The message of humanity and hope that the decolonisation doom of Divide and Dissolve carries grows in strength with their work’s consistency and volume. In that sense, Systemic is no less devastating and uplifting.

Over repeating ground bass figures, Barbieri builds and varies an increasingly complex architecture of melodies and harmonies in vaporous synth tones. Created using the Orthogonal 101 modular synthesizer, the means may possess degrees of randomness, but everything sounds precisely placed.

The steadiness in their performance is captivating and a pleasure to immerse yourself in. There are great rewards to I Don’t Know, in this regard.

Creep Show’s second album Yawning Abyss reaches further into your soul, and once there, it really gets to work, rummaging furtively and stealthily metastasising. The more spins, the more you submit to its charms.

Beyond the impressive list of guest stars though, this is an album that reflects on one person’s history and is steeped in honesty, grief and empathy as a result.

There’s plenty of intricacy in the intimacy of this record. In the end, though, The Age Of Pleasure is an easier ride. Less densely packed with ideas but it’s no bother.

The bending of time and place and sights and sounds across this record leaves the listener with plenty to digest and a lot to be excited for with what’s to come from Squid.

In their pursuit of experimentation, Decisive Pink have accomplished a great deal with this expansive body of work.

All in all, Potter Payper lives up to the title of his debut album, officially putting the real rappers back in style.

A beautiful resurrection for Zamrock, Zango is one of those rare records that, after living with it for a few months, still makes me feel something very profound. A triumphant return indeed.

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.

Another great Pere Ubu record, one imbued with a more upbeat emotional sensibility than its predecessor, with some memorable songs and some wild sonic experiments. It’s a snapshot of where the band are right now, as well las a hint of where they might still go in future.

Start with the bangers – and there are plenty, mostly front-loaded. ... It’s a visceral and strange album, one that revels in its abstractions, but is direct in what it has to say.

It’s refreshing then that their music comes without a prescribed meaning being spoon-fed to listeners. This allows the listener to come to their own conclusions.

Overmono have produced an album with a euphoric and kaleidoscopic appeal.

Title track ‘Love Invention’ continues to push this colourful pop juggernaut with its exploration of “wellness” culture, and there are a few songs in this louder kind of vein – painted with the broader brushstrokes of disco and house, with varying degrees of success. ... In truth it is Goldfrapp’s vocal that anchors this record, and things take a more interesting turn when the melancholy sets in (as is so often the way).

Rites Of Percussion is a fine addition to the lineage of drum albums largely thanks to his sense of intuition.

Crystal Vision does indeed seek to provide a kind of crystal vision, resulting in a more direct love-letter to the ties that bind, and in doing so Fake weaves a sense of body, community and connectedness.

Extra time has bred extra confidence, and everything’s bigger. Dreamer is a surrender to wide, blurry, technicolour horizons, as unreal and otherworldly as its name suggests. At its basic level, the elements are simple – indie-pop, a little more shoegaze, a lot more trance – but extra waves of electronic wash and vocals so multitracked they’re choral make it labyrinthine enough to get lost in.

While most of the songs on Fuse have sharp electronic edges, a soulful ballad such as ‘Run A Red Light’ isn’t going to scare Radio 2. Nevertheless, as the album unfolds, it becomes clear this isn’t EBTG simply revisiting past glories, but cautiously experimenting, and perhaps hinting at where they might go if they make more albums.

The live recordings feel raw and vibrant, capturing the energy of the performance, the power of the music, and the subtlety of emotion.

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.

There are no crescendos or sections that wrestle for attention, but rather, an ever-shifting soundscape that swirls and swims like a starling murmuration. The shapes it makes in the air are often wounding, but also graceful. And like all of his work, it is devastating in the best way possible.

Each track is inevitably a wild combination of memories, ideas, and influences – midi-fied sacred harp singers clash with squiggly synthesis, fiddle collides with the most absurd funk bass. Meanwhile, the spectre of prog is everywhere and the club is never far away. Amazingly, it all works.

Crash Recoil is as taut and sinewy as anything he’s done, yet there’s a certain looseness here too, a contemporary, accessible feel that suggests that by trying new things to break out of a creative rut, Surgeon is once again pushing the genre forward.

While seeing any bit of vulnerability in Friday’s work does make her more relatable, it’s the woman who titled her debut EP Bitchpunk that dominates Good Luck, and her attitude is a lot of fun. ... Friday attacked her debut like she was born ready, and it’s fully convincing that she was.

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.

Compared to the preceding Plunge, this new album is more adventurous, perhaps, attempting to summon diverse and emotionally challenging experiences of a relationship. Depending on a listener’s experience and expectations, Radical Romantics can be found as uncomfortable as it is accommodating. The album tackles its subject with an attitude that exudes boldness and acceptance.