As the title states, the tones and timbres of the album are blue. But it’s not the crushing, overwhelming darkness that you might expect. By the time you reach the final track, the sombre ‘End In Blue’, in which all beats have been stripped away to leave only Chen’s voice echoing against a background of drones, you get the sense that a hard and relentless journey is almost over and that just ahead, at the end of a tunnel that has sometimes felt like it would never end, there’s a glimmer of light.

Despite everything, CEL never feels sprawling. It’s not complete anarchy. The arrangements remain lean and starched, austere even, with clipped, unprocessed jazz drum breaks regimented underneath icy, hyperactive square wave arpeggios.

This is a record with conflict, displacement, trauma, and tension woven into every seam, and all the more powerful for it.

While in lockdown, Bad Bunny decided to step out of the box and explore new music to mix with Latin trap, coming up with fresh sound narratives and reaffirming his ‘lawbreaker’ reputation in an otherwise rather boring reggaeton scene.

While ‘no body, no crime’ is easily evermore’s biggest misstep, there are a handful of forgettable songs on here. ... evermore benefits throughout from a more forgiving production style, but the songs are slightly less good here: it doesn’t have a song as accomplished as ‘the last great american dynasty’, as revelatory as ‘peace’ or a crowning achievement like ‘exile.’ It is generally a joy to listen to, and it is a joy to see her so comfortable and so prolific.

Overall 2R0I2P0 works incredibly well and shows that the partnership between these two titans still has plenty of gas left in the tank.

While made from individually minimal, looping rhythms and uncomplicated textures, Drift Multiply is rendered into a harmonically luxurious and sonically dense whole.

A taut, at times challenging, but engrossing collection of sounds.

A powerfully confessional record steeped in mystery.

Deciding to reflect on states of mind some of us could resonate to – especially this year – BE serves as a chronicle of what 2020 has been during lockdown: a year of uncertainty, anxiety, depression and frustration. But it also delivers hope for the future.

Send Them To Coventry is an album bursting with life. Pa Salieu sounds confident and convincing whatever style he turns his hand to. Whether or not it’s the best album of 2020, it’s surely one of the most interesting, and should be a strong contender for awards in the coming months.

The results are beautiful, an upside to all this desolation, a lengthy excursion among the snippets. Perhaps there could have been a couple more of these at the expense of some of the shorter, less obviously complete pieces, but as a fascinating clear-up exercise, Lamentations makes a virtue of its small sorrows.

It delivers an impressive belt around the chops from the start, with ‘Valleys’ building from eardrum-realigning bass to a full-force techno-rock wig-out.

Side one exemplifies 2020 in that it’s not entirely successful. While there are great ideas bursting to get out, it also lurches mechanically and is difficult to love. It often feels laboured, like Kirk is giving himself a migraine trying to reinvent something because you suspect he feels that’s his job. Flip the record over and the outlook changes. Once he submits to the pulsating rhythms and allows himself to be free then there’s a gold rush.

In so many ways, Monument encapsulates everything Molchat Doma has to offer. Having recently signed to Sacred Bones Records in January and a successful few months of nonstop streams, 2020 has really been a strong year for the group.

For open ears the recordings on Pakistan Is For The Peaceful offer immersive ever-spiralling tracks that reach ecstatic heights as they open up endless waves of spiritual harmonies, beyond the drone and into the unknown.

BENEE may not necessarily be an album artist, but listeners will find that most bases are covered within Hey u x’s 13 tracks. ... There’s a song here for every playlist, even if consuming all 13 in a row becomes a bit of a drag.

A Mythology Of Circles isn’t a radical reinvention for the Brooklyn-based composer, but it is a significant leap forward in her craft.

What Tunng have shown with Presents…Dead Club is that addressing grief and death doesn’t have to be devastating. It can be thought-provoking. It can also be simply pleasurable.

The pared down arrangements showcase a set of mostly previously released material in a way previously unheard. The at times slightly slower pace reveals more depth and warmth to the arrangements and, if anything, offer more than in this form than they were originally presented.

