marrow of a nation that in 2021 doesn’t really know itself and possibly doesn’t want to. The result is a fever dream splicing of Pan’s Labyrinth and a cider binge beneath an underpass that has got out of hand and turned unexpectedly nasty.

William Doyle’s Great Spans Of Muddy Time fuses the emotional honesty of 1960s girl groups with muscular electronica to create an atmosphere of absolute sincerity and uncertainty soaked in pop yearning. It is an album that truly sinks in.

You won’t hear a better pop album this year. I doubt you’ll hear a better rap album this year.

It astonished ... It is a celebration of sound at its finest and most pure: from the smallest scratch to cathartic crescendos, from spiralling improv to contemplative silences. Every note, whisper, bleep, and shift is significant. It is marvellously multifaceted but never obnoxious: a refreshing, one-of-a-kind conversation between jazz, classical, and electronic.

The density of soil has been scraped back, giving each song a lightness and an ability to breathe.