None of this feels glib, not in the circumstances, and not when the music steers clear of mush to come out gorgeous, taut and streamlined.

Eyes on the Lines sounds alive: the ivy growing out of that sphere, adding color and oxygen to the weathered, though still captivating, form underneath.

Either it sounds like 35 years of extreme metal and fast hardcore boiled down into one molten sea of fury, or you straight up don’t get it and are doomed to exist on the other side of the glass. See? This us-and-them rhetoric feels more fun the more you listen to this album.

Much like religious experience, the constellations of songs here (and their brethren on the two prior albums) rely on an intensely relatable core, a simple idea or feeling sizzling at the center that anyone can attach to. From there, the instrumentalists ripple out in meditative layers, never covering over or distracting from it, but rather reinforcing.

Bell’s mastery of subversion and convention enables the record to function as an exploration of dance and community; a reminder of how it feels to be alone, a stranger in a crowd.

Previously, Brian Leeds made music that you could dance to. Now he makes music to lose yourself in.

Throughout, Strangers is quite simply an understated tour de force by a now experienced composer and performer, able to convey a feeling and lead the way within it in equal measure.

Traditional airs 'Women Of Ireland', 'Carrickfergus' and 'Curragh Of Kildare' are evocative, stately and impassioned, respectively and alternately, and Rowland's bolshy old yelp has softened to a croon. He brings the kind of authority he didn't always have 30 years ago, along with a hard-won wisdom that gives him the character to handle this stuff sincerely.

On Treasure House they find an impressive balance: classical, symphonic music melds with garage and post-punk, giving credence to the cliché that opposites attract, outstanding in its complex sounds and arrangements.

Basses Loaded is excellent. Like every other Melvins record it holds its own identity while oozing the same sweet black guitar sludge they have re-perfected many times over the years.

The Lexicon Of Love has a brand new chapter. Read it and weep like a river, but then smile, because tears are not enough. The future that got away has got it going on again.

Despite this crippling reliance on traditional psychedelic touchstones, there’s certainly a few thrills to be had on the album, and things do pick up somewhat toward the second half of the work.

There’s simply so little spark here, barely glowing embers and blackened dust where once Radiohead blazed a fascinating, furious trail for others to attempt to follow.

What this sense of apparent introversion leads to, however, is anything but a soft or slow record. On the contrary; Oh No often grooves harder and faster than Pull My Hair Back, with Lanza’s voice still invoking early Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

Konono No. 1 Meets Batida isn't quite the sustained and magical dialogue it might have been, but it's an intriguing cultural experiment with moments of real alchemy.

Phased bottleneck guitars, Rhodes pianos, basses and synths lay a solid foundation, each instrument perfectly balanced with the other, though keeping a distinguishable part in the harmony, giving the songs a layered and complex structure never overdone or taken too far as Cohen croons on top.

Though it is not articulated directly, the heart of this record is about the potential for a genuine and communal response to that hopelessness, and about an empowering, defiant joy that can be forged even in the depths of despair. Soundtrack to a soon unceasing summer.

Honey, when it works at least, is the sound of piecing together the night before: a love letter to not making it home, to the Tequila salt still stuck to your hand, to hands brushing under the cover of the smoke machine. Unfortunately, half of the time, it says precisely nothing and if that unquestionable potential is to be realised, Kathleen Brien has to make a choice.

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.

Cluster had rewritten the linguistics of modern sound and then turned away without any further heed. Somewhere, someone would always be playing live in der Fabrik from here on.

It is decidedly pop in parts, both accessible and innovative, reaffirming Hubbert's standing as one of Scotland's finest and most treasured artists.

There's a dryness that inhabits this music; and listening to to these future-past musical reliquaries (especially the fragile--and aptly named - end track, 'Death Of The Ego') you wonder whether it could all crumble away if subjected to the slightest breeze. Regardless; there is also a sense of an extraordinary concentration at work.

They haven't quite carved out new territory here, but if the best moments of Nocturnal Koreans are anything to go by, the wheels have started turning.

It's a sparse, isolated and overlong affair that's more difficult to love than previous solo outings like the lush The Forester or the sweet Wild Dog. However, for an artist with the vision to take such on such a huge subject as the three-pronged relationship between one woman, her gods and her planet, even managing to squeeze it down to a mere 22 songs is achievement enough. That the album is spectacular, introspective and terrifying all in equal measures is just a bonus.

A respect for the original material is clear throughout, and the emotional power of Badalamenti's tunes is identified and played up wonderfully.

Malamore is an album full of standouts, and a step in the direction of greatness.

It needed to be a Blackstar, not a The Next Day Part 2. Instead we're left with a lightweight affair that reminds us all that John Carpenter is far from infallible.

Dead doesn't so much kill Spectres' songs with these remixes as reanimate them and turn them loose on their creators, and the world.