Experimental music inevitably engenders pretentious music writing, yet when it's as good as Behold it creates a listening experience that altogether dwarfs any linguistic rationalisation. This is a record of light and shade, and one that demands your fullest immersion.

With The Savage Heart, The Jim Jones Revue display a deft ability to move things forward whilst retaining firmly in place all the components that made them such a seductive proposition in the first place.

It's a mind-bending metal album that casts the gaze of its extraterrestrial eye towards an unknown galaxy far away.

One of the most darkly enthralling instrumental records of the year.

Moot!’s frill-free tautness makes it anathema for casual listening, while repaying your commanded attention not with the spectacular structures of build-up, breakdown, or resolution, but with a sustained, flattening tension which would be dissatisfying were it not so completely gripping.

Modern Vampires quite often touches brilliance, and does so without audibly straining for 'maturity' or pushing hard to be some po-faced Great American Album.

Highway Songs is David Pajo’s protracted gasp for breath, his slammed fist on the table and his most resounding act of defiance. As we await certain brilliance, it will serve as a very fitting departure in the meantime.

Fabric 91 deserves to linger in the public consciousness: it feels like a statement, a carefully curated bridge between past and present that evokes atmosphere and emotion.

Things crunch, grunt, and whinny with much effort and abandon, the band’s gurning labours hitting a sweet spot somewhere between Mudhoney and The Groundhogs. Occasionally they stretch so far for Earthless-like levels of jam band transcendence that you might be able to hear their vertebrae pop – were it not, of course, all so frighteningly loud.

It's good to know that, like you and me, he's swimming hard against the ever increasing tide of shit and still, in the main, coming up smelling of roses and refusing to back down.

There is great life and verve in these songs, teeming, irrepressible. Listen closely and you can hear the record breathing.

While there might be a pleasing inevitability to their sonic tryst--and even to its shagging-and-dying trajectory--there is nothing predictable about Here Lies The Body.

This album sneaks up on you. It swiftly moves from easy-listening to music to obsess over. If you listen to it through cheap earphones on a crowded train, the intricacy of the production behind this album could be missed. It’s only when you invest attention, time (and good speakers) that you truly begin to revel in its wonders. To be able to relate with the messiness of Gartland’s emotional journey is to feel at one with a talented artist.

Lily We Need to Talk Now is an unexpected piece of artwork that manages to reflect the liberating now of boundaryless music. With influences from decades of genres and artists – from 70s to 90s to 00s and from The Sugarcubes to Pixies to beabadoobee – this album pieces together the excitement of discovering fresh music, making for a rollercoaster of a listening session.

The sensation of Winterval's astral travel may be a familiar one for fans of Willis, but that feeling of being propelled there by a fellow living being, rather than the tools at his disposal, means it's one that's easy to embrace.

Carter Tutti has never seemed crippled into one genre, and now there's an authenticity tied to a gravitas that sounds instantly advanced.

This soundtrack creates an air of wonder and foreboding, that only very occasionally and briefly plunges you into the darkness. ... Working skilfully with a modest, mostly-stringed timbral palette, Krlic incorporates the traditional Swedish nyckelharpa (as did Mark Korven for The Witch) and the hurdy-gurdy to underpin the conventional themes and create an unsettling wheezing groan, characteristic of these ancient instruments.

Irisiri is an album that explores the concepts of femininity, technology and the how many non-conforming bodies end up falling between the cracks in the seemingly implacable poles of gender, sex and the human, all her songs display seemingly disparate contrasts of surrealist wordplay, with organic, fragile tones and cold, machinist grind, as she pieces and stitches them into idiosyncratic little monsters that at times bewilders, but ultimately beguiles you with their curiosity and playfulness.

These experimental techniques give Bachman's recordings a unique intimacy and a rare openness. His is a brave music of warmth, community and generosity.

Hushed and Grim is not only Mastodon’s longest, but also their most personal album to date. An impressive and brutal addition to the canon, even if making it to the other side can sometimes feel like a more unassailable task than traversing Blood Mountain itself.

Don’t Look Away is a supremely confident album from a songwriter who has found his place and knows his music. It completes a trilogy which is essential listening for anyone who wants to hear why the psychedelic lineage of the past 50 years is fresh and alive.

