Their fifteenth album Nonetheless doesn’t measure up to the friskier mid-’10 releases Electric and Super – the melodies are often wan and Neil Tennant’s delivery is uncharacteristically stilted – but the Boys are old friends. They amuse and move us. Their foibles are familiar.

There’s just enough time to get lost in thought before you’re jolted back to the beginning again. Only ‘Long Assemblage’ has any ambitions to break out from the sketches, a five-minute exposition that dares to create anything like a narrative arc, carried along by some intrepid hi-hats. Otherwise it’s soft and languorous and thoughtful, and occasionally a little bit sinister.

Peering out from the shadow cast by their Band on the Wall contemporaries Joy Division and The Fall, their thirteenth album It All Comes Down To This is their strongest since 1982’s Sextet.

This makes for what might be the most polished album in the Neubauten canon, though one band’s polish is another’s poison. There are still interjections of metal perc here (played by N U Unruh) or electric drill (played by Rudolph Moser) there, and if it’s a less dangerous record than some of its predecessors, that’s mainly in the health and safety sense.

Using mournful drones, haunting vocal arrangements and the judicious inclusion of foley-type sound effects, Cotton communicates not simply the details of the story but the emotional journey of its characters.

Here, the trio integrate skeletal post-rock with soul and jazz, deconstructed by a presiding impulse to blur lines between terms or genres, allowing it all to collapse and collide. It’s harmony clashing with disharmony, the musicality of concrete sound.

While this particular take lacks the almost chaotic energy and sense of transcendence of the Coltrane/Ali version, it still overflows with riotous lyricism. The additional instruments expand the textural and rhythmical dimensions of the piece, before topping them with a rumbling drum solo. A fitting end for an equally inspirited, crucial live recording.

Jlin has always reached across musical genres to create her music, and with Akoma, she reminds us again that genre is a malleable idea meant to be redefined and reshaped.

Its [Daydream Repeat’s] arrival as fourth track brings a welcome levity to proceedings and you sort of wish there was more of it. Nevertheless, if Three is predictable in its lack of surprises, in Hebden’s case, that can only mean what’s on offer is sturdy and assured.

The Great Bailout is a hauntingly edifying experience born out of intergenerational trauma, political rage and suffering. Echoey vocals and experimental composition hold this album up as a house of mirrors – a forceful confrontation with an ugly past with no way out. Its counterpoint is a feeling of strength.

Half Divorced is packed full of pep. They’ve stomped on the gas and it burns along like a raging forest fire.

An antidote to the corporate pop that forces us to be joyful, Rooting For Love offers a genuine alternative without being militant or hideously self aware.

Under the Sun is well crafted, interrogating the listener and experimental where it needs to be, gifting you with something to gain throughout.

Shah’s control of the narrative makes her songs sound more confidential than confessional. She exercises the same incisive observational skills that she applied to songs about social unease and toxic relationships when she turns the lens on herself, as willing to be cutting, critical and humorous when she is her own subject.

The power of these long form works is the room afforded to imprint your own interpretations, feelings, and notions upon them like Rorschach tests or perceiving shapes in clouds. Will these drones imprint the same emotions and thoughts a thousand years from now? Only time will tell.

An oscillation between control and disorientation continues throughout (the album’s title refers to a numerical vector for oscillation in physics and engineering). Hewing closer to the former is when Phasor is at its strongest, exploring the world of a character seeking connection but far from reach.

What Do We Now is a record of beautifully put-together songs played on an acoustic guitar then beefed up by a band (mostly Mascis himself on overdubs, plus a little piano from The B52s’ Ken Mauri and some slide guitar played by Toronto musician Matthew “Doc” Dunn).

Upbeat, curious, and inquisitive, Cloudward makes for a great city walking album. It strikes the perfect balance between being jazz that’s not too impenetrable, while also being full of interesting surprises (primarily in terms of the language of Halvorson’s own playing).

Her distinct 2018 style isn’t lost at all. The dreamy synths, the soft vocal harmonies and the unhurried compositions are still there in several tracks on this record. Thanks to that, Orquideas is the perfect tracklist to introduce any newcomers into a more niche latin sound.

Bertucci might not have the reach of Taylor Swift but, in creating such affecting work, she’s generating a legacy that will hopefully last for as long as there are still humans pacing these receding coast lines.

Lean and yet lush, No More Blue Skies might boom slightly less than 2019’s My House but it is more richly arranged, the sound built out with sax and strings as mastermind Andrya Ambro carefully details a beguiling series of stark, spidery vignettes.

The bucolic folk-fingering on display gives the sense that he was gazing out upon the same grand vistas as Pan American.

There are a lot of different elements in the mix here – prog, reggae, folk, loungecore, even a little disco – and perhaps some listeners may initially feel a little inclined towards indigestion. However, the vision behind it all is singular and persuasive and balances its more unconventional aspects with strong harmonies and vivid lyricism.