Frusciante has given space for Maya to breathe, for the powerful breakbeats to push things forward to their full potential.

The combination of Diggs’s hyper-enunciated double-time flow, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes’s twisted industrial production, and high-concept albums strikes me as original.

There is a sense of nostalgia throughout, with tracks such as ‘Angels Pharmacy’ and ‘Remembrance’ featuring female vocalist Zsela giving off hazy club vibes. The turn to voice, Actress’s first time, has formed a deeper sense of worldliness, the invasion of corporal sensation into his production style.

Dark Hearts marks an astute shift away from the energy of the clubs, focusing instead on hazy synth pop. Languid ballads run through the album and their production feats, led by the work of Stefan Storm, are best enjoyed on headphones.

SIGN is a welcome detour, a diversion, and in these difficult and complicated times, a salve of sorts. It’s as close to chill-out music as the duo are ever likely to get, making it the perfect Autechre album for 2020.

The album manages to be wholly fulfilling. Each track takes on its own character, sometimes wispy and laid black, channelling the unbounded soulfulness of Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah albums like on She’s My Brand New Crush. At other times they’re pointed and deliberate, such as ‘Cut To The Chase’, which does away with sung lyrics entirely for statements spoken over tribalistic percussion and futuristic electronic harmonies.

All things considered, this is a brilliant record from Metz, and perhaps the closest they’ve yet come to capturing their incredible live performance on record.

In Silver Ladders, Mary Lattimore brings the harp back down to earth still covered in clouds, but also threaded with veins of gloom that marble its silvery glow.

For an album that is extremely paired down, it is complete in all its meditative richness and erudite honey light. Gold Record presents itself as an album of quiet epiphanies - reaching into the interior space of the quotidien and feeling around for something that is tempting to romanticise, but instead, producing it before an audience with a frankness that trumps a flourish.

Napalm Death continue to exist to push sonic boundaries and challenge dogmas, and it’s great to hear them have fun here while further broadening the vitriolic sound they’ve defined into a singular movement.

For all the synthetic otherworldliness, this record is unflinchingly honest in its assessment of the United States as well as a very personal and raw portrait of Steven’s own humanity and fallibility. There’s no dogma, only equivocation.

Herein lies Róisín Machine’s beauty at its most uncomplicated: every single one of its songs implores you to dance, and in doing so implores you also to forget the human fragility of which you are so incessantly reminded. Vicariously through Róisín Murphy – be she god, machine, person, or something floating between them – we can forget our fragile bodies, losing ourselves in a blissful utopia, even if only for an hour.

It’s emotive, heavy, satisfying. It’s Deftones. They’ve made their album again and, honestly, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s with By The Fire that Thurston Moore goes properly into orbit. Make no mistake; this is an album that stands shoulder to shoulder with the very best of his alma mater.

No era sólida travels to cavernous spaces, occupying an ethereal landscape that is deep inside an unknowable earth. Its final title track crystallises with Dalt singing in Spanish, moving out of her made-up language, the dissolution finally coming into sharp focus.

Traversing minimal jazz, soulful R&B, edges of glitch, hip-hop sampling, voice modulation and ephemeral field recordings, Help is a welcome addition to Timothy’s growing body of work and forward-thinking alternative music in general.

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is one of the most fully formed albums she has put out. Yes, some of the rhymes are clunky and a tad juvenile, but there is a sort of elegance to them. Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is the album I’ve always wanted Del Rey to make. It’s brave, in a naïve way, and filled with some of glorious subtle backing tracks.

Whilst there have been several releases so far worthy of consideration as amongst the best the year has to offer, none have felt quite so necessary and potentially healing as this one. ... It attains a transcendent, mantric like force through repetition of multi-tracked vocals and the resonating squall of guitar that it emits cloud-like from the deceptively simple core of its construction.

This is a lovely record. The motion of ‘Circle Line’, the charm of ‘Summer Places’. Comma is an exercise in taste, expertise and skill as much as anything else, and it’s evidence (if it were ever in doubt) that contemporary modular synths can be used to highly emotive and beautiful effect.

