39.
Imperial Wax Solvent: pure surge and shudder, the heaviest, grimiest, most guttural Fall of all. Not just the best Fall record for three years, or five years, or eighteen years… IWS is powerful enough to pin you in the present, bellow in your face until all you understand is this, here, now – and what the hell are you doing with your life that it doesn’t match up to this? By the time you remember that it’s not the best record The Fall have ever made, it’s too late. It might as well be.The FallImperial Wax SolventCastle, 2008
38.
Over the course of several album-length collaborations with emcees established and new alike, L’Orange has been building rap’s version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: an imagined world where all the pieces interlock, but with each chapter digestible and relatable on its own. Arguably the best of an extravagantly wonderful bunch is this, a crime-themed team-up with Warp-affiliated rapper Jeremiah Jae, where the pair blend gangsta rap with film noir atmospherics to create something immediately accessible yet entirely unprecedented.LOrange and Jeremiah JaeThe Night Took Us In Like FamilyMello Music Group, 2015
37.
BBF is a rare example of an album that invites both arty introspection and head nodding. Much like Blunt himself, BBF is not always easy to love. But that makes the eventual rewards even more satisfying.Babyfather”BBF” Hosted By DJ EscrowHyperdub, 2016
36.
Electric WizardBlack MassesRise Above, 2010
35.
Slave Vows is a masterpiece, its black-hearted explosions and sordid vibes coming from a darker place than most of those pantomiming their way through rock & roll. But while there’s bleakness here, there’s also that sulphurous sound of resistance, of high drama at very real stakes.The Icarus LineSlave VowsAgitated, 2013
34.
AlgiersThe Underside Of PowerMatador, 2017
33.
While the album opens with the chiming of a 12 string, it slowly morphs into elektronische musik before sliding blissfully under layers of super heated sludge guitar and noise. By the time the ecstatic synths are met by necrotic black metal vocals, nothing about this album will surprise you, which is good thing, given that it shifts through sparse BM moves that remind one of Norwegian second wavers Thorns and through the arboreal drones of early Growing, before ending on a celestial cover of Nico’s ‘My Only Child’ with speaker destroying drone metal.Stara RzekaCień chmury nad ukrytym polemInstant Classic, 2013
32.
John GrantQueen Of DenmarkBella Union, 2010
31.
Scott’s youthful nihilism may very well be a branded put-on, but with narcotized lifestyles now so very en vogue he speaks both to and for more people than his stubborn detractors realise. Tracks like ‘Beibs In The Trap’ and ‘Goosebumps’ immerse listeners into a virtual world populated by warped sonics and honeyed vocals. Simple yet effective, ‘SDP Interlude’ makes his ethos clear. On the referential and essential ‘Through The Late Night,’ fellow rap crooner Kid Cudi comes through with his blessing.Travis ScottBirds In The Trap Sing McKnightEpic, 2016
30.
Belbury PolyFrom An Ancient StarGhost Box, 2009
29.
Dragging rock ‘n’ roll from the rural and out into the true folk heartland where it belongs, this was plugged-in rock music at its most literate. When future historians want to dig deep into British life at the dawn of a new age, the answers will be found here in songs like ‘A Trip Out’, ‘No Lucifer’, ‘Waving Flags’ and ‘Atom’, soaring anthems one and all – songs to leave you dizzy and ruddy-cheeked like a skinny dip in a moon-lit fresh water stream, songs that blow away the cobwebs of ennui and cynicism like a blast of fresh air at the summit of HelvellynDo You Like Rock Music?Rough Trade, 2008
28.
Eddy Current Suppression RingPrimary ColoursAarght!, 2008
27.
Restless reinvention is to be admired, but reconsideration and striving for personal perfection is to be prized. While Frahm’s previous penchant for the former has given him a brilliant and varied book of songs from which to draw, it’s his intense performance and passionate adoption of the latter which makes Spaces a work of gentle genius.Nils FrahmSpacesErased Tapes, 2013
26.
Jah Wobble & Julie CampbellPsychic LifeCherry Red, 2011
25.
Jam CityClassical CurvesNight Slugs, 2012
24.
With so much going on, it could lose its way, but instead Visions has a sort of timelessness to it. The purest, most beautiful moment is ‘Skin’, a bareboned Prince-via-Burial-via Julee Cruise ballad where Boucher’s breathes in her ether-light falsetto “you touch me within / And so I thought I could be human once again”, showing off a Carey-esque melismatic trill, offset by a chanted, pulsing chorus. It’s a heart-stopping moment, and testimony to the power of what you can do when you just please yourself. Is that pop music, then? Honestly, who bloody cares.GrimesVisions4AD, 2012
23.
Unlike the first two chapters, which dealt with more explicit stories delivered through more conventional musical structures, River Run Thee hones in on the tragedy and violence that lay at the core of the slave trade, coiled like murderous snakes. Matana Roberts’ music is similarly taut, bristling with angry textures and gasps of accusatory outbursts.Matana RobertsCOIN COIN Chapter Three: River Run TheeConstellation, 2015
22.
By rights no group should be peaking after 30 years of making music together, yet that is the situation in which Oxbow find themselves. Will they ever transcend Thin Black Duke? Such are the ideas and attention to detail on this record, only a fool would bet against them.OxbowThin Black DukeHydra Head, 2017
21.
This album is full of radical empathy – radical in the sense that it extends to everyone. In ‘Mekong Glitter’, it even extends to Gary Glitter, getting a blowjob from a child. “Why? Don’t you ever ask why?” chants the chorus, when it finally arrives two-thirds of the way through the song. By that point, we’ve already plunged into that forever-compelling motorik Glitter-Band beat along with sythesized gone-awry noodles, fuzz and feedback; it is glorious. It is glorious even as you hear the seedy and racist and clumsy innuendo, the boorish barking backing vocals. They are crossing a line here. But (to paraphrase EL Doctorow) if you’re not transgressing then what’s the point?Insecure MenInsecure MenFat Possum, 2018
20.
Of course, Journal For Plague Lovers will do nothing to convert the haters; for them, the Manics have always been a poor man’s Clash playing second-hand hair metal riffs. But that view does the band a disservice — their inner turmoil always elevated them above that status. For the majority of admirers who have been consistently disappointed by what followed Everything Must Go, this latest outing will be a cause for celebration: not only is Edwards providing his idiosyncratic words once again, but his bandmates have risen with grace to meet those lofty standards.