Sometimes their simple guitar riffs can feel too plain and familiar, and mingled with the consistently doomy atmosphere, it can at times feel relentless, but equally, they take their hard-wrought innovative DIY aesthetic and refine it.

The immersion of oneself in I<3UQTINVU allows you to reacquaint yourself with their vast electronically-led arrangements and also appreciate Jockstrap’s endlessly adventurous spirit.

Return to Archive is a funny and unsettling trip through the past, to a time before we felt like we’d heard everything. But its greatest power is in forcing us to question what we should archive, given that any noise can capture the world it came from.

Butler shows that there is strength in numbers and in being able to amplify the skills of fellow collaborators.

Spike Field isn’t particularly immediate, but is the kind of album that sits in your mind: you come back to it and it surprises you in a new way.

The sound design is absolutely phenomenal, rich in detail. New components, from the clanging of chimes to the rattling or chains, enter from moment to moment. It’s every bit the album Engravings was: a vast world of sound unfolding on a battlefield which exists between the ears.

Like everything else they’ve done, it doesn’t sound limiting or calculated or agonised over – it just sounds vibrant and magical.

It’s purposely chaotic and skeletal in places, but when the disjointed pieces are viewed as one, you get an album that is a fascinating and hypnotic listen.

L’Rain has produced another fascinating record, a reappraisal of past work, while managing not to repeat herself. It is a very interesting album, as much about resilience as it is grief.

Footworks remains the axis around which Jlin’s productions revolve, though her music transcends contemporary club trends, flirting with modern composition and theatre music.

There is a dichotomy at play of denser, more distorted electronics at one pole and soft, minimalist arrangements at the other; gauzy sounds cut against metallic harshness within songs and across the album. But with this expansive approach, Afternoon X feels focused and cohesive.

Medicine is, in other words, a straight up psychedelic rock affair – for better and for worse. .... Overall, it is an amazingly fun record for spooky psychonauts.

Meticulously structured yet fuzzily abstract, cloudily claustrophobic yet aurally vast, it sounds nothing like a traditional rap LP yet definably and definitively adheres to the most crucial characteristics of the genre. It’s certainly a marvel and may well be a masterpiece.

Le jour et la nuit du réel proves something else entirely: that these hunks of wood and wire and circuitry still have the potential to surprise. And to delight us with those surprises.

Each of these tracks effortlessly conjures the swirling feeling of needing to make a decision – and questioning your own being – never quite settling, always moving.

Richly textural and delicately performed, Setting exude a lingering warmth, their edges softened as if left out in the sun. It’s lethargic in all the right ways, untroubled by the need to shock or surprise its audience – and yet surprise it does.

Even though the idea of listening to another quarantine-inspired ambient record might seem off-putting, the rewards are simply too tempting.

Shrewdly, she rarely repeats herself, keeping things fresh by always being adventurous. That’s worked throughout her career, and it works on Tension especially.

Whereas their previous album, WINK, had some laidback grooves and opportunities to properly croon, CHAI bounces along at a high energy clip, honing a polished and effervescent pop record.

In sharing her experience of doing this, James’ most exploratory album also proves to be her most open-hearted.

This is a powerful, balanced, personal and at times harrowing album that is deserving of your attention. Each listen seems to add further layers of depth and seriousness. Spend time with it.

The diversity of drums and percussion instruments and players also lends a different quality to the sound, bringing in a slapped, clacking flatness. It’s a perfect match to the frequently staccato energy of the saxophone.

While at first listen Everything Is Alive might seem plain and minimalist, its flavours can be savoured for a long time. A bit similar to a perennial flower regrowing every spring. Like wonders of life and death hiding beyond the seemingly impenetrable façade of routine and time, its sonic complexity lies beneath the surface.

There’s a lot to unpack across STRUGGLER. The demands it places on listeners to fully connect with the material are more than warranted.

Eyeroll is organic and expansive, woven around the bouncy sounds of struck, scratched, and stretched rototoms, mutated voices, squiggly trumpet noises, and the ambient sounds of Ziúr’s flat in Berlin. The resulting music is restlessly rhythmic and capable of growing into a multitude of textural and structural directions.

RPG casts a powerful spell but finds magic in the power of imagination rather than the supernatural. It is a celebration of the essentially human playfulness of gaming, storytelling and songs.

What is also quite impressive about this album is that amidst the dominant beats and densely textured arrangements, Georgia’s presence and her words are never shrouded. Furthermore, her openness and vulnerability throughout is immensely commanding and as you go through the tracklist, you become increasingly curious to hear where she’s at.

The world has caught up to Lanza, but in staying true to her appeal as she explores new sides of herself, she’s sounding as fresh as ever.

