You come through it all not with a standard sense of enjoyment; playing it loud, you really feel like you’ve been through the wringer. But it’s the way that Sex Swing blend textures of psych, krautrock, doom, and goth that rewards those who are prepared to get their ears mangled.

Fabric 91 deserves to linger in the public consciousness: it feels like a statement, a carefully curated bridge between past and present that evokes atmosphere and emotion.

Although Last Night On The Planet isn’t likely to find itself on any end of year lists, it’s a welcome addition to the Letherette oeuvre, despite being intermittently overwrought with retrospect.

Each member’s lyrical proclivity, musical preference and sonic muscularity are given equal measure, a pagan triumvirate of penetrating, pointed liberation.

Every expansion is followed by certain randomisation of energy; some may object that album's sound is overcrowded, bringing together seemingly incompatible stylistic patterns. Too many new ideas that need to be quickly processed are restlessly thrown, but never scattered, in raw fluxus.

Here augmented by three additional CDs of b-sides, Peel Sessions, alternate mixes and a live recording from Manchester’s Russell Club, the original album still sounds like nothing else from the time, as if a line is drawn on the sand and the full potential of what punk had to offer is finally realized. Indeed, Metal Box is still so far ahead of the curve that if it was getting its inaugural release now and it’d still be daring other bands to catch up.

Put simply, Redemption is an impressively ambitious record, and its to Richard’s credit that she pulls it off as a cohesive piece of work.

The five members of the Golden Quintet perform this suite with perfectly poised balance and musical integration, composer Smith's trumpet taking the obvious lead with crystal clarity yet never lapsing into solo virtuosity for the sake of it.

Despite that introductory flash, Newman and Spigel are equal partners in Immersion, and there's no way of telling where one's contributions begin and the other's end. The instruments themselves are also equal collaborators.

After a slight misstep with Audio, Visual Disco, they’ve only gone and created a masterpiece with Woman.

It’s music to seek out when some respite from all the blurred lines in this very busy world is desperately sought. In taking our hand but never gripping too tight, Holmes taps into something that even the best Late Night Tales compilations sometimes neglect: the pure self-therapy of total escapism.

It’s dark, unrelenting. ‘Almost Loved’ showcases the fictional Void Pacific Choir chanting like an Omen soundtrack, a song of regret becoming a pounding mantra. The “perfect lie” of ‘And It Hurts’, the “dying sun” of the Killers synth-pop of ‘Are You Lost In The World Like Me?’, the falling sky of ‘Don’t Leave Me’ – Moby’s worldview feels unremittingly bleak. It's not all spit and thunder, not quite.

Highway Songs is David Pajo’s protracted gasp for breath, his slammed fist on the table and his most resounding act of defiance. As we await certain brilliance, it will serve as a very fitting departure in the meantime.

Sonically, there isn’t the same sense of startling reinvention with the stately sound of You Want It Darker, although it’s undeniably grander, lusher, more beautiful than its forbears; its melancholy mixture of string laments, orchestral flourishes and sombre choirs virtually compel you to bow your head in hushed reverence.

Savoy Motel’s eponymously titled debut has a lot going for it, full of interesting ideas, some of which come to fruition and some that could do with some development still. The next one might just be great.

Wild Pendulum soars with the sounds of a band comfortable in their own skin, free of past pressures and ready to celebrate the present in magnificent style.

Musique de France isn’t an indiscriminate smash and grab of appropriation, it’s a wonderfully organic and experimental and occasionally psychedelic record that will take you to interesting places if you’ll let it.

There is no doubt that Become Zero is a heavy record in every sense, an obliteration of the senses to leave one wrung out and euphoric, offering both epiphanies from Heaven and elegies from Hell.

You Know What It’s Like is a grower, and one that demands repeated listening.

Lodestar sees Shirley Collins creating a boundary-pushing, exhilarating work by doing nothing other than what she does best: reanimating the folk songs of Britain with all the respect and veneration she feels for them.

After a while, such frantic energy can get exhausting, and fans of Room(s) or Vapor City might feel bewildered by the whole thing, but throughout the morass, Stewart’s keen ear for rhythm and melody shine through, and his exploration of pop and r’n’b finds more common ground with his own aesthetic that might have been expected.

In Kuedo’s hands, they’ve landed in nebulous terrain, drifting between possibilities of rhythm and bass, atmosphere and drone, noise and melody. It’s a beautifully complex tapestry.

