Chris Todd

Night Life is a dark synth album from a band turning away from the big expansive sounds of the past to explore both the desolation and pleasures when light turns to dark, and their best album since Skying.

Here ... Grant embraces his love of eighties IBM/EBM music and kitchen sink gothery from the likes of Soft Cell, alongside the end-of-the-world electronica of Throbbing Gristle, all delivered in the form of yet another excellent John Grant release.

Whitelands, a fully POC band, are immediately important in a genre where colour is such a rarity … on this showing, they prove they’re totally capable, and up for the challenge.

Of all the nineties electronic acts that reached out beyond the underground to achieve mainstream success ... looking back at each body of work, only Underworld have truly kept up with the consistency of The Chemical Brothers, and with the scintillating form shown on For That Beautiful Feeling, it’s going to take something really spectacular to catch up.

The Love Invention isn’t quite the crown grab it has the potential to be, despite her being on brilliant form as always.

On their debut collaborative album Happy Ending, we find the two artists fully synergised.

Musically, Black Girl Magic is a house record, but it's what the music channels that makes it much more – it’s about groove, but just as important, it’s about feel.

Gibson’s talent isn’t in question here, there’s a reason he’s built a reputation as one of the UK's best production talents and it’s in full display in Actual Life 3. However, it's hard to put a finger on what the album's intent is.

The Price of Life’s relentless delivery of its agenda is a tiring but invigorating shot in the arm.

Dark Matter, Camelphat’s debut, sounds excellent - their reputation for being great producers can’t be denied, however there are a number of problems.

Familiarity isn’t a bad thing when it’s done well, if we refer back to the four cycles of reformation, Doves land firmly in the bands who have their fire relit by a break category, The Universal Want is Doves in essential form.

On 2017 – 2019 he again shows us why he is one of the most vital electronic acts of the 21st century.

Everything is intimate here, her hushed vocal styling sounding as close as a whisper to the ear, the lazy warmth of the instrumentation all culminates in a sound as cozy as a night in in front of an open fire, expertly masking the natural intensity of inherently sad break-up songs.

HITH is a mellow, exploratory affair, with drum machines, acoustic guitars and bottleneck slides being dreamily deployed at key moments to break up the Krautrock churn.

V isn’t a huge reinvention, more a subtle reboot, and a move which has worked out perfectly. The Horrors are hardly new to making brilliant albums - they did that with their previous three - but V is better than them all.

For the majority of Woman, Justice are acting out their pop dreams through machinery. Where in the past they’ve allowed to let the equipment do the talking, here, they show that they too are human after all.

They’ve consolidated on the progression made between their first two albums and in turn produced their finest effort to date.

The core components of their sound have remained intact, and it's only the delivery - which has naturally slowed down in pace - that has changed.

Demons beat, married and now living in LA, Brown’s new environment is reflected on this release, and it’s….ok.