While some fans of her earlier, more challenging, material may be mildly disappointed sonically by such a straight-up pop record, even they must acknowledge what an important album this is both personally to Monae and socially to the current world, and for that, it is a successful and pleasurable work.

As a rule, Dove meshes into a good album that might be accounted a small disappointment if this was 1995, but is a pretty spectacular accomplishment for a group of semi-retired musicians in their fifties.

Beyondless is an ambitious and accomplished ride that will claim a deserved spot on most Best-Of lists this year. Wrap up warm: the ice age has arrived.

The result is 7, a record that gets closer to the band's self-imposed boundaries than they ever have before without really threatening to break them down.

It’s not the Arctic Monkeys you might expect, and living inside Alex Turner’s identity crisis can be an occasionally uncomfortable experience, but give it some time and this sixth album reveals itself as one of the most interesting of the band’s career.

Here, the former Supergrass leader is so busy trying to prove something with his lofty themes and overreaching stylisation, that all of the magic is lost.

While much of the album has you spitting out quicksand, the clear escapism theme of ‘Noah’s Ark’ is a hand dragging you out of the quagmire. And with the amount of misery The Body are offloading here, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

The moments of unity sound accidental and haphazard, ambient music with the occasional breakcore eruption, as if a child was operating two stereos playing each artist and alternating turning the volume up and down on each one.

Confident Music For Confident People is exactly what it says on the tin. It's also the most unashamedly addictive record you'll hear all year.

There’s this frustrating sheen over everything--likely from Fitz and Joy’s formal training--which makes the violins too syrupy to be sweet, the steel guitar too rustic to be real. By the same token, Joy’s lyrics also lack any lived-in landmarks.

Overall, the album is thought-provoking and relevant. It’s an enjoyable listen and one which morphs and draws deeper messages with each listen. The moderate changes in sound only serve to highlight the poignance of the words through unassuming backing.

She’s created an album that’s worth more time than a quick fling on the rebound, another engaging entry in her ever-expanding catalogue.

Exorcism is very often an uncompromising listen, but the truth that Wilson exposes makes it hard not to galvanise around her. Her sheer unwillingness to sugar-coat the truth is harrowing yet inspiringly brave.

This collection of his most ambient and interesting soundtracks is presented here in a contemporary art crescendo; and features the good, the better and the synthesized from his artsy endeavours.

Yet another satisfying record from the London-based producer, who, while loses marks for his perhaps too similar creation, remains an important figure in the UK electronic scene and for good reason. Ultimately, Singularity will shape your summer of 2018 the same way Immunity did of 2013, and all power to it.

Fourteen years on from their last outing, A Perfect Circle’s return to active duty as a living, breathing band is broadly speaking a good thing for the hard rock scene. Just don’t expect a record which silver plates their stellar reputation.

Despite his various left turns, the one constant in Carlson’s work is the unrelenting hypnotic power of repetition, and a conviction that “the best music feels like the melody has been around forever.”

While Caer stumbles over artifice at the gate, Twin Shadow eventually rebuilds a vibrant pallet to unload actual confessions that other lonely listeners can relate to.

Grid of Points is the sound of what’s left after the winds have subsided. It’s astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly, painfully real.

On A Girl Cried Red Frasqueri showcases that she is more than just visceral beats and fierce rhymes. She has written some of her most confessional and personal lyrics to date.

With the exception of the dingy, dirty and grandiose boom of ‘Pulled Up The Ribbon’, most of In The Rainbow Rain is made up of occasionally-sombre songs cleverly disguised as up-beat, harmless, light-hearted tunes, which of course they’re not.

Beautiful Thing can be marked down as an interesting experiment but not a great record. It may end up being loved by hardcore fans of his song-writing but there won’t be a lot here for casual fans to come back to.

The second album from Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley carries the same sense of freedom as their first outing, this time a bit softer and more song-shaped than their debut’s meanderings.

Overall No. 4 is serene, still, and deep. It doesn’t allow you to become transfixed by predictable patterns by rather relaxes you into accepting the next step, whether you are being visited by a herd of headless horsemen, flying away on a magic carpet or sinking slowly, irresistibly, into torpor.

Without the installation, Dimensional People feels a bit 2D. There’s a piece of the conceptual puzzle just out of reach, and I’m not really sure what to do with all the other bits.

With Evil Spirits, you have to halt, to concentrate entirely to absorb the main message. Close your eyes; and it’s a politically charged electro-pop-rock love-spell to our tumultuous political times--but without the band’s names on the front, you wouldn’t even begin to place which dimension this demon came from.

Slug at their very best are a live band, so I’ll take this album as a warm-up.

It’s a--for the most part successful--attempt to reach across divides in a world which seems more confusing by the day, a battle against the increasing entropy which seems to be seeping in at the edges of all our existences.