Welshpool Frillies (that wording itself an intriguing prospect) is peppered with powerful language hinting at events untold, slotting together in surprising mixtures, shapes, and forms. Sure, there's the odd track that feels a little phoned in (the palm-muted slog of ‘Cats On Heat’, for example) but when the hit rate is this high and there’s still mystique and gut-punch intimations wrapped up within these beguiling twists of phrase, then why not keep the faucet gushing and let the waters rise?

Despite the strong influence that can detected in the band’s style – Smile via Penguin Café Orchestra, The High Llamas and contemporary classical ensemble North Sea Radio Orchestra perhaps – few others are so committed to making music that sounds like this. After decades building up to it, The Clientele have produced what is probably their finest, most enjoyable record.

Jad Fair knows what time it is and yet he still offers hope, which makes his positive qualities appear all the more authentic and necessary in these dark times. That is the essence of this record, whilst still acknowledging the perilous near proximity of the void, we can choose instead to Jump Into Love.

If their late 90s records were marked by the fallout of Britpop and the fallout of relationships, The Ballad Of Darren is marked by this existential contemplation — not quite a breakup or a crisis, but the weight of the changes through the years. It’s a statement of where Blur are now.

While A Trip To Bolgatanga can’t be considered an epochal release as some of their earlier outings, it provides a particularly transportative soundtrack for the coming scorching days.

Crucially, this is a record that deserves to be approached, consumed and judged on its own merits. And merits there are aplenty.

She has delivered a body of work where she has given herself the space to be resilient, vulnerable and inspiring.

At moments, Byrne is rhapsodic, her vocals soaring above the fluttering electronics of ‘Summer Glass’. Later, she stares down the darkness, as on the deceptively gentle ‘Lightning Comes Up From The Ground’ or on closer ‘Death Is The Diamond’.

The message of humanity and hope that the decolonisation doom of Divide and Dissolve carries grows in strength with their work’s consistency and volume. In that sense, Systemic is no less devastating and uplifting.

Over repeating ground bass figures, Barbieri builds and varies an increasingly complex architecture of melodies and harmonies in vaporous synth tones. Created using the Orthogonal 101 modular synthesizer, the means may possess degrees of randomness, but everything sounds precisely placed.

The steadiness in their performance is captivating and a pleasure to immerse yourself in. There are great rewards to I Don’t Know, in this regard.

Creep Show’s second album Yawning Abyss reaches further into your soul, and once there, it really gets to work, rummaging furtively and stealthily metastasising. The more spins, the more you submit to its charms.

Beyond the impressive list of guest stars though, this is an album that reflects on one person’s history and is steeped in honesty, grief and empathy as a result.

There’s plenty of intricacy in the intimacy of this record. In the end, though, The Age Of Pleasure is an easier ride. Less densely packed with ideas but it’s no bother.

The bending of time and place and sights and sounds across this record leaves the listener with plenty to digest and a lot to be excited for with what’s to come from Squid.

In their pursuit of experimentation, Decisive Pink have accomplished a great deal with this expansive body of work.

All in all, Potter Payper lives up to the title of his debut album, officially putting the real rappers back in style.

A beautiful resurrection for Zamrock, Zango is one of those rare records that, after living with it for a few months, still makes me feel something very profound. A triumphant return indeed.

With Archangel Hill, Collins continues to deliver on the title of that extraordinary record, Folk Roots, New Routes: finding old ways to look forward and new ways to look back.

Another great Pere Ubu record, one imbued with a more upbeat emotional sensibility than its predecessor, with some memorable songs and some wild sonic experiments. It’s a snapshot of where the band are right now, as well las a hint of where they might still go in future.

Start with the bangers – and there are plenty, mostly front-loaded. ... It’s a visceral and strange album, one that revels in its abstractions, but is direct in what it has to say.

It’s refreshing then that their music comes without a prescribed meaning being spoon-fed to listeners. This allows the listener to come to their own conclusions.

Overmono have produced an album with a euphoric and kaleidoscopic appeal.

Title track ‘Love Invention’ continues to push this colourful pop juggernaut with its exploration of “wellness” culture, and there are a few songs in this louder kind of vein – painted with the broader brushstrokes of disco and house, with varying degrees of success. ... In truth it is Goldfrapp’s vocal that anchors this record, and things take a more interesting turn when the melancholy sets in (as is so often the way).

Rites Of Percussion is a fine addition to the lineage of drum albums largely thanks to his sense of intuition.

Crystal Vision does indeed seek to provide a kind of crystal vision, resulting in a more direct love-letter to the ties that bind, and in doing so Fake weaves a sense of body, community and connectedness.

Extra time has bred extra confidence, and everything’s bigger. Dreamer is a surrender to wide, blurry, technicolour horizons, as unreal and otherworldly as its name suggests. At its basic level, the elements are simple – indie-pop, a little more shoegaze, a lot more trance – but extra waves of electronic wash and vocals so multitracked they’re choral make it labyrinthine enough to get lost in.

