The minutiae of each song’s sonic environment reveals far more than a casual listen, making this an album best experienced through headphones.

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

This is a rare Morrissey record in which the music matters as much as the words. Mercifully, this reissue does what no Moz re-package has yet managed, and respects the integrity of the original.

The Age of Immunology finds the group tightening some bolts and adding depth to their mythology, and it’s really quite a treat.

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.

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

A Pocket Of Wind Resistance combines powerful storytelling and songwriting to produce something special. Polwart and Murphy make Fala Flow seem unnervingly real, conjuring atmosphere through quiet incantation and simple but resonant instrumentation. They also deliver a strong political message in the best traditions of folk music, making health equality something to sing about.

The Old Fabled River is an exceptional record, a powerful example of a living folk music based on exchanging stories and remaking cultures in the process.

At times a song can simultaneously be baroque and noise, harsh and beautiful, and the contradictions aren't evident because their voices are one--but there are also times when the record is triumphant, precisely because they're torn away from one another.

All [tracks] are grand, and strong-hearted.

LV are remarkably adroit tunesmiths, able to navigate the fine lines between minimalism and melodicism without ever descending into dry formalism or familiar clichés. Josh Idehen has a voice that is just as expressive and powerful.

It's fair to say with such as varied collection of sounds from disparate sources, µ20 doesn't make it easy on the listener. After spending two hours of being buffeted by a dizzying array of beats and sound textures, listening to the third CD, with its wilful experimentalism, was almost too much on the first listen.

The record ends brilliantly with the superb one-two of ‘Trankil’, a truly brilliant pop track, and the immensely sympathetic ‘Aminiata’. The brisk, crisp, ‘that’s your lot’ ending on each of these two tracks somehow makes listening in so much more enjoyable.

The Art of Losing has been in the can for a couple of years now, delayed by the pandemic. It’s been worth the wait: this is a special record. They don’t come along very often. Quotable, immersive, moving, imaginative, delicate, and dramatic. A stellar achievement.

The 24-piece choir which accompanies most of the pieces here are a lightwave beam keeping the listener afloat, yet it's Coltrane's own vocals which resonate the most deeply.

If their late 90s records were marked by the fallout of Britpop and the fallout of relationships, The Ballad Of Darren is marked by this existential contemplation — not quite a breakup or a crisis, but the weight of the changes through the years. It’s a statement of where Blur are now.

Like pretty much all of his previous work, C4C isn't really open for the casual listen. Music as densely layered and as assimilated as this tends to unwrap itself at different times in different situations and with varying results.

His finest work since the first two Suicide LPs.

It's not a perfect album by any means, but I don't think it wants to be. It just wants to, be. Musically it walks a proverbial tightrope and often loses balance. The beauty, however, is in the moments when it does fall. Because for every time Mazy Fly falls from the sky, there is always a safety net on standby briefly followed by the next enthusiastic trapeze flip in Chrystia Cabral's psychedelic circus of one.

Sleaford Mods' eleventh album is a remarkable leap on from 2017's English Tapas, a record of consolidation that addressed the strange situation that the duo found themselves in--going from a niche concern more accustomed to playing alongside noise artists suddenly given column inches and selling out massive venues. This progress has come hand in hand with a keener knack for more fully developed tunes to bolster Williamson's hectoring. It is also, frequently, a hilarious record.

Ultimately, Midnight Rocker is a worthy, maybe even essential, addition to both Horace Andy and Adrian Sherwood’s massive catalogues. It’s not perfect, but there’s a strange vitality in its imperfection, and that energy, that vitality – whatever it is – is incredibly compelling.

With Archangel Hill, Collins continues to deliver on the title of that extraordinary record, Folk Roots, New Routes: finding old ways to look forward and new ways to look back.

It’s as engaging a release as you could hope for. The melodic sheets adorning the surface offer enough solace for casual listeners whilst intrigued parties will locate heart-heavy layers if they lean in just a little. As you might expect from the steady hands at the tiller, this is a cortex-hugging drone record of beauty and depth. A soundtrack worthy of living your life to.

Black Metal 2 ends at an uncertain crossroads, while sonically the record is perhaps Blunt’s most easy to engage with.

This time with an added bite of something that is entirely their own. This is a remarkable album, and easily good enough to send them global.

While it’s a short EP, it doesn’t disappoint. If anything, he presents himself as a soloist with an unexpected sound for his high-pitched countertenor voice and very far from those earlier ballads we have heard from him.

The National have arguably never struck that balance [between tenderness, optimism, humour and melodrama] quite as sweetly or persuasively as they do on Trouble Will Find Me, a layered, resoundingly human work that extends their winning streak without so much as breaking a sweat.

The Practice of Love reveals the sensitive humane core that was always behind Hval’s practice of enlightened dissent. The album develops an elegant approach to solving the existential problems of love, care and intimacy from the position of otherness.