Nigel Godrich’s carefully measured and studied arrangements imbue the band’s new material with a maturity and self-assurance to match their growing ambition.

El-P comes out swinging, challenging the world before him to a fistfight on this record of awe-inspiring defiance, both lyrically and sonically.

Mayer’s latest is his most “down home” effort yet, as well as his most tender and poignant.

The French label dig up a bunch of lesser-known (or up-and-coming) US acts and create a coherent and interesting mix, without ever straying too far from their comfort zone.

Cold Specks’ debut oozes dark atmosphere and pleasing musical moments, but it plays its cards so close to its chest that it struggles to connect on a deeper level.

There’s intuition, a splash of magic and some greatness of delivery here between Watt, Silver Jew Tim Barnes, John Dietrich of Deerhoof and Nels Cline collaborator Thollem McDonas. It’s no American indie indulgence, it’s the straight strange path straight out of standard sound and off, beautiful and ugly into somewhere other.

Buzzing and resonating wildly, like the hysterical thought processes of an overactive blast furnace, this is a Ballet Mécanique for a post-nuclear age.

A brief yet blistering record from Baltimore’s Dead Mellotron that combines MBV-style sonic attack with straight-ahead jangle to great effect.

Electric Sound Of Summer treats the listener as an object to be played; a means of transferring ideas. We’re just a canvas to create wildly beautiful abstract art.

It’s a pure vapour of everything that made the 1980s musically thrilling, the excruciating byproducts left behind. Basically, it elevates an already great band to the altitude of Good Vibe Heaven: thank the party gods, they’re still flyin’, still.