Ba Power was recorded in short, raw sessions. It hits hard, yet ingrained in every track is the sense that Kouyaté is letting loose of his previous restraints. This, is surely Ngoni Ba as he always wanted them to sound.

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.

The album has everything you expect from Suede: Brett Anderson’s astonishing voice, those pulsing baselines, the violins, the rangy impossible guitars, and the powerful drums. But it’s also a more mainstream record than they have made in years. Without losing what is wonderfully difficult about their music, they are bringing us what they are best at and offering something for people new to the band.

[Jenny Hval's] most straightforward record to the date, full of colourful and warm sounds – as well as one of her finest pop tunes.

Timbaland, Kanye and Diddy are among the big names on the boards here, battling it out with lesser known producers, all gleefully playing to Pusha's style.... If Pusha T can keep this up throughout King Push proper, the forthcoming main event, he'll have the hip hop album of next year too.

There is a playful freedom on display from start to finish. By increasing the importance of the bass and keyboards (a move possibly inspired by fellow Swedish prog compatriots Anekdoten) and simultaneously writing with string arrangements in mind, the innate grandeur at the heart of this band’s music has never been as audible as it is now.

Simply, we are left with more evidence of a true American original, who was also as important in his own way as Harry Smith or Alan Lomax and other such college-educated curatorial spirits.

His third album may not perform the economic miracles of the second, but it’s a powerful addition to Stromae’s canon and a beautiful gift to the world.

Lyrically, Stumpwork triumphs over anything produced by their contemporaries, but that might have been to the detriment of the music, which bravely evades the instrumental vitality of their debut. But it is an album rooted in grief – specifically the grief that comes from losing a loved one – and with that knowledge, Stumpwork suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Old Ideas is the most musically considered Leonard Cohen album yet, and perhaps the first that sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect from an old master of the 1960s and 70s.

Each of the eighteen tracks gathered on Livity Sound absolutely wrecks on a big rig, ripping ragged from the speakers, turning small basement rooms into packed, humming resonance chambers and settling teeth and viscera rattling.

Yeule sits in a coterie of future thinkers making eclectic pop music, and since the scene has become a cultural firecracker in the last few years, many artists are seeing praise for work that rests on its recent success. Glitch Princess moves the goalposts once again.

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

Spare, affecting and hauntingly melodic, For The World is a timeless record, looking back only in a human, personal way--not to some lost golden age, but over a life lived, with all its ups and downs, losses and gains.

It's rich and hypnotic, but it's not an easy listen: the gloom of many of the tracks will feel oppressive to some.

Le jour et la nuit du réel proves something else entirely: that these hunks of wood and wire and circuitry still have the potential to surprise. And to delight us with those surprises.

You might not have thought to put Anderson and Kronos Quartet together, but they did think of it, and the results are, in both the philosophical and the colloquial senses, sublime.

With three of the nine songs clocking in at over seven minutes-long, every note is earned and necessarily. Extended instrumental breaks and outros never feel gratuitous, if anything they allow the listener to fall deeper into the song, to lose track of time.

The composer with the Radio 6Music soul has constructed something elegant, thought-provoking and comforting that will genuinely make you wish it was October.

Crucially, her sense of humour remains intact, sharp and lethal – the sweet laments carried by her increasingly accomplished voice feel often to be one step away from, not laughter exactly, but self-deprecation, or a mordant smile at her own expense.

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.

Their best record to date, Ecstatic Arrow reminds us of the astonishing things you can do with pop music if you dare defy conventions.

Astroworld is no Rodeo or Birds In The Trap Singing McKnight, but it’s a beautiful creation of sonically striking sounds.

You Are Eternity is not po-faced, despite its thematic and sonic weight, it's concise and does the job with a glint.

It is a bold, expansive body of work that should have all the praise heaped on it because, without warning, she dropped one of the strongest albums of the year on us.

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.

Memento Mori is an absolute triumph. It’s almost the real songs of faith and devotion that they’d spoke of thirty years ago. Universal themes of mortality, love, anxiety; a handful of pop gems and what feels like an economical stripping back of the stadium-ness of previous works, making it their best long player this side of the century.

R.A.P. Music is an album that takes the energy of hip hop's rebellious instincts as its heart and reminds us of their importance.