What ‘Perfect Saviors’ succeeds in, however, it exploding those aspects ever outwards, renewing The Armed and emboldening their most ambitious, rewarding album to date.

One of our greatest living guitarists has conjured up something truly special.

Injury Reserve’s new album is a truly dystopian impression of despair, smashing together polar opposite genres to create something wholly new.

Makaya McCraven breathes new life into not only the album but Scott-Heron’s legacy.

A more concise LP that continues LUH's mythos, whilst also branching out sonically, Love Hates What You Become reinforces their necessary purpose. Fearless, life-affirming and without compromise, Lost Under Heaven's future blues have the potential to be a soundtrack of a generation.

A core message for hope in a fragile world (delivered via singers like Moses Sumney and Tawiah) completes this delicate musical tapestry perfectly, resulting in a quietly triumphant comeback from the British masters.

Her second album is an enchanting collection of beautifully raw songs, the faint trace of tape-hiss in the quieter moments combined with the rootsy feel of songs.

Despite the visceral joy and catchy melodies of the music; it's Joseph Talbot’s lyrics that are the main event. Part social commentary, stand-up routine and motivational quotes lyrics.

Channel Orange demands to be listened to in a single sitting.

Fuelled by rapturous and disjointed guitar work and bittersweet lyricism, this record will easily be in the running for one of the best records out of the UK this year.

Imbued with a rupturing rave-punk sensibility.

Showing clear progression and monumental ambition, TNP have crafted a stark and dense knockout performance.

‘Coral Island’ is huge in scope and ambition, while also remaining staggeringly consistent. The bar is set high from the off, and they never fail to reach it. A lazy comparison: it’s as creative as ‘The White Album’ and as unified as ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’. A truly superb experience, it feels as though The Coral have painted their masterpiece – a one way ticket to ‘Coral Island’ is a truly an offer you can’t turn down.

The Betas were a formidable live band, and the radio session tracks here are as good as, and sometimes better than, their studio counterparts. There’s little in the way of actual rarities, though.

‘The Family’ is the perfect BROCKHAMPTON album. It has a flawless balance on energy fuelled moments with more melancholic ones, and the departure in sound from previous efforts makes for a compelling full listen.

Whilst we aren’t handed the next chapter of The Libertines story on a platter, the beauty and tumult of the band is in the subtext. It’s in John Hassall and Gary Powell joining Barat and Doherty’s mythic duo on vocals for the first time on ‘Man With The Melody’. It’s in the closer, ‘Songs They Never Played On The Radio’, which was born in 2006 and finished for ‘All Quiet…’, one of the most beautiful Libertines songs of all time.

Stuffed with bomb-ass beats and rhymes that will bang from Cali to Darlington.

It’s reality music, and while obviously tailored around the life and times of Shawn Carter, offers so many narratives that the common man can relate to in astounding measures.

Everything suggests that, on the strength of this set, The Land of the Brave won’t need a referendum to prove its independence.

Stunning debut mixtape ‘Send Them To Coventry’. The 15-track project is a musical kaleidoscope, fusing elements of afro-swing, dancehall, grime, and rap. Sonically, it speaks to the fluidity of Black sounds.

‘MOTOMAMI’ blows away the lingering strictures of lockdown, and finds a true modern icon bathing in personal freedoms.

The Bones Of What You Believe is an exceptionally strong debut where every track is a potential single.

I See You is perhaps the bravest album of the band’s career, the one laden with the most changes, with the most prolonged journeys into the unexpected. Yet it also feels resolutely like The xx.

Some of the tracks cry out for a bar or two to be spat over, but when you hear that hollow synth on Teeza’s ‘Rum And Coke’, you’ll be sold on the grime renaissance.

The pacing can get interrupted somewhat by the sheer amount of skits on here, and a Jay Sean featuring ‘Any Day’ slams on the brakes mid-album, but other than that this is a tightly packed, lightning-quick swing at the racism of British society. Riz Ahmed might now be more famous for his acting, but he’s been making music since he was a teenager – and on this album, it shows.

This isn’t download territory--it’s a journey, and if you buy a ticket, you have to put the time in to get to the destination. But what a destination.

Another impressive feather in one of the most versatile caps in Parisian pop music.

Cheeky, subversive ‘I Saw The Truth Undressing’ seems to sum up this wonderful, enlightening record.