While most of the songs on Fuse have sharp electronic edges, a soulful ballad such as ‘Run A Red Light’ isn’t going to scare Radio 2. Nevertheless, as the album unfolds, it becomes clear this isn’t EBTG simply revisiting past glories, but cautiously experimenting, and perhaps hinting at where they might go if they make more albums.

The live recordings feel raw and vibrant, capturing the energy of the performance, the power of the music, and the subtlety of emotion.

While it’s a short EP, it doesn’t disappoint. If anything, he presents himself as a soloist with an unexpected sound for his high-pitched countertenor voice and very far from those earlier ballads we have heard from him.

There are no crescendos or sections that wrestle for attention, but rather, an ever-shifting soundscape that swirls and swims like a starling murmuration. The shapes it makes in the air are often wounding, but also graceful. And like all of his work, it is devastating in the best way possible.

Each track is inevitably a wild combination of memories, ideas, and influences – midi-fied sacred harp singers clash with squiggly synthesis, fiddle collides with the most absurd funk bass. Meanwhile, the spectre of prog is everywhere and the club is never far away. Amazingly, it all works.

Crash Recoil is as taut and sinewy as anything he’s done, yet there’s a certain looseness here too, a contemporary, accessible feel that suggests that by trying new things to break out of a creative rut, Surgeon is once again pushing the genre forward.

While seeing any bit of vulnerability in Friday’s work does make her more relatable, it’s the woman who titled her debut EP Bitchpunk that dominates Good Luck, and her attitude is a lot of fun. ... Friday attacked her debut like she was born ready, and it’s fully convincing that she was.

Memento Mori is an absolute triumph. It’s almost the real songs of faith and devotion that they’d spoke of thirty years ago. Universal themes of mortality, love, anxiety; a handful of pop gems and what feels like an economical stripping back of the stadium-ness of previous works, making it their best long player this side of the century.

Compared to the preceding Plunge, this new album is more adventurous, perhaps, attempting to summon diverse and emotionally challenging experiences of a relationship. Depending on a listener’s experience and expectations, Radical Romantics can be found as uncomfortable as it is accommodating. The album tackles its subject with an attitude that exudes boldness and acceptance.

Musically, UK Grim is stark and austere and without embellishment, but combines the melodic reach of their last album with the pulsing minimalism of the Austerity Dogs era. It angrily counters the corporate pop that forces us to be joyful, but it’s not without its own brand of optimism.

Miss Grit’s debut full-length dials down the dimmer switch for a more intimate entry into their songs. ... It is Miss Grit’s lovely voice that captivates – simultaneously strong and breathy, the way she effortlessly jumps between the notes of these interesting melodies really standing out.

Some might feel that at 55 minutes and 17 tracks and with so much going on, Shook is perhaps a little long. Yet to these ears it never feels bloated and it’s hard to see what might be pruned without losing some of the record’s impact.

A draining, breath-snatching release, nature morte satisfies on an intellectual level as much as one that is viscerally primal.

Land of Sleeper is unlikely to win over anyone who doesn’t already enjoy Pigs’ (etc.) particular brand of stoner rock, but then, I doubt it’s really trying to. A steadfastly unsubtle affair.

It’s an album that is hard to categorise but its methodical beats, otherworldly production, intriguingly chaotic clashes of melody and hazy vocals all inexplicably mesh together, with Liv.e leaning further and further towards that vital point of breakthrough.

Once again, the results are even richer and more rewarding than on their last outing. There are subtle evolutions and tweaks to their tried-and-true formula, sure, but it’s hard to say what makes one Acid Arab record better than the one before it (and, to be sure, this one is their best so far.)

Her phrases heave through a cycle of breathy registers, then crash into a wail of the song’s title. Those repetitions, moored by no predictable structure, are hypnotic, intoxicating, and the lyrics heighten the sense of time being distended. ... Desire avoids feeling derivative by crossing so many wires, drawing from a more adventurous time in pop and placing innately familiar elements in new contexts.

With three of the nine songs clocking in at over seven minutes-long, every note is earned and necessarily. Extended instrumental breaks and outros never feel gratuitous, if anything they allow the listener to fall deeper into the song, to lose track of time.

By embracing the rich heritage of Black, queer dance music and adding a splash of her own magic, she’s created a genuinely captivating record. It’s a seductive sound – even worth waiting six years for.

It’s as engaging a release as you could hope for. The melodic sheets adorning the surface offer enough solace for casual listeners whilst intrigued parties will locate heart-heavy layers if they lean in just a little. As you might expect from the steady hands at the tiller, this is a cortex-hugging drone record of beauty and depth. A soundtrack worthy of living your life to.