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.

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.

Led Zeppelin III is where the band's dynamic and musical range really comes together and, for this writer at least, the most satisfying of the three.

Despite its lyrical limitations, Led Zeppelin remains an astonishing calling card.

At brief points Lamar does err on the side of self-indulgence, but for the most part his grandiosity is matched by his talent. A worthy follow up to its platinum-selling predecessor, To Pimp A Butterfly stands as a fearless and uncompromising manifestation of Lamar's desire to push the culture of rap forwards--a crusade that's as much in his blood as the city of Compton.

Much more the clenched fist than Gish, their second effort saw an increase in intensity, ballast, grit, ambition and sheer scale.

With Tunes, 2011 to 2019, a collection of songs released originally in EP form over the last eight years, sequenced by Burial himself and released to commemorate Hyperdub’s fifteenth anniversary, we are able to make cohesive sense of how Burial’s aesthetic grew more expansive and conceptually concise while mirroring our evolution through a decaying society.

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.

It's so lean and spare sonically that it feels like a dash of cold water to the face after the cacophonous, dense To Pimp A Butterfly; it's so light on its feet that it makes Good Kid, M.A.A.D City feel ponderous in comparison. It does this while also staking its claim to being Kendrick's most philosophically profound album to date.

This is an incredibly sexy album and the grooves contained within it are deep and wide.... The companion disc in this package offers an intriguing insight in the creation of Led Zeppelin II and one that highlights both the production skills of Jimmy Page and the musical contributions of his cohorts.

It is a huge pleasure and a relief that this comeback is so good, so strong.

The demos themselves, while manna for nerds like oneself, are for the most part hardly revelatory.... a singular album in both intent and execution, and the most satisfying expression of Dulli's dark, dark heart. The grunge era's answer to Millie Jackson's Caught Up, it remains a triumph, an album whose impact is no less powerfully felt 21 years on.

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.

Much has been made of these vocals, and they certainly do stand out on the recording. That said, any serious listener has heard both precedents and antecedents (Leon Thomas, AMM, about half of both the Nonesuch Explorer and ESP-Disk catalogs) for Coltrane's approach.

If the first [issue] had sonic charms which seem extemporary, this one is somewhere between the sublunary murk of the earlier bootlegs, the original band-approved TeePee records version of 2003 and a brighter, modern-sounding studio demo, but it's not glaringly distinct.

The highs here hedonistically bounce around big beats, and the ease in which Rosalía can rap coolly about her status and influence is just as easy as you get wrapped up in it. ... Sadly, Rosalía does not find a way to organise her many ideas well. The tracklist’s brisk changes in energy and awkward hard endings deny any chance of momentum-building.

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.

Life's Rich Pageant rather sweetly gathers the emotions and carries them back to the time.

What was perfection has become even more perfect.

The reach of these records [Loveless and Isn't Anything] makes bands yet to form sound hopelessly out-of-date.

This a sensitively curated survey of Czukay’s many-splendoured oeuvre, and it makes a good case for Czukay as the OG granddaddy of modern German music.

There'll never be another band like them. And if this is really it and they leave Blur to the history books, then it's a perfect way to remember this unique, occasionally annoying, but genuinely quite amazing band.

Taylor is also creating epic pop from this mess, and the soundworld she has built with her producer, Johan Kalberg, is her lyrical support system. ... The uneasy stuff is louder this time around – beefier, darker – but Taylor has twisted it to become a solid component of her strength.

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.

Channel Orange is a staggering step upwards from Nostalgia.

Simply put: this is the artistic culmination of the last five years in the world of Adam 'Nergal' Darski and with integrity and quality like this, in combination with his uncanny ability to position his band on solely his terms, it's a match made in heaven. Or hell.

Cluster had rewritten the linguistics of modern sound and then turned away without any further heed. Somewhere, someone would always be playing live in der Fabrik from here on.

Where in the past, Cave used artistic practice to escape "whatever it was that was pursuing me," on Carnage, he and Warren Ellis confront it head on. The result is a record that sometimes collapses under the weight of that task, but is nonetheless a remarkable demonstration of their artistic power.