Night Thoughts is a record that deals poetically and bravely with the shadows that start to grow as we age and life's responsibilities weigh heavier on our shoulders. Brett Anderson seems as comfortable writing about the aging process as he did chemical smiles in the backs of Volvos and bored suburban housewives done in on sleeping pills etc, something that bodes well indeed for the future.

So while the production isn’t as in-your-face as before, the flourishes that characterised those releases are here deployed to subtle effect on an album that’s only too happy to explore a variety of stylistic routes including blues, jazz, deep house and dub elements to make a surprisingly coherent and cohesive statement.

The Great Bailout is a hauntingly edifying experience born out of intergenerational trauma, political rage and suffering. Echoey vocals and experimental composition hold this album up as a house of mirrors – a forceful confrontation with an ugly past with no way out. Its counterpoint is a feeling of strength.

An album that has Blawan back and showing us why he matters to us techno heads.

Her distinct 2018 style isn’t lost at all. The dreamy synths, the soft vocal harmonies and the unhurried compositions are still there in several tracks on this record. Thanks to that, Orquideas is the perfect tracklist to introduce any newcomers into a more niche latin sound.

In contrast to the usual free improvisation idiom and its tendency to meander between abstract figures and skronking freakouts, the four pieces here – each of them around twenty minutes long – are locked into steady, slowly shifting rhythms that give the music a funky, cosy feeling ... A lovely, warm album.

Algiers isn't incitement to revolution, it's a call to self-interrogation, to consider your reality and the reality of those around you.

Dear could have been the end of the trip. But a quarter of a century in, Boris remain alert at the controls as they pilot their craft into uncharted galaxies, boldly going where no group has gone before.

While the first disc replicates the original album, the real meat is to be found on the remaining discs.

Heather Leigh has emerged from centuries of tradition and the improv world she is most closely associated with, to deliver a work of art that exists in a world all of its own.

The only, minor caveat is that the songs end a little too abruptly. But there’s enough good music here to listen to over and over and to get you giddy about what Sink Ya Teeth will do next.

Here, it seems like 65dos are challenging themselves in a way that they are finally happy with, evoking the confidence of 'Exploding and matching that with the energy and intensity of The Fall of Math.

They've always been a subtle unit, resisting obvious moments of catharsis in favour of subtle dynamics, but here they manage the trick that Khanate mastered so effectively and create a tension that derives as much from the fear of silence as it does from the threat of noise.

There's lots of good guitar playing, but no flashy riffs and absolutely nothing you'd call a solo. It gives Monuments its greatest strength: a self contained identity.

Home Time is an album by a songwriter whose distinctive style has more than a little of the music hall. Hayman is a modern storyteller whose curiosity means he just cannot stop uncovering material.

Jlin has always reached across musical genres to create her music, and with Akoma, she reminds us again that genre is a malleable idea meant to be redefined and reshaped.

While their evolution in favour of modern soul perhaps won’t fill as many dancefloors as their earlier releases, Closer Apart is one of the most life-affirming and addictive records of the year, from a collaboration that truly justifies its existence.

Unknown Rooms is very, very accomplished, giving the sense that Wolfe has realised the extent of her own ability and acted on it.

[Wyatt's guitar work and his synths] manage to coalesce with his guitar on the album's strongest moments: as one becomes indistinguishable from the other. It is this coherency which arguably marks Lets… out as Wyatt's strongest work to date. He has created a rewarding sonic landscape that is consistently poignant, without ever being cloying.

There’s a lot to unpack across STRUGGLER. The demands it places on listeners to fully connect with the material are more than warranted.

How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident is right up there with the giddy heights of Travels With Myself And Another and proves how downright essential FotL are.

An immersive journey, to be sure, it’s one worth taking the time out for to experience in a single sitting.

While the record as a whole rewards revisit, the excitement concerning its many idiosyncrasies inevitably levels off. And yet, that initial pang of shock never fully subsides.

Disaster Piece is proof that Flowdan is still capable of the acerbic flow and rhymes that many have come to associate with the MC. Proof that he can stand on his own, the album actively pushes against the growing hordes of casual fans of the grime sound.

Porpora has managed an album that is at points a tiny bit distressing, yet it offers sweet refuge from the uneasiness he himself creates.

While the tightly managed polish and control perhaps doesn't grab the heart in the visceral way of older Sleater-Kinney, an emotional urgency remains on this album, albeit conveyed with greater sophistication.