Aforger has a mysterious, almost uncanny quality to it beyond the more obvious emotional exorcism.

Through Obel’s breathtaking vocals and ethereal piano and cello compositions, Citizens of Glass succeeds in creating a welcome musical space to escape the observations of ourselves and others.

Despite their EDM club appeal and pop sensibility, seven strikingly dynamic and expansive maximalist compositions are still locked in a very private headspace, a kind of solitude that contains multitudes.

It’s a brilliant, confounding piece of work, in other words, although good luck finding its niche in your well-ordered record collection.

During the album's first half especially you therefore find yourself wishing for a more tangible emotional link to its maker. This arrives during Sport's last third, which closes the distance with the listener in a thrilling final run of tracks.

In the case of Serpent Music, its magpie aesthetic can leave certain areas feeling improperly unearthed. This instinctual approach could have resulted in an uneven work, but works far more often than not.

It is in this emergent, slightly surreal space between music and politics that Jaar’s syncretic talent shines through.

This is an album significantly more than what it seems to be, at first, on the surface. To some, it will sound like just another melodic punk album with a predilection for pop--an angry retort at the grievances of being in your twenties--but it’s the kind of record that will stir and inspire you during moments of existential crisis.

II is nothing short of a modern classic; the sound of a band fusing elements of electronic music with raw psych-rock to devastating effect--something more lauded bands have failed to do.

There’s an ancient sense of purity to this music which seems a cut above any similar projects.

If this is her last record then she hasn’t gone out on her finest note, but that’s certainly not to undermine the album. Maya Arulpragasam’s body of work remains an important reminder of the exciting prospects of cultural exchange and the immigrant experience. Taken in that light, AIM is a fitting addition to her oeuvre.

If anything, this album is better than his first, as he settles confidently on his recognisable but versatile sound.

The Childhood of a Leader opens up further notions on the increasing use of mise en scene within Scott's music as well as positioning himself as a modern composer utilising cinematic techniques within narrative frameworks. It is an unexpectedly urgent addition to a master's late period canon.

Neurosis have not reinvented extreme metal on Fires Within Fires, and at this point it seems unlikely they’ll ever again record anything as gamechanging as Enemy... or 1996’s Through Silver In Blood. These albums and others give them ample credit in the bank to merely – merely! – bust out a new record every few years, tweak their various formulae, play by their own rules and timescales, and keep on delivering the goods in punishing, end-time-preacher fashion.

As Flock Of Dimes, Wasner refuses to waste a second. Most tracks are pop hits waiting to happen in some daring universe, with verses as charming as the shimmering choruses, each a perfectly formed little jewel, Wasner's voice lush and warm.

In and of itself, EUSA is a beautiful piece of work that acts as an aural snapshot of one man’s vision of security and peace.

On Physicalist, Forma, mind-bogglingly skilled with their synthesizers, push themselves further and further into new territory--almost literally--as they pare back, slow down, spread out, dig into the (American) soil beneath their feet.

Musically, Blood Bitch plays a lot with drone, feedback and white noise, while simultaneously handing huge portions of songs over to the most melodic and annoyingly catchy work Hval has ever made.

With Furfour the duo has altogether eschewed contemporary psychedelia’s hackneyed reliance on drones and heaviosity, and in doing so have made a powerful case for catchy tunes as a vehicle for mind-expanding music.

Going, Going... is a little overlong, but it’s also bursting with some tremendous songs and a vitality that belies over 30 years in the game.

While it’s a formula they work to, it never sounds formulaic.

It is the sound of a musician coming to terms with the excruciation of making art and exposing himself without armour.

The fractured fairy tales of their full-length debut Lady Parts will assuredly satisfy both those old Prefuse 73 fans and newer listeners who enjoy a sensible amount of weirdness in their mixes.

Inevitably there’s nothing here to rival the dark majesty of Van der Graaf Generator’s classic 1970s work, and newcomers should start with Still Life, Godbluff or Pawn Hearts. But Do Not Disturb is a worthy addition to the group’s canon and--if this is indeed their last album--a fitting end to an illustrious career.

This project with 1-800 DINOSAUR is--for the most part--genuinely refreshing.

The only way to respond to the sourpusses is to ensure the music is very, very good, something that KoKoro can more than justifiably claim.

La Femme’s second album Mystère continues where Psycho Tropical Berlin left off, though it is a more sophisticated affair, and perhaps more subdued too (though that’s no bad thing). There’s still room for the surf rock antics of the impossible catchy ‘Où va le monde’, but on tracks like ‘Septembre’, there’s a definite sense of foreboding as summer ends and the season changes.