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’.

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.

In another rapper's hands the concepts might have been overcooked or the messages too self-righteous, but Kendrick manages to achieve scale while remaining firmly grounded on two feet.

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.

This is another incredible addition to Roberts’ Coin Coin project, and one can only assume that when the 12-album cycle is completed, it will be regarded as a singular masterpiece of twenty-first century sonic and narrative art.

Little Simz' third studio album, Grey Area, sees her swing confidently through the duality of youth to harness the harshest of her vulnerable, raw moments, and the best savage, wisdom-weaponry, giving each reflection on herself pride and place on this record.

Only the live recording, Manhattan is not essential here, given that, as is often the case with much archival material from the period, the sound quality is uneven, but it at least gives a glimpse of what the band was like onstage. Elitism For The People confirms two things, essentially: that Pere Ubu were possibly the most original band to emerge from the embers of America's punk scene and, more importantly, one of the best rock & roll bands to have ever spat out riffs, lyrics and noise.

SOS is twenty-three tracks long and sonically it sprawls all over the hood. From low to high, clipped to soaring, SZA’s vocals are icily superb and her overwrought writing is vivid throughout. These progressive, ambitious melodies act like stitching to hold together the patchwork of an exceptionally diverse approach to genre and production.

It's not certain whether the acre to the desert forest has been crossed, but the feeling that abides is one of compassionate admiration for Stevens, not only for making this beautiful album of unfaltering rawness (and one which may even provide a crutch, a brutal one, for others), but for all of his work that has preceded it, music which frequently transcended the hurt of a life so wounded at its root.

While not an unqualified success, particularly in its sequencing, the overwhelming majority of Bright Phoebus warrants every ounce of the reputation the record has spawned during its absence from the world at large. Where it sags, it recovers quickly, and where it rises, it rides upon thermal after thermal, scornful of gravity.

While the tightly managed polish and control perhaps doesn't grab the heart in the visceral way of older Sleater-Kinney, an emotional urgency remains on this album, albeit conveyed with greater sophistication.

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.

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.

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.

Restless reinvention is to be admired, but reconsideration and striving for personal perfection is to be prized. While Frahm’s previous penchant for the former has given him a brilliant and varied book of songs from which to draw, it’s his intense performance and passionate adoption of the latter which makes Spaces a work of gentle genius, and one of the year’s best albums.

Like most bumper collections of this nature, Savage Young Dü is not a starting point. Sensibly, one should swot up on Hüsker Dü’s complete 1984-86 output first, then dig into this box and its wealth of eyewitness anecdotes and photos of puppy-fattened band members. Historical context suitably delivered, toast the lifespan of a great rock band and burn one for the guy who didn’t see this release hit the shelves.

St. Vincent's real genius is the way it manages to project an aura of perfection while simultaneously showing us its guts; it suggests that while the polished surface may not be a lie, exactly, it's based on a series of elisions that we're all uncomfortably complicit in.

Run The Jewels 2 is a great listen because of the artistry on display, but it's the pent-up frustration that takes it into the stratosphere, that makes you want to hug your loved ones and thank god for each breath while you set fire to the neighborhood.

It’s very easy for a reviewer to play armchair warrior and forward claims for all sorts of nonsense for music they like. But this is a glorious, heart-stopping, essential album. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it.

Apex Predator - Easy Meat retains the hyperactive energy and deadly pacing of its recent predecessors, and as a result, it gives their fans a diverse and devastating listening experience during what is a quintessential, zeitgeist-destroying grindcore album.

Dark Energy was already a significant left turn for footwork and Black Origami is a leap into the future from that, with probably only ‘1%’ (featuring Holly Herndon) from Black Origami sounding like anything on her first album.

Yves Tumor has let assertiveness, assuredness and vulnerability run wild within him for Safe In The Hands Of Love and the result is magisterial and deeply engaging.

This record is full of deft brass lines, clever little melodies and memorable refrains. Because at the root of everything For Those I Love writes great pop songs.

