Constant Bop has an air of effortless accomplishment and fresh brilliance, which can only come from hard work and a fastidious attention to detail.

Under all its punk ferocity, however, lies a grander message of mindfulness and mental strength. That’s an immeasurably powerful theme from two musicians both known for bringing vulnerable accounts of severe anxiety and depression to hip hop.

Stanger Today is the sound of a band doing what they want, knowing how to do it and, most importantly, having a blast doing it.

For now though, as an album, as a piece of art, it’s beautifully painted but the colour palette needs to expand substantially.

Stage Four is quite possibly Touché Amoré’s best album yet. They have once again one–upped themselves into crafting a fierce record which would do all their families proud.

On Let them Eat Chaos Tempest has cemented herself as a poet/rapper of the highest order, who isn’t happy just make the masses smile, but to challenge and make them think and love too.

It’s a frighteningly powerful album that will be adored by open-minded newcomers and "Miss Machine" converts alike.

Laurel Halo’s most ecstatically esoteric effort to date, which, in the case of this artist at least, is another way of saying that is both her best and her most joyously listenable.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have made a soundtrack that is haunting, mechanical and beautiful.

With such a range of musical stylings on one record, No Shape occasionally sounds more like a collection of songs than a unified album, at times this can be a bit stifling to the listener. ... But these are minor flaws in a record with many a moment of gorgeousness.

As the Richard Harris exhibition showed, by enabling us to momentarily confront our own mortality, morbid artistic meditations on death can be oddly and overwhelmingly uplifting.

If Fall Be Kind is noticeably less hooky than "Merriweather Post Pavilion," it sounds just as ravishing, and offers an equally cohesive whole.

You know a good sound when you want to take out a second mortgage to buy headphones good enough to appreciate it.

Stark but lush, these are pop songs for moonlit lakes, soft throbs to bob in while no one else is looking.

Animal Collective have made the album I hoped they’d make, and even that it’s autumn and summer’s over.

All together, Alpha Mike Foxtrotis a lot to take in at once--over five hours of material, and Wilco enthusiasts will have heard much of the contents already.

Under closer scrutiny, a three song lull holds it back from being as powerful as it might have been, but I’m happier listening to this flawed, fumbled and underdeveloped Kanye record than I am a thousand other records that came out this year and didn’t even try to change the world.

This is not a flirtation but the sound of the Necks entering genuine rock territory... and it’s brilliant.

Ten is just Ten, and I guess for all their reservations, the band have come to accept that: there’s no mystery to the new cover, just Pearl Jam in plain view, big shorts and all.

What’s really on display here is a well honed, experienced band flexing their muscles and creating tightly controlled, good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll music (of a rather cerebral variety) on their own terms, free from the weighty plague of fashion.

There is something to be said about a record like Quiet Signs, which finds its maker willingly dwindle and fade within the corporeal world’s fog and decay. It may be an old fashioned idea, sure, but it’s one that will undoubtedly age well.

A spectacular triumph.

Copia is the sound of Cooper surpassing himself, combining his patented minimalist drones with beautifully rendered piano.

As an experimental project, it's clever and varied, and a vital chapter in the history of electronic music and sampling. As a pop record, it's tantalising, sensitive and essential; if you don't already own My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, the reissue's extra tracks make now as good a time as any.

In spite of its gloomier mood, it’s a record every bit as spirited as Half Way Home, and possibly even more affecting.

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.

Halo cements itself into yr ears. This is logic in motion, and it’s dead beautiful to watch every piece of these puzzles fall into place.

Bang & Works Vol. 2 also captures a genre in transition, as both the old guard and the young producers increasingly look to other genres for a way to progress the sound, or at least re-flavour it.