Through electro beats, samples and soaring choruses, Lynch's voice is consistent, strong and always beautiful.

Blade of Love is a piece that takes the ideas and challenges of their debut even further without losing any of their focus or animal thump.

It’s an album that needs the thick-skin its title connotes to listen--you won’t emerge from it feeling joyous, but you will emerge seeing a truth that will deeply unsettle.

This is an utterly spellbinding record that shows with maturity that the band only grows and improves. If this is their last, it is an exit at their peak, proving their relevance and importance more than ever.

Astronaut Meets Appleman might very well be King Creosote’s masterpiece. It is at once ethereal and contemplative, grounded and matter-of-fact.

Like all Zedek's music it leaves you reeling with questions, the perfect balance between the dead-ends of despair and the realisation that this turbid onward drift, eternally unresolved and unrequited, is perhaps our only option.

They might need to be a little more consistent to make that one stick, but if they're up for it, One Day All Of This Won't Matter Anymore is a decent launch pad, proving they've the confidence to mix it up.

Ultra is, at first, quite hard to get your head around. There’s a lot to take in over its 50+ minutes, not so much in the With Love sense of sheer musical volume but more in the new ideas and stylistic left turns that find their home on the album. Leave it to sink in, though, and Ultra works fantastically as an album experience, with sequencing that sees the level of intensity wax and wane as emotions freeze and thaw.

The Scientists never really broke through to a wider audience. But what they did do is leave behind a body of work that was picked up by subsequent generations and cited as highly influential. There’s certainly much to enjoy here but there’s also plenty to re-affirm their cult status in the greater scheme of things.

[Endless and Blond(e)] are great--but they require time and, realistically, a step-back from the extraordinary (and sometimes ludicrous) hype that necessitates Ocean’s new works be either masterpieces or a complete let-down.

[Endless and Blond(e)] are great--but they require time and, realistically, a step-back from the extraordinary (and sometimes ludicrous) hype that necessitates Ocean’s new works be either masterpieces or a complete let-down.

Exploded View is the type of album that seeps into your soul. Consciously designed or not, it exposes various unpalatable truths about the way we live now and turns them into frightening, spellbinding music.

Their most rowdy and rambunctious album yet.

Partners is another triumph in Broderick’s career. It will simultaneously disorientate and captivate; it will feel both familiar and unlike anything you’ve ever heard previously.

Whether due to Gurnsey and Void’s developing rapport, or the honing of their collective sound, 25 25 packs the immense sort of punch that descriptions of their live shows recount.

The instrumentation, forms, and concepts are familiar: “pure” country, as it were. Lyrically speaking, love, companionship, and family (‘Mama’) represent persistent threads; even more so, though, the passing of time seems to be Parton’s chief concern.

A dark heart beats at the core of this album, much as it did with all of the influential bands mentioned in this review, but its creators have proved themselves to be dabber hands at good time rock’n’roll than most of their previous ventures indicated.

Ghost Stations is designed to arouse thoughts of “abandonment, empty spaces and dereliction”. But that denies the album’s soothing, ultimately positive nature. It may offer a melancholy tour of desolate scenes, but they’re lent the nocturnal beauty of ancient structures bathed in subdued lighting, any sense of threat exchanged for a reassuring sense of security.

The result of this apparent simplicity far exceeds expectation: The pop-informed songwriting of Quasi oozes among creepy, distorted noises, feedback and hypnotising pulses in long, composite songs, at times made of two different parts.

It sounds ominously worth, but on listening the level of fun is obvious too. Layer upon layer, spoken word singing weaves around carefully crafted atmospheric drum patterns and rudimentary grooves, sounding unpremeditated--spontaneously surreal.

The really interesting stuff here is from those groups that barely scraped out an album before disappearing into obscurity or never even got to release a record at the time, many of them victims of being outside of what was still largely a London-centric scene.

Dinosaur Jr. have succeeded in creating the ultimate gateway album, a perfect synthesis of all the ingredients that have made them one of the most intriguing and long-lasting guitar bands in recent history.

There is something unsettling but ultimately compulsive about this record. From the opening moments of ‘Deep Six Textbook’, you feel compelled to listen attentively and follow the whole oddball affair to its conclusion.

Missteps matter little on an album that proves a minimal tour de force, home to some of the most simply enjoyable music in Hood’s 20-plus-year production history.

