This is her strongest album to date and one where “noise” is but a tool towards a much more expansive expression of music.

MITH is an insightful record, one that gives its listener pause and feels like a valuable artefact of our time.

Jassbusters is the first release where Mockasin is accompanied by a band--and it’s a revelation. His usual exaggeratedly washy, reverby sound is anchored and evolves into something fuller, groovier, twangier. ... Jassbusters deserves a big fat red marker pen A.

It’s a forward-thinking, innovative distillation of the zeitgeist that pushes things forward. Indeed, while he’s had a co-sign from Drake, in the Scorpion-era Octavian’s new mixtape Spaceman is the kind of vibe Aubrey wishes he could make.

They mix a palette of distinctive darkness, creating a work of remarkable richness and thematic consistency. While there are still full-throttle assaults that recall the face-chewing passages of The Apostacy (‘Angelvus XIII’ packs particular bite), vast swathes of the album exude a more sinister magnificence.

An album that ought to be regarded as a creative peak for Suede, easily reaching the heights of their 90s best.

Throughout Fabriclive 100, Kode9 and Burial piece together their choices with little care for linearity or the kind of journey-led approach many might expect from a mix CD. Ambient interludes--many of them carrying Burial’s signature sound palette--weave in and out throughout the mix, perhaps bridging the gaps between the respective artists’ selections.

Wanderer, although not explicitly confrontational, subtly undermines this longstanding and limited perception of What Cat Power Is. Marshall herself sits in the producer’s seat, and gone is the gloss of 2012’s Sun; these 11 songs are stripped back to the sparse bones of piano, guitar and that distinctive, smoky, Southern States voice.

Mudhoney have released an astute, politically relevant and commendably fired-up garage punk belter of an LP. Aye, it blindsided me too.

The songs not only feel like they exist in a vacuum, but that they demand the listener create one too. It’s an important and serious album because it forces you to experience it as one, it asserts itself as the only thing you can concentrate on.

There is still a lightness of touch to Who Do You Love; however dense the writing gets, no matter how ludicrous and far-reaching in scope, it has enough of a knowing sense of its own bombast to prevent it from becoming po-faced.

The takeaway sensation of their epic and sprawling second record is quite simply one of pleasure. They embrace the ridiculous and the sublime in equal measure.

Negro Swan feels like a collection of personal and cultural traumatic memories, and it also feels like an embrace--a call for young queer people of colour to have hope, feel beautiful, and be filled all the way up.

Pastoral may be an album of satire, but it’s not the cheery-pallid rural parody of Cold Comfort Farm, Five Go Mad In Dorset or even Hot Fuzz. Gazelle Twin’s Pastoral jester bares its teeth with glee; its smile is part Punch and part the grotesque little homunculus of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’.

>>> might cast an eye on the same mood-inspiration material of 70s avant rock and 80s chilled post-punk, but this album is no trite, bland replication.

Deaths is particularly, brazenly haphazard: it was written and recorded briskly, around full-time jobs, and the results are thrillingly erratic without ever feeling rushed.

This is an immersive listen, full of eerie familiarity and suspended body horror; a quasi-mystical sense of oneness gives Anticlines cohesion and a sense of spiritual comfort, and somehow reminds of of the vast indifferent universe as we descend into environmental disaster.

This Behavior jitters with energy and swells with smart touches, and if Kuperus and Miller are still as dedicated as this album indicates, then maybe they don’t need you rubes anyhow.

Yves Tumor has let assertiveness, assuredness and vulnerability run wild within him for Safe In The Hands Of Love and the result is magisterial and deeply engaging.

[The title track is] a challenging conclusion to a beautifully crafted, exploratory piece of work.

Grande’s new sound, the Williams-produced Not-Bangers, only make up half of the album. These standout tracks are interspersed between standard pop tracks. ... That’s not to say that the Bangers on Sweetener are bad--it’s more that they belong in previous era of Grande and they spoil the flow between songs. Sweetener may not be the dawning of a new age for Ariana but it could be a step towards somewhere weird and wonderful.

Mitski’s devotion to music has resulted in a tremendously earnest and endearing record.

Joy as an Act of Resistance is a feature-length confirmation of what many have long suspected: channelled via frontman Joe Talbot, the Bristol five-piece are striking a midpoint between polemical and impactful, the grit of which few contemporary guitar bands have any odds of outdoing.

Hunter is a tempestuous album full of haunting, unsettling vocals; it resonates with evocative power.

The only, minor caveat is that the songs end a little too abruptly. But there’s enough good music here to listen to over and over and to get you giddy about what Sink Ya Teeth will do next.

Don’t Look Away is a supremely confident album from a songwriter who has found his place and knows his music. It completes a trilogy which is essential listening for anyone who wants to hear why the psychedelic lineage of the past 50 years is fresh and alive.

By the album’s end, they seem to be stuck in a cul-de-sac. The next album, one hopes, will come along soon and help them out.

Astroworld is no Rodeo or Birds In The Trap Singing McKnight, but it’s a beautiful creation of sonically striking sounds.