Beautiful eulogies, luscious instrumentation and the occasional funk freakout, Shaman! is up there with the best of all of Ackamoor’s works.

There is a uniformity to the album. It has a pace and atmosphere that all tracks pretty much conform to, which in less skilled hands can be a problem. But here what we have is one of those records where your favourite track changes with each listen. One whose coherence and solidity allow you a little escape form everything, to a different place. A not altogether happy one, but a beautiful one nonetheless.

For all its conceptual maximalism, gen(r)e-splicing and densely irregular time layering, the compositions here are supremely considered pieces of continuously mutating gracefulness, spacious and expansive, stretched like a long fade-out into timelessness. Equally grounded and spaced out, on Seeing Through Sound Hassell has found an ideal balance of psychoacoustic and compositional values, the most sublime synthesis of tone magic and artistic craft.

As a whole, the record achieves something remarkable: a comeback record that overcomes the fractures and scars of its creation without trying to ignore them, a near-complete revival of the band’s former powers, and a bold delve into epic new territory.

While the higher purpose behind Voices is obviously beyond reproach, the surprise is just how much joy it contains.

Metal, Meat & Bone manages to be both a hypnotic and focussed listen, despite its length. For all its otherworldliness this is certainly one of their most powerful efforts and, for my money, up there with early classics such as Meet The Residents or Third Reich ‘N’ Roll, other brilliant subversions of sacred cows and taboos.

The instrumentation is often so clean and clinical it can almost feel like stock sounds, but coupled with the eerie atonal textures it feels very odd. Like a Bosch painting, where the lines are smooth, colours are clean and saturated, and even figures in darkness shine in the gleam of some unseen light, the arrangements feel alarmingly smooth and uncomfortably well-rendered.

With ‘Dirt’ and ‘Funhouse’, we find a similarly expressive Pop in action, wrenching every ounce of feeling from the words. Iggy as a seer not a sucker. It’s refreshing to hear. The only sad thing about the whole experience is not really registering the rumble of Dave Alexander.

From relationship failings to poor comedic efforts and acerbic remarks aimed at his peers, Gonzalez is extremely charming in his boundless self-deprecation set to effervescent 80s synth-pop.

Though falling short of revelatory, a few rotations of A Hero’s Death brings some good news. Outgrowing Joy Division and overblown inverted paddywhackery, it’s a largely nuanced and, most blessedly of all, believable affair.

A direct response to the band’s dreamlike debut, Wicked City is a venomous inversion of the very world the group strived to create; where there was once playfulness, there is now fiendishness. It’s a frenetic and lively record, for not once does it stay too long in one place.

Bougaïeff’s record is toying with the same aesthetics as Nine Inch Nails, but with the dancefloor’s (and hindsight’s perspective) rather than a powerlifting miseryguts’ – and the result carries much more positivity, lifting us up and through the darkness and into the (strobe) light. ... This album is ideal for anyone who likes moving their body and counting at the same time.

Howl is certainly at the more pop-oriented end of Foxx releases, and that is its strength.

An album that is assured, contemplative, and sometimes a bit sad.

There’s an endearing earnestness permeating Tuttle’s amble through the various landmarks of his beloved Alexandra Hills. Along the way, his arrangements, in a stream-of-conscious flow, create a childlike wonderment depicted in Miyazaki’s films, providing a restorative portal of escapism.

Healing is a Miracle is easily Barwick's most intimate – and intentioned – foray in years.

An extremely accessible record for a broad-range of new listeners and one that’s easy to return to.

The album rewards as time passes. Initially tracks change relentlessly and the notion of fifteen more feels like a chore, but by Quickies’ end you’ve encountered so many characters and so many songwriting modes that this slight album feels like an entire populated universe. The Magnetic Fields have pulled off their old trick of reminding you that there can be something to a gimmick after all.

For an album so grounded in electronics, it sounds remarkably organic. Perhaps it’s the lyrical intent, or the fact that Kember’s been cultivating its growth over some time, but the record’s connection to the earth is unmistakable. In making his grand statement, Pete Kember has succeeded in creating his magnum opus and an album for the ages.

