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.

By rights no group should be peaking after 30 years of making music together, yet that is the situation in which Oxbow find themselves. Will they ever transcend Thin Black Duke? Such are the ideas and attention to detail on this record, only a fool would bet against them.

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.

Reward is Cate Le Bon’s most emotionally astute record to date, and her melodic prowess is the strongest it’s ever been. With that, Reward sounds like a modern classic, because it has a longevity that very few records possess.

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.

One of the purest, most ferocious, most generous albums I’ve heard. A simple offering, and an outright masterpiece of emptiness and full-to-bursting-ness at the same time.

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

He lacks the humour, more explicit angst and emotional confidence of John Grant and lacks Garneau's devotion to melodrama and pop. He is hardly Stephin Merritt. He exists independently as a cultural explorer as well as simply a very fine, very sensitive songwriter.

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.

‘Wited, Still and All…’ is a soft and broken, but strangely discordant cut, while ‘Of This Ilk’ and ‘Vital’ allow the more musically daring sides of the group to surface, with start-stop rhythms and razing riffs fencing the mass of metal aftershocks. As the album nears its end, there is a sense of something huge moving past just beyond the reach of senses, leaving a trail of subtle melodies behind. A way forward where there was none before.

This is an album that vindicates maturity, long years of toil, cumulative effort, resilience, patience, wisdom.

Sonically, Purple Mountains embraces and accentuates Berman’s taste for cushion-edged, almost AOR country-rock, with none of the powerchords or uptempo jigs that peppered late-period SJs LPs Tanglewood Numbers and Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea.

The reissue's bonus material, culled from the original cassettes Darnielle recorded to, fails to outshine the album's original tracks, but does offer a few highlights.

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.

The really great thing about this heavy, intense album, as punishing as it is beautiful in its resolve, is that it shakes to the core the philosophies that Björk laid out so methodically on Biophilia, but she still finds a dark difficult way back to hope and love.

The tropes of romantic art are self-consciously manipulated, but the artifice is made plain, and the finished work feels more real as a result.

Bursts of reggae wooziness, gnarled free-jazz atonality, and electronic noise afford the album a shock of modernity and adventurousness without feeling forced or awkward.

All the material contained within is new, and very good. The bands are in fine form, building on their former forms.

Virgins is Tim Hecker at his most thought-provoking and enigmatic.

Mitski’s devotion to music has resulted in a tremendously earnest and endearing record.

It is these three songs [MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA, Pool Hopping and Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism] that, in their hugeness, tend to overshadow the rest of the record on initial listens. Though the remaining tracks should not be missed or dismissed because of that.