The album Cistern is thoughtful and meticulous, agile and artful.

This is techno music that fires the mind and soothes the soul; intricate, micro-tuned productions that work on a guttural level; electronic music that soars by aural intelligence rather than lumpen sonic trickery. In the end, you may not be healed by The Disco’s of Imhotep but you’ll certainly be uplifted.

Disaster Piece is proof that Flowdan is still capable of the acerbic flow and rhymes that many have come to associate with the MC. Proof that he can stand on his own, the album actively pushes against the growing hordes of casual fans of the grime sound.

Spread over four LPs, this Warm Leatherette box set is an exhaustive compilation that thankfully doesn’t dip in quality for the wealth of what’s on offer. For any Grace Jones fans this is as definitive as it gets, though it will take some serious powers of discernment to differentiate between LP one and LP two.

The two pieces enhance and complement one another to make a combined whole. This is very much a considered and, with regards to its structure, composed body of work.

Nothing’s Real is proof that Shura has carved out a name for herself in a distinctly oversaturated market. Here is a pop star that has undoubtedly arrived.

Take Her Up to Monto is the schizophrenic underbelly of Toys’ teary composure, and its much less interested in working through earthly lived experience than it is in traversing it.

Fifteen songs is probably a few too many, but it’s hard to imagine consensus among listeners on what to excise, and plausibly the band ran into the same problem. If so, they’ve earned the right to moderate self-indulgence at this point.

Eleven great tracks out of twelves is a handsome return though, and the listener must surely delight in the fact that Harvey isn’t done with Gainsbourg just yet.

Odonis Odonis is evolving. Though, for now, they seem to sound a bit more like yesterday than tomorrow.

Even if it could never feel like a childhood's worth of lovingly curated music, and even if the shock of the new's way out of its reach, it's still another out-of-its-time, forensically assembled wonder.

This brand of brooding synth instrumental has been so long entangled with narratives, it’s perhaps the ultimate test to make it work without without any framing context; to inject enough substance into the music for it to carry itself. Jean-Michel Jarre managed it, Tangerine Dream (sometimes) managed it, and with The Capsule so have Necro Deathmort.

None of this feels glib, not in the circumstances, and not when the music steers clear of mush to come out gorgeous, taut and streamlined.

Eyes on the Lines sounds alive: the ivy growing out of that sphere, adding color and oxygen to the weathered, though still captivating, form underneath.

Either it sounds like 35 years of extreme metal and fast hardcore boiled down into one molten sea of fury, or you straight up don’t get it and are doomed to exist on the other side of the glass. See? This us-and-them rhetoric feels more fun the more you listen to this album.

Much like religious experience, the constellations of songs here (and their brethren on the two prior albums) rely on an intensely relatable core, a simple idea or feeling sizzling at the center that anyone can attach to. From there, the instrumentalists ripple out in meditative layers, never covering over or distracting from it, but rather reinforcing.

Bell’s mastery of subversion and convention enables the record to function as an exploration of dance and community; a reminder of how it feels to be alone, a stranger in a crowd.

Previously, Brian Leeds made music that you could dance to. Now he makes music to lose yourself in.

Throughout, Strangers is quite simply an understated tour de force by a now experienced composer and performer, able to convey a feeling and lead the way within it in equal measure.

Traditional airs 'Women Of Ireland', 'Carrickfergus' and 'Curragh Of Kildare' are evocative, stately and impassioned, respectively and alternately, and Rowland's bolshy old yelp has softened to a croon. He brings the kind of authority he didn't always have 30 years ago, along with a hard-won wisdom that gives him the character to handle this stuff sincerely.

On Treasure House they find an impressive balance: classical, symphonic music melds with garage and post-punk, giving credence to the cliché that opposites attract, outstanding in its complex sounds and arrangements.

Basses Loaded is excellent. Like every other Melvins record it holds its own identity while oozing the same sweet black guitar sludge they have re-perfected many times over the years.

The Lexicon Of Love has a brand new chapter. Read it and weep like a river, but then smile, because tears are not enough. The future that got away has got it going on again.

What this sense of apparent introversion leads to, however, is anything but a soft or slow record. On the contrary; Oh No often grooves harder and faster than Pull My Hair Back, with Lanza’s voice still invoking early Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

Konono No. 1 Meets Batida isn't quite the sustained and magical dialogue it might have been, but it's an intriguing cultural experiment with moments of real alchemy.