A record that ranges widely without ever feeling tacked-together. A real feat of production.

Lala Belu finds 2018 Hailu Mergia fired up by the prospect of playing with other talented musicians. The resulting sound is more wild, unpredictable cocktail of ideas that make his past solo releases sound like the demo tapes they were.

Medicine is, in other words, a straight up psychedelic rock affair – for better and for worse. .... Overall, it is an amazingly fun record for spooky psychonauts.

There's a sense of fun on Shadow Of The Sun--an almost giddy joy at music-making – that earlier records lacked. The band's songwriting, however, remains as straightforward as ever.

Cala is a record that, at its strongest, reaches astounding levels of beauty and emotional fragility, but at its weakest, is just a fading shadow of its most powerful moments.

Yes, it really does nod towards Sound of Music and backs this cleverly with an illuminating barrage of steely industrial noise. Of course, the album will only truly explode into life when it surges into the live arena. A lavish and unique operatic gothic party that promises, as ever, to be a scream.

Each track, although dressed in punk scuzz, is whip-smart and perfectly framed

Floreat isn't simply a seduction--in the most understated way, it's too intense for that.

In reconstructing their music to match the grand scale of their ambition, they've mapped out a whole new territory to explore, and Tape Hiss indicates it's going to be a hell of a ride.

Tortoise may no longer sound like the future because the future happened, but as long as they keep on hitting the levels of perfection they reach on tracks like 'Shake Hands With Danger' and 'Gesceap' then complacency doesn't sound so bad.

The diversity of drums and percussion instruments and players also lends a different quality to the sound, bringing in a slapped, clacking flatness. It’s a perfect match to the frequently staccato energy of the saxophone.

It's the first great guitar album of the year--stimulating, idiosyncratic, occasionally challenging, but most importantly, jam-packed full of proper tunes.

The whole album wobbles with the uncertainty of potential. The composition tumbles between folk, pop, techno and computer music. Sometimes it’s unrefined like the untethered looping of ‘Bridge’ and sometimes dazzling and terrifying like ‘Crawler’, a track that builds toward the edge of sentience--but it’s never short on ideas.

With Wrecked, ZONAL and Moor Mother have made a joyously feel bad album whose grinding negativity and tidal heaviness provides a necessary form of catharsis, that sloughs or burns off the stench of ego and know-betterisms. It demands a form of humility from the listener both of their place in the world, and of the experience and position of others.

This is a deliberate Difficult Listen, an Atrocity Exhibition, an Intense Humming Of Evil. If you've always been a Stewart-skeptic, there's a good chance you'll dismiss this as Super Hans conjuring a powerful sense of dread; if not, it's likely to genuinely unsettle.

If nothing else, this album is a guitar fetishist's dream, and sounds like it was a joy to make, too.

Every track on this album has its moment in time, its place in life and its meaning in itself.

Much of this delightful album resonates with the sound of a man's ambition fulfilled.

Where the album is most successful though, is in its achievement of capturing the raucous, unhinged live sound that the band create when they set upon the stage with a whirlwind of noise.

This is Eggland is a relentless, heartfelt statement of intent. You wouldn’t bet against them unearthing glory from the fringe for decades to come.

Only ‘It Will Never Be Simple’ (at 2:32) feels a little like padding. Overall though, this is the pinnacle so far of the current GBV reformation, reaching in parts the high calibre of classic era albums like Alien Lanes and Under The Bushes Under The Stars.

This album flips that fail-state on its head courtesy of being 39 minutes of utterly triumphant fusion pop. Everyone should hear this.

The result is something stranger and more off-kilter than either of its predecessors, but equally distinctive.

On Change, Cindy Wilson finally shares her formidable pop intelligence, unmediated.

Despite the strength of the track list, there’s little doubt that Groggs, Parker and Ritchie are the stars of the show. The trio’s chemistry infects every track on Injury Reserve.

This refinement in Mogwai’s modus operandi suits them well. Where once their revolutionary sound startled, their evolutionary execution now beguiles--and keeps them several steps ahead of the pack.

A powerfully confessional record steeped in mystery.

Once you get past the gimmicks, be they dolphins, falsetto vocals or Japanese girls whispering "we love you Connan", you'll find genuine talent and quality informing the album's blissed out psychedelia. Caramel is a sugary-sweet treat to savour.