This album is a demonstration of how BigHit Music’s in-house producers and TXT members' composing skills blend smoothly to experiment with sound in clever but relatable narratives. ... The Chaos Chapter: Freeze is a surreal album in which a mix of sounds, music genres, and metaphorical lyrics seem out of shape – until you step to the right distance to appreciate the whole painting.

The central two of the six tracks are a bit of a cruise by comparison. .. Machine-fed streaks of looping refrains and rippling electronics make for a pleasing melange, no doubt, but it’s the surrounding four tracks which really vindicate the horizon-opening technocultural paradigm which apparently informed the album’s concept.

Vince Staples doesn’t care for being labelled a rapper, perhaps, but in just "being himself” he has created one of the finest exponents of the genre this year. Hip hop is punk, it’s poetry, but also it’s party music--Big Fish Theory is an outstanding album that potently shows all of these exquisite possibilities. What’s more is, Staples makes it seem like the easiest thing in the world.

While there are many masterful qualities to what Tamara Lindeman has created with this record, more of the introspective numbers such as ‘Trust’ and ‘Robber’ would have made for a more sonically rewarding body of work. Otherwise, this is a vivid and vibrant return.

For all their three-pronged power and musical fluidity, Unwound didn't, perhaps, quite make music which transcended the genres, styles and subcultures it was associated with.... If nothing else, this two-hour compendium of righteous, often superlative noise demonstrates that they could also cater to dancin' feet, and ears looking to be bled like radiators.

One of the finest debut albums this century. ... Bright Green Field is a brave and daring debut album that manages to mix experimental and avant-garde influences smack bang next to bouncy indie-disco post-punk motifs. I can’t get over how grand and great it is.

Riderless Horse is quietly redemptive rather than world-razingly cathartic, and despite all the mental and emotional hardship she’s survived, Nastasia remains even-handed and philosophical.

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.

Clone have struck a good balance, and there is not a single bad track amongst the 13 included here.

Despite clearly being intricately crafted down to the tiniest gestures--musical feats at this level of intensity and control don't emerge from half-arsed noodling--To Be Kind's songs also feel more fluid and open-ended than before, expressive and rich in possibility.

From start to finish, this album feels like an exposed wound, freshly – you might almost say studiously – picked and mastered to tape. It is an album of baroque intensity and gothic flamboyance played out like one long cathartic scream. Like an onion, it offers up layer after layer to slowly unpeel, each one a potential incitement to the very bitterest tears.

It is an easier, more focused listen than Ekstasis, but there is nothing here to rival that album's 'Marienbad' for sophisticated songwriting.

By shedding much of his fantastical baggage but none of his charm, he has created a nimble, playful little album that ranks among his very best.

MASSEDUCTION defies expectation, defies definition and defies the very idea that definition can exist. It’s an album detailing the mess of identity politics and power structures, and yet it hits serious cohesive highs. There is no cookie-cutter remedy, no rallying cry, just a baker’s dozen viewpoints of the chasm where we once thought order, power, and meaning lived.

Proof serves as a nostalgia trip for long-time fans of the septet and a summary introduction for the curious. With thirty old songs, three completely new tracks, and eleven new versions of well-loved classics, this album marks a satisfying closure to their first nine years as a group.

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.

While some of the music drifts a little close to the milky reassurances of New Age music (‘Praying for Mother / Earth Part 1’ places seemingly random plinking notes over the top of rippling running water that challenges the listener to not run to the loo), other tracks, such as ‘Variation – III’ by Masashi Kitamura + Phonogenix, move gorgeous ambient chords around the sound of waves licking the shoreline, a peace punctured occasionally by a chū-daiko drum to wholly peaceful affect. Together, the twenty three tracks here promote a warmth that feels somewhere close to paradise.

Everything works beautifully on what's still their most sublime piece.

It’s a beautiful and inspiring suite of music, by turns both lyrical and aggressive, evocative of the elements in their many different forms. ... Great artistry which is significantly more than the sum of its parts.

Designer is both self-referential and evolutionary. ... There's more to chew on here than you'll find in many records released this year. It's with one eye staring into the past and the other firmly fixed on the future that Aldous Harding presents this mysterious, complex and intelligent work--a third essential in as many albums.

