Ultimately though, it is about mixing disparate influences and seeing how they blend together. Happily for all of us, this approach works brilliantly.

Ultimately, Abyss is like a nightmare. It consumes you, shows you a darkness you'd tried to keep away from, but in the cold of night, wide awake and heart-pumping you can't deny you enjoy the thrill of it.

This LP is clearly the product of four immensely talented musicians with a clear vision of asphalt soaked in rain and asphalt, the fears of death reflected upon by shining a flashlight through a hazy, ominously beautiful mist.

Although Green Lanes is a total bore, it is cool how they bear this mask on a handful of different songs. They've made that style of storytelling their own.

Despite remaining dutifully authentic to his own back-story and expressive temperament, the album, at times, sounds like it was written and recorded years ago, offering outdated production trends and repetitive content.

It all adds up to a pretty remarkable reinvention and album of leftfield synth-pop that is dark and mysterious enough to beguile in any language.

If you can convince yourself of TMLT being a novel, a musical, or five EPs crammed into one record, the experience becomes more immersive and rich.

Fans of Oneida, or Liturgy, or both, should be familiar with the boundary-pushing aspects of those bands, and will relish a chance to dip into this recording.

Even where his pieces feel unscripted and accidental, they all manage to paint a doomy melancholy which has a filmic charm.

In bitesize chunks this is a sumptuous feast--but it's more buffet than banquet.

This album is catchy. There is nothing wrong with writing catchy songs. Melody matters. Listenability matters. But this album feels like priority was put on making sure there were hooks in each song instead of letting the songs form organically.

The hazy, dream-pop vibe mixed with piano bar works. Take a listen. Soon you'll be lost in the worlds of melancholy and the sublime.

White Reaper Does It Again is undoubtedly a summer album.

Four years after dropping his breakout mixtape, the follow-up is an exultant street album.

It often has the spontaneous feel of a live show, and Mark Greenberg's unfussy production serves to amplify that rawness.

This is as close to pop perfection as music as seen in quite some time.

While this sound is by no means new or challenging, it is a lasting one, ensuring that Mondanile's work is always relevant (especially when the clouds disappear).

On album five, they still manage to experiment and sound as fresh as they were when they spat out 'Seventeen Years'.

There is song crafting of an exceptional variety as Sermanni delivers ten solid songs, the longest just a touch under five minutes, that all have an important story to tell.

These 16 minutes from Thundercat will likely prove to be one of the year's thought provoking and most rewarding listens of the year.

Whilst sounding altogether more psychologically and sonically cluttered, the challenges this album presents are as invigorating as its rewards--poetic beauty can still be found amidst the lysergic confusion.

Wildheart is a leap in the right direction but Miguel hasn't shed off all of pop's restrictive trappings just yet.

Communion may be the end result of years of refinement, but you can't help but feel it was reached on someone else's terms.

It's a relentless album full of short, sharp, shocks of art-punk chaos made by a group of awkward, anti-rock stars, but however strange and experimental it gets, there's still that primal joy you get with gangs of mates crashing around in sweaty basements.

No Life For Me might be fast, but my god, will you enjoy the ride.

If there is a criticism to be made, it is that at times the whole thing can be a little too low-key.

PeteStrumentals 2 is exactly the album you'd expect it to be. Similar to the '78 Fury, we aren't chasing the latest here.

It may struggle for attention-grabbing fireworks, but Build a Boat to the Sun is completely endearing.