Here, you'll find a more focused version of mournful doom, no less emotive for its precision. Happily, even in their later years Paradise Lost sound hoary and venerable rather than wizened or dilapidated.

Home Time is an album by a songwriter whose distinctive style has more than a little of the music hall. Hayman is a modern storyteller whose curiosity means he just cannot stop uncovering material.

Ungodly Hour boffs along with sexy aplomb. But this is carefully collated product with its eyes on all the prizes, rather than a space for vivid artistic expression.

This is Shah finding her rhythm, enjoying herself doing tongue-in-cheek domestic subversion. It's the kind of album she has long wanted to make, when not urged towards a large scale social statement, like on her Mercury-nominated Holiday Destination.

Kate NV has probably made her most confident and colourful statement with Room for The Moon. It’s an all-encompassing record, packed with plenty of reassuring elements to those already familiar with her work, but with acres of room for the listener to disappear into.

Sonically, she expands exponentially from her debut Stranger in the Alps. That album, elegant and wise, dealt mostly in acoustic guitars and fairly familiar folk influences. Her hero, Elliott Smith, was deeply felt. Punisher keeps some of the acoustics but also blows it all up: strings, horns, waves of mellotron melodies and nylon guitars create a greater sense of a swirling hurricane just waiting to happen.

This is Pallett’s most ambitious album to date, filled with complex string sections, captivating melodies and the kind of lyrics that show a love for life seldom heard.

Elder have crafted a lush and carefully-orchestrated record, approaching from a different angle than their peers, or indeed their previous attempts.

Godfather 3 is more like a mixtape than an album. Many of the tracks are shorter than three minutes and the number of features gives it a collaborative, crew-project feel. But this is what Wiley does best.

Funeral Songs is neither the first nor last gloriously raw album to be laid down in such a state.

While not life-altering, how i’m feeling now is fun, fast and thoroughly listenable. It’s absorbing as a document from a strange period, and its diaristic, vloggy aspects provide an intriguing peek into artistry under pressure.

A bold introduction and dynamic arrangement sticks to the formula while constantly evolving and developing. The sharp production allows each instrument the space and sonic textures to open up expansive new worlds of unfolding sounds and wider influences.

Through the toxic smoke of environmental catastrophe, a new romantic love emerged for Craig and was immediately complicated by long-distancing, infusing the record with the strangest blend of emotional contrasts.

This is a record of infinite different energies, and as a result can be headspinning as it whirls from one to another, but beneath them all there is this deeper, more primal momentum at play - a hypnotic, looping repetition around which those myriad flourishes are wound.

An admirable and invigorating work, Scramblers casts its eyes to the future of machine music and does not flinch in its steely gaze.

Blizzards is a beautiful and fun and affecting record that never fully succumbs to the easy allure of nostalgia over its expansive sixty-four minute runtime.

Each track here has a distinct and complementary topography. Places to explore, spend time in, and marvel at. The Necks remain at the top of their game.

The Don Of Diamond Dreams feels imbued with a sense that alternative realities – different ways of telling stories, different mythologies to reflect our true nature – are always within our reach, if only we’re able to fully embrace our own imaginations.

Melt Yourself Down combine a pan-global cannon of jazz, afrobeat, and western pop to arrive at a truly thrilling kind of party music. Some parts may be garish, others recall the Klaxons a tad too potently, and some moments are more forgettable than others, but in essence 100% YES is the purest of escapist experiences. The most fun you can have without taking your daily exercise.

Birthmarks is a deft exploration of selfhood and becoming, and a marked step-up from an artist whose trajectory has promised a release that could stop you in your tracks.

Fortunately, It Is What It Is takes the listener’s needs into consideration by counteracting giddy one-liners heightened by energetic accompaniments with introspective ruminations coupled woven into sultry arrangements. In adjusting to the shifting sonic plains, the listener is presented with a gloriously rewarding stretch of tonal stability in the record’s third act.