It's certainly Omar Souleyman's most user-friendly listening experience. Hebden's democratic production style and mixing board economy, valuing every instrument equally, makes it less relentless than its ancestors.

She turns experience into art with a painter’s eye and a warrior’s heart, and Music For People In Trouble is a profoundly humanist work: her finest by some distance.

Like a young monster venturing out into the world on its own, Volume Massimo, despite its pretences towards a pop sensibility, is still a beast at its core, but it’s an album that showcases just how much Cortini‘s aesthetic has developed since his early days.

As the f-bombs scatter and sloppy seconds diss tracks land hard, Kesha’s integrity and emotional depth leans in too. She may be a Malcolm Tucker of chart pop but there is so much symbolism – and often raw courage – in Kesha’s creative reclamation of her self, it can be dizzying.

WHY?’s brand of excess ought to be not abandoned, but embraced.

Gurnsey here bounces back with a project nostalgic of the late 80s and early 90s club scene – a very characteristic return for a most uncharacteristic artist.

While perhaps coming up slightly short on the nuanced splendor of Shields and the instantaneous élan of its Veckatimest, Painted Ruins is a special kind of conquest. Be it via the unseen sparks that spring forth from heartbreak or the dizzying urges that stem from one too many late-night wrangling with one’s place in the world, this is music stemming from a place that few artists can access.

From the base material of improvised music made in a situation of flux, his arrangements are incredibly dense and layered, linking intricate snippets and components together perfectly.

It’s purposely chaotic and skeletal in places, but when the disjointed pieces are viewed as one, you get an album that is a fascinating and hypnotic listen.

From Out Here is another beautifully crafted voyage into electronic music's substrata.

Despite the songs' far-off beginnings, Change Becomes Us is like an aggressive, steroid-pumped continuation of the band's excellent 2011 album Red Barked Tree, a testament to the band's consistent faithfulness to the key signatures of ice-sheet psychedelia and jackhammer punk.

Luminous is a great record, but it's an awkward bugger at times, and I suspect that in the long run the album will prove all the more rewarding for just that reason.

[Government Plates] is bursting with kinetic energy and texture, and never focuses on one particular sound for overlong over its economical 36 minute run time. It's that sense of ever shifting energy and momentum that characterizes Death Grips best work and it's a relief to see it returned to.

Musically, this is Anderson at her most assured: she has synthesised her various musical interests and influences--noise music, metal, grunge, folk and country--into an entirely idiosyncratic musical lexicon.

While Murray's lyrics are consciously evoking images of old timey Americana – desolate arcades, voodoo rites, thunder in the mountains – your mileage will vary on whether you find it charming or cheesy. Regardless, The Last Exit is a road trip worth taking. Murray’s sultry croon is effortlessly affecting.

This is music that transcends the detached nature of its making.

Wolf Eyes were never one-dimensional, but they're adding an increasing number of strings to their duct-taped noise bow and more moods, techniques, textures and subtleties to their bile-splattered palette.

Only the live recording, Manhattan is not essential here, given that, as is often the case with much archival material from the period, the sound quality is uneven, but it at least gives a glimpse of what the band was like onstage. Elitism For The People confirms two things, essentially: that Pere Ubu were possibly the most original band to emerge from the embers of America's punk scene and, more importantly, one of the best rock & roll bands to have ever spat out riffs, lyrics and noise.

This is some of the raddest music you’re likely to hear this year. Rad in its overall excellentness and radical as to its forward-thinking nature, sounding so even today, though recorded at the height of Ceausescu’s suppression and censorship.

Their distinct blend of hypnotic African blues provides a glimpse into another world with profound concerns about the fate of their people, nomadically shifting across the desert in search of an elusive peace.

All the pieces constitute a splendid array of transnational collaboration, a brilliant collage of ideas.

Happier Than Ever is a record of many layers and nuances. It is primarily a deep dive into the dark side of overnight celebrity and the internet’s industrial-scale objectification of young stars. But the project is also is a study in loneliness and a baroque, at times almost gothic, picking apart of adolescent melancholia. It’s Lindsay Anderson directing an episode of HBO’s Euphoria. Or Edward Gorey illustrating Judy Blume.

Though it is not articulated directly, the heart of this record is about the potential for a genuine and communal response to that hopelessness, and about an empowering, defiant joy that can be forged even in the depths of despair. Soundtrack to a soon unceasing summer.