DAMN. sees the rapper make a 180 degree turn from the sprawling jazz/funk/hip-hop odyssey of TPAB to deliver 14 taut, tough and wise cutting-edge examples of what’s possible in hip-hop today. ... Essential stuff.

IV is simply packed to its dank rafters with monstrous riffs, muggy low-mixed vocals and more discordant amp noise than you could shake a deaf stick at.

It’s powerful stuff, still wholly worthy of “10 fucking stars”.

Later songs Bear and Cleaning Out The Rooms are rewoven to even more emotional effect than in their previous guises, on the Zeus EP and Valhalla Dancehall long-player respectively.

While his guitar-playing remains robust and his vocal range undiminished, it’s the characteristically immersed, impassioned songwriting that most vividly illustrates his ongoing vigour.

The King Crimson archive is a thing of genuine wonder: it feels as though there isn’t a single picosecond of their career that hasn’t been somehow preserved, and the meticulous largesse with which this archival cache is curated and packaged sets an intimidating benchmark.

A joyous blend of dumb fun and sonic smarts with the talent that Stevens has been peddling for nearly 20 years to glue them together, this feels a fresh start in a career that didn’t exactly need one. Somehow, a wonderful surprise. Wow.

Divers is another meticulous masterpiece from one of the songwriters of her time, an album that’ll still be spellbinding generations from now.

Song For Our Daughter is, well, so uncannily, unreasonably and astutely beautiful that it meticulously sets aside every last one of your emotional checks and balances to wrap your core in a firm embrace.

It has been five years since their last studio album proper, and with The Wilderness, Explosions In The Sky have created something very special indeed.

Bereft of freestyle ivory plonks, You’re Not Alone captures WK doing what he does best: that utterly distinctive fusion of metal riffs, Springsteen bombast, pristine ABBA hooks and choruses bigger than Hercules’ biceps.

Old sweetens the deal, with tracks as good as anything from previous releases. However it’s New that intrigues, confuses, saddens and ultimately tempts you back with its sheer vulnerability--this is far deeper than the cash grab landfill this reunion could’ve spawned.

Deceptively simple, Cocker’s economical narratives sit atop Gonzalez’s evocative ivories, drawing you in with their intimacy, like an old rummy spilling the beans.

Kicking off with I Am Dust, it hangs together marvellously as an album.

As the original album did for Prince’s artistic progression, so this super deluxe edition does for the posthumous reissue series: refine a vision, making good on all the promises of the past while pointing to a future full of possibilities. Whatever expanded edition comes next, if it builds on this it cannot fail.

These 17 discs comprise every Island studio album, each with generous extras, plus standalone discs of genuine historical worth.

The erstwhile Felt and Denim frontman, the innately enigmatic Lawrence, is doing his best work right here and right now.

Spooky Action is all a bit like an ambitious sixth-form production--and I mean that in the absolute best way--the sheer excitement of experimentation with the requisite chutzpah to banish any gaucheness.

It’s an album blazing with a refulgent light that illuminates the darkness. Ultimately, it’s a cathartic celebration of life co-created by someone who’s survived a traumatic experience. More importantly, it shows how heartbreak, suffering and tragedy can be refashioned into transcendent art.

Tthis dark horse of a debut isn’t just vastly superior to most of the recycled indie landfill swilling around--it’s one of the most emotionally-charged guitar-based debuts to be unleashed over the past 12 months.

At their strange best, they sound like Radiohead with an ABBA obsession. A special album from a special band.

The set ends with a trio of songs from a 1964 BBC session; the sound quality may be poor but those voices shine through, utterly peerless nearly 50 years on.

He has certainly struck gold. This is out-and-out the best pop release so far this year.

Lament For Nepal is one of three love letters to the earthquake-ravaged Kathmandu Valley. A stark Nepali bell opens and closes this haunting piece, though as is so often the case with Chapman, the English pastoral qualities of the composition are equally compelling.

They took their sweet time, but that Breeders line-up is back, and has just nonchalantly knocked it out of the park.

While there is little new ground being broken on this debut album – DJ Spinna and Onra have both pursued similar territory--Kaytranada adds a pop nous and Dilla-like beat-making precision to the equation.

The charm of Thanks For The Dance can be found in the tidemark between the lapping waves of Cohen’s poetic self-effacement and the shoreline of our appreciation for his lyrical accomplishments.

What remains is a tightly-focused snapshot of an intensely creative period in Prince’s career: perhaps the most generous single-album box set of all time, for an album that itself just keeps giving.