Insomnia is generally solid, with more peaks than troughs. All things considered, it probably isn’t groundbreaking, and doesn’t feel as vital or captivating as Dave’s Psychodrama or Headie One’s Music X Road. But it’s a welcome addition to the artists’ respective back catalogues.

On Heaven To A Tortured Mind, Tumor harnesses his relentless curiosity to test the boundaries of rock and noise – and reinvents what we expect from both in the process.

With Rakka, Vladislav Delay has created an arresting album of sheer punishing density that encapsulates the ecological pressures of a land that is brutal and unforgiving at the best of times, but occasionally encompass moments of estranged beauty.

It’d be easy to assume the reason Every Bad sounds so vital is because its raw, agitated songs are the perfect soundtrack for these blighted times, built to be played while the world’s never-ending dumpster fire burns hotter and hotter. But it’s also got a slicker, more muscular sound than 2016’s home-recorded Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers.

While challenging intellectually, Fountain is also nothing less than a pleasing listen, like a delicate wine that opens over time.

Even with each powerful stride forwards in his career, it never seems Baxter will quite escape the shadowing of his late father, Ian. Yet, perhaps it is this paternal context, this very partial eclipsing that leaves Baxter’s work with a great style of its own. After all, a light emanating from shade will always appear brighter than one already doused in daylight.

England is a Garden is a beautiful and well-worked project. The five years wait it induced is retrospectively more than worth it as it is one of the most thoughtful and listenable albums the band have unleashed for quite a stretch of time.

The album sounds like the process of ripping away at one’s own humanity in search of some kind of core; the music is colossal, destructive and all-consuming. ... Extraordinary, turbulent album.

Partly through technology, of course, but owing much to the composer’s own ingenuity, A Separation Of Being was made by just one person and an acoustic sideman, and makes densely assembled music sound feather-light and, yes, joyful.

Rather than simply throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, together, the pair throw a lot, all while investing time and a marked sense of freedom to what each track could eventually become.

Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is a fun album that allows Frasqueri to show both sides of her personality. ... The main problem with Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is that it doesn’t contain anything as devastating as ‘G.O.A.T.’, ‘Tomboy’ or ‘Kitana’. The songs never quite hit the same vein of intensity, catchiness and lyrical abstraction. There are moments when it comes close.

Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is a fun album that allows Frasqueri to show both sides of her personality. ... The main problem with Everything is Beautiful/Everything Sucks is that it doesn’t contain anything as devastating as ‘G.O.A.T.’, ‘Tomboy’ or ‘Kitana’. The songs never quite hit the same vein of intensity, catchiness and lyrical abstraction. There are moments when it comes close.

The music is cryptic, otherworldly, and uncanny. The dislocation of Smith’s voice from The Fall is jarring and thrilling at times.

Loom is a brave and raw document from the frontlines of grief, exhibiting the full range of its manifestations beyond sadness – its vacancy, rage and disorientation, delivered with a sweet disposition, enchanting you into a greater and richer awareness of what lies beneath, revealing deep beauty in the collision of exhilarating creativity and inevitable doom.

Navarrete is a versatile artist, and Salvador is a rare thing: an emotionally candid, melancholic album full of bangers.

Companion Rises is the sound of rattling shackles and tension not resolved but placated. The narrator rooted on earth by their surroundings still has a poetic awareness of the ethereal and the far-flung. Companion Rises is Ben Chasny’s valiant attempt to cast himself skyward.

Tthe album plays out like a mood swing of rage, despair, and an ennui that threatens to consume. It’s in that ebb and flow that Sightless Pit as a trio have found their balance. There is space for softness and melancholy. The organic is allowed to creep amongst the distorted or the electronic. Noise is only meant as a temporary shock to the system, not as a punishment to be endured.

Ultimately, this is a rather gorgeous and engrossing collection, that borrows stealthily from a rich history of sound effect and soundtrack to build a tender poem to the night time. It’s all big plate reverbs and shuffling drums.

It’s an album that if you take it at face value will delight, but if you stick around and penetrate its surface, you’ll find one of the most transfixing albums in recent years.