Twigs still finds ferocious power in her music, her femininity, and her sexuality. But on MAGDALENE, she tampers that ferocity with a radical sensitivity and vulnerability that indicate a broader maturation in her artistic development.

The album isn’t uplifting in a simplistic sense. Often, it’s blotted with shadows. In her lyrics, Zauner has a fondness for zig-zagging from ebullient to devastating, often when you least expect it (“With my luck you’ll be dead within the year / I’ve come to expect it,” she croons on ‘In Hell’). And yet at a molecular level, Jubilee is a rush.

It could so easily have turned into a mess, but Mbongwana Star have made probably the most consistently listenable album to emerge from Kinshasa's rapidly evolving new genre.

This is a progressive, accessible album that could take Tame Impala to the next level, or the mainstream, whichever comes first. Not bad work for a directionless layabout.

Whilst Bandana doesn’t have Piñata’s same effortless sense of an instant classic, it has considerably more urgency and contemporary punch, also reflected in the once-again immaculate choice of collaborators, Killer Mike and Pusha T in particular contributing a devastating sucker-punch to ‘Palmolive’.

There is humour--albeit dark--throughout this precious, timeless album.

There are countless high points, memorable moments and addictive grooves on these two discs, and Haiti Direct is most certainly already a candidate for compilation of the year.

Rather than carry a casket loaded down with the fast-tiring tropes of the doom genre, with Foundations Of Burden Pallbearer choose to breathe thrilling new life into them.

Forty-two minutes of profound pleasure all in all, which both challenges the clichés of guitar-based heaviness and mines them for their ore.

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.

Joy as an Act of Resistance is a feature-length confirmation of what many have long suspected: channelled via frontman Joe Talbot, the Bristol five-piece are striking a midpoint between polemical and impactful, the grit of which few contemporary guitar bands have any odds of outdoing.

Where Visions looked inward--sounding like the echo of your voice inside your skull--Art Angels blasts relentlessly outward; an unabashed pleasure seeking missile that blurs the lines between euphoria and the nauseating sickness of excess.

To say this is a 'fans only' set is something of an understatement, but if you do have an interest and indeed if you can actually afford it, this is a lovingly put together and ridiculously detailed exploration of a record that has aged very well. For those whose interest is more casual the two-disc edition is well worth revisiting.

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.

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.

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

It might be less daring than some of the other hankerings, but there’s no room for emotional snobbery on Plunge, no victory that’s not worth celebrating: those seized, stolen intimacies she’s grubbed around for, the flashes of desire and flushes of pleasure, are things to be savoured.

With her third album Dirty Computer, that she’s truly achieved a tour-de-force. ... There are times though where Monáe’s feminism feels disappointingly cis- and vagina-focused--I wish she’d taken the time to explore the politics of non-cis women and non-binary people a little more. But Dirty Computer succeeds at what it came to do--it’s here to make you think, and it’s here to make you dance. It is the most clearly delivered result of Monáe’s vision so far.

Part of the album's cunning is owed to the time allotted for disparate strands to develop and take form.

The overall impression is of a lamp shone directly into the darkened corners of Shackleton's music, casting all its hidden detail in sharp relief.

Former Things indicates more ambition, comfort in shifting tones and overall sophistication in its production which ultimately proves a more rewarding listen. A thought-provoking and reaffirming record.

David Bowie hasn't sounded this relevant in an age. [Blackstar] marks the bold and rejuvenated beginnings of a second or maybe third wind.

The core remains. It is a worthless task to try and work out exactly what exactly it is Sundfør practices, beyond an extreme form of uncompromising pop.

Circle have reached many great heights over the last two decades, but this new album again attains a new zenith.

Hidden mysteries of not, it’s impossible to be anything but charmed by this record.

[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.

As well as being aware of frequencies in our immediate surroundings, deep listening observes cosmological energies. Angel Tears In Sunlight seems to resonate with Oliveros' observations by interweaving distant galaxies with her own rapturously intimate sonic sphere. One of Oliveros' greatest assertions is that is not only the ear that listens – you listen with your whole body.