Fatigue deserves to be listened to in succession. It needs you to sit down with a cup of tea, it needs to be envisioned and thought through. You need to let it embody a change for you, and take you somewhere else, where you can sit in the duality of your own emotions. Each song is preceded by an interlude to piece the emotions of each track together.

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.

In Outlaw R&B, Night Beats staple their genre-binding sound across eleven great tunes.

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

It is electronic music unencumbered by genre rules and the specificity of signification. It is at once completely familiar and pleasingly fresh.

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.

The ground covered on Black to the Future is immense. The visceral passages really slash deep, the moments of unbridled energy are exhilarating, and the meditative moments reach crescendos of total beauty.

WINK is CHAI’s most comforting listen to date, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left behind the fun or the bold, animated bite of it all. Instead, it’s a record that builds on everything they’ve done before, understanding their strengths together as a group and then growing something more immersive and insightful from it – all while remaining deliciously joyful.

Each track is a universe of its own, doing what art should do: using its own virtual space as an experimental testing ground to try those limits of taboo and impossibility that remain limited IRL. ... Cavalcade may prove to be one of the most accomplished albums of 2021; future classic of a happily undefined now-core genre. Humanity, level up. If they are giving us any taste of the immediate future, let the roaring twenties roll.

There’s a few too many repeated melodies, and too few differing musical moods. Still, this is a reliably impressive package from a man who knows his business, and crucially still has something to say. It’s Prime Numan in his prime.

A gradual unfolding of creative consciousness in real-time, long evolving in a psychotropic loop of self-invention, her journey culminates on The Tunnel and the Clearing in hard-earned clarity.

The collaborations are abundant throughout Reflection too and mark some of James’ most assured offerings: her skills as a producer (particularly on drill tracks) are especially impressive. Through working with other creatives from afar, James starts to arrive at something that resembles peace.

‘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.

Overall, this is a rewarding and captivating body of work. The Waves Pt.1 is a testament to Kele Okereke’s adaptability as an artist.

The nine tracks on Frontera isolate Fly Pan Am’s part in the project, yet taking the multi- out of multimedia doesn’t dilute the themes seared into the music.

Medieval Femme plays to its strengths, with only a couple of disjointed cuts amongst an excellent collection, and even those keeping a tight ship on runtime.

There is not a song on Build A Problem that does not deserve its place on the album. They all have the potential to be favourites, depending on the day, your mood and what you want from a song. Smoothly woven from dodie’s most intimate moments, Build a Problem has it all.

While at times Flat White Moon struggles to match the awe-striking levels of the album’s opening track, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

Made Out of Sound might be one of the finest things either Corsano or Orcutt has done, which is no mean feat.

If you want to think about grubby late mid-century New York, go and read Just Kids or something. If you want a high-production, catchy album that’s cheesy, fun, and occasionally a bit naff, buy Daddy’s Home.

A superhuman album celebratory to a soul very sad to have lost.

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.

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.

It’s an exploratory, ebullient album from start to finish, and one that embodies the insatiable curiosity that led him to work with so many artists from so many different genres, a celebration of collective endeavour and of life itself.

Complex and sophisticated, if i could make it go quiet is one of the most enticing new albums I have heard in a long time.

In places, when compared to their earlier works, it sometimes feels like songs don’t get the space to grow and unfold. Other than that, this is a sublime and beguiling record, and a milestone in the evolution of a unique creative voice.

Very programmatic, AAI allows Mouse on Mars to fully flesh out their ever implicit techno-humanist sonic philosophy, a certain anarcho-progressivism with a tech-utopian bent. The record serves as a magnifying glass to their career-long preoccupations.

a softer focus feels like a breakthrough: simultaneously freer and more composed, closer and more abstract, sweeter and more caustic.