Machine is an album of military rhythms, deep sub pressure, rasping bass synths heavy enough to take chunks out of the earth, and massive, driving, low-end drones that occasionally sound like weeping hairdryers. Yet, through all of that, there are glimpses of a melodic melancholia.

One of their most rewardingly mysterious and perplexing releases in quite some time.

The spirit of ‘Pussy Power’ percolates in OneDa’s searing lyricism and rapid-fire flow all the way through Formula OneDa, underlining exactly why she represents an exciting and inspired future for the Mancunian hip-hop scene and beyond.

For all the proggy flights of fancy here, Absolute Elsewhere still resolutely retains what made the band’s unique take on death metal so fascinating in the first place. Once the novelty of hearing them bust out Rick Wakeman-esque synth flourishes amidst churning blastbeats has worn off, repeated listens reveal the band’s songwriting skills feeling more finely honed than ever, with a consistent (if entirely surreal) logic underpinning the structure of both these side-long movements.

While Memorial Waterslides (the title itself a perfect juxtaposition of the bleak and the playful) is shot through with a sense of longing and an awareness of the passing of time, it’s also a joyful celebration of creativity, and of a band who appear to have ideas in abundance.

A shining, distorted, expertly constructed, open-ended record, that might be Xiu Xiu’s best.

While it’s so clearly a record about loss, it’s not one that reverberates with grief. In fact there’s a joy in the bold, restless exploration – messing with the machines until something human came out. And there’s also a joy in treasuring Parker’s memory.

Thematic and tonal dexterity accounted for, The New Sound is undeniably an entertaining body of work which highlights Greep’s strengths as a singular songwriter and performer. However, there are instances (the bizarre final minute of ‘Walk Up’) where Greep throws too many ideas at one song, resulting in misaligned structures.

Looser and more personal, fragile but still pissed off, City Lights – next to the band’s self-titled debut – portrays the classic tale of a creative harmony that blooms over time, no longer tempered by the tentativeness that comes with getting to know one another.

This feels, in many ways, more like a compilation than a coherent album: a selection of tracks created in tribute to the late artist, rather than a cogent piece of art crafted by her exacting hand. It isn’t so much that this tries and fails to replicate what SOPHIE did best – or, more accurately, what only SOPHIE did – but more that it steers too far away from that, likely (and with good reason) to avoid criticism on that front.

The whole record feels hauled from a dream space where you’re laid on your back letting the sky sink down to you. It’s ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ the album.

The pop hooks in contrast to their previous two albums are more subliminal. The melodies don’t always go in places you expect, but this music is best left to stew in the background before the magic manifests.

As a whole, Viewfinder is Eisenberg’s most ambitious statement yet, and a testament to their range as an artist.

Cascade is a unified and more straightforward album from Floating Points, made for those looking for dancefloor elation.

Migratory is a beautiful listening experience that should hopefully bring some succour to you, wherever you might be.

Rack is what fans have waited a long time for. .... It’s partly completing unfinished business, returning to the high-water mark of those Touch and Go days. And it’s partly because, together, they make an unholy racket that makes them feel good.

Wild God is exactly what you’d expect a Bad Seeds record made by church-going Nick Cave at the age of 66 to sound like – vocally, that wobble and rasp now is what you’re going to get from decades spent smoking snouts and everything else besides. Musically, it is a slow and elegantly-arranged record, which also seems fitting for where Cave is in life.

WOOF charms mainly by the dint of its barefaced cheek: a record like this has been long overdue, especially since the pandemic.

American Standard is, paradoxically, perhaps the band’s most straight-up listenable record while also their hardest to process thematically. .... It focuses in large part on a life lived with bulimia nervosa. Like the band’s four previous albums and sundry collaborations, these experiences are examined under a harsh, bright, unforgiving light in a manner that’s deeply unflattering but also cuttingly incisive.

Thirty years later, Seefeel still know how to push our buttons.

Despite the inevitable ending, Amelia is an unexpectedly soothing record. This is largely down to Anderson having a calm, meditative quality to her voice that holds steady whether the arrangement is minimalist or intense. But much of the relaxing quality of the album is also related to Anderson’s ability to look at a figure frequently only cast in tragedy and mystery as a whole person.

A project with little boundaries, 3+5 stands on its own two feet as a concoction of hyperactive releases weaving in disco, electronica, cyberpunk, metal and more.

A Firmer Hand is such a thrilling listen because it eschews the platitudes of empowerment for something far more gritty, tough, self-critical – yet also unafraid to dish it out.

Ndola emphasises the need to acknowledge and learn origin stories to gain a deeper understanding of how music works both locally and globally in the present. Far from just another spectacularly re-playable adventure from Kampire, this is the most convincing evidence to date that she’s an excellent musicologist and historian, not just an exceptional DJ.

Flight b741 could have come off as overly kitsch or ironic, but King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard stick the landing.

Musically, >>>> is as strong throughout as the vocals are characteristically for the birds. .... >>>> arrives out of nowhere and it’s a fine addition to the canon, made all the more amenable by the cleverly engineered surprise of it all.

Cellophane Memories is harder to get a grip on. Chrystabell’s vocals, previously the unambiguous focus of every song, are here layered, cut-up, and reversed, often to the point where they become indecipherable. That’s in part due to the nature of its creation.

Its story expands on the journey and transitional creative period their last release embarked on, in a way that both compliments their past while not being afraid to introduce a slightly weirder path.