Powerhouse, is not solely a political statement. Instead, it is simply a story of queer existence. From childhood to present day, the album floats between chanting expressions of self-certainty, to intimate biographical snippets. Rather than looking for approval, Planningtorock, is laying out their experience and listeners can take it or leave it.

Although Cocoon Crush finds Hertz pushing in a more organic, expressive direction than on Flatland, it’s a record that is still stamped with his distinctive quirks--thanks no doubt to his studious self-editing--as he continues to chart a path as one of current electronic music’s most consistent producers.

With Plainly Mistaken, Nathan Bowles has stepped out of the Black Twig Pickers’ shadow and demonstrated his vitality in forging new routes through old-timey music.

It doesn't have the polish of 2015’s La Vie Est Belle, but is more daring in its exploration of its diasporic soundscapes.

When each song begins, you’re never quite sure where they’re taking it; each of the five tracks leads us through unfamiliar, pared-down disco landscapes.

It’s an album made for obsessives to dissect, component by component. But independent from the technical obsession, Ishibashi creates a clear narrative through the album.

TVAM’s debut album looks both backwards and forwards, drifting in a somnambulant hinterland of psychic anxiety. It conveys a disgust for our regurgitated culture while pilfering with abandon; it’s a cerebral endeavour, and it’s also a peach to dance to.

At times Soap&Skin recalls Fever Ray, not in sound but in essence: something dark, oblique and stinging lies at the core; both artists combine an emphatic sense of place with molten identity.

A Laughing Death In Meatspace is by no means easy listening: the playing is off-kilter, strange bursts of noise erupt from instruments, songs dissolve into a maelstrom of noises; the production, mixing and mastering bear traces of the album’s speedy composition and release; and the lyrics invite us to contemplate, without histrionics or self-deception, precisely how fucked we all are. It’s hot with anger and full of ugly truths about the ways we live our lives; and the effect is compelling.

In other hands an album as disparate and scattershot as this would fall flat, its moments of brilliance muddied by misfires. This is not one of those records.

Magus is fairly free of wild excess or brain-flaying drama. It is Thou’s most traditionally and accessible metal album so far, with a series of rewarding riffs scattered across the record.

Where Have You In My Wilderness faithfully stuck to pop structures and verse-chorus-verse dynamics, Aviary appears through-composed, as though its songs were written purely according to whatever felt like the right thing to do next, and not dictated by any of Holter’s more traditionalist habits. This doesn’t make it a difficult listen, though--this is an album steeped in beauty, a celebration of sound.

Polwart’s inventiveness is unfettered on Laws Of Motion, but the result is not only musically and instrumentally rich, but uncommonly focused. Music for our times.

This is her strongest album to date and one where “noise” is but a tool towards a much more expansive expression of music.

MITH is an insightful record, one that gives its listener pause and feels like a valuable artefact of our time.

Jassbusters is the first release where Mockasin is accompanied by a band--and it’s a revelation. His usual exaggeratedly washy, reverby sound is anchored and evolves into something fuller, groovier, twangier. ... Jassbusters deserves a big fat red marker pen A.

It’s a forward-thinking, innovative distillation of the zeitgeist that pushes things forward. Indeed, while he’s had a co-sign from Drake, in the Scorpion-era Octavian’s new mixtape Spaceman is the kind of vibe Aubrey wishes he could make.

They mix a palette of distinctive darkness, creating a work of remarkable richness and thematic consistency. While there are still full-throttle assaults that recall the face-chewing passages of The Apostacy (‘Angelvus XIII’ packs particular bite), vast swathes of the album exude a more sinister magnificence.

An album that ought to be regarded as a creative peak for Suede, easily reaching the heights of their 90s best.

Throughout Fabriclive 100, Kode9 and Burial piece together their choices with little care for linearity or the kind of journey-led approach many might expect from a mix CD. Ambient interludes--many of them carrying Burial’s signature sound palette--weave in and out throughout the mix, perhaps bridging the gaps between the respective artists’ selections.

Wanderer, although not explicitly confrontational, subtly undermines this longstanding and limited perception of What Cat Power Is. Marshall herself sits in the producer’s seat, and gone is the gloss of 2012’s Sun; these 11 songs are stripped back to the sparse bones of piano, guitar and that distinctive, smoky, Southern States voice.

Mudhoney have released an astute, politically relevant and commendably fired-up garage punk belter of an LP. Aye, it blindsided me too.

The songs not only feel like they exist in a vacuum, but that they demand the listener create one too. It’s an important and serious album because it forces you to experience it as one, it asserts itself as the only thing you can concentrate on.

There is still a lightness of touch to Who Do You Love; however dense the writing gets, no matter how ludicrous and far-reaching in scope, it has enough of a knowing sense of its own bombast to prevent it from becoming po-faced.

The takeaway sensation of their epic and sprawling second record is quite simply one of pleasure. They embrace the ridiculous and the sublime in equal measure.

Negro Swan feels like a collection of personal and cultural traumatic memories, and it also feels like an embrace--a call for young queer people of colour to have hope, feel beautiful, and be filled all the way up.

Pastoral may be an album of satire, but it’s not the cheery-pallid rural parody of Cold Comfort Farm, Five Go Mad In Dorset or even Hot Fuzz. Gazelle Twin’s Pastoral jester bares its teeth with glee; its smile is part Punch and part the grotesque little homunculus of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’.