Thomas Blake

Tor Invocation Band’s ‘Medicine’ travels through a borderless realm of traditional folk, ambient, heavy psych, noise and free jazz. But it hangs together admirably under Jake Blanchard’s guiding hand, proof that the most uncompromising music can also be an absolute pleasure to listen to.

Elijah Minnelli’s Perpetual Musket is a highly unusual release, but brilliantly executed and bitingly relevant. And after one or two listens, you’ll never think about reggae or folk music in the same way again.

Georgia Ruth’s Cool Head is defined by subtle experimentation, highly accessible melodies and clever, heartfelt lyrics that have always been her forte, while her attention to the smallest musical detail allows her to draw out the latent emotion of a moment…It’s her strongest offering yet.

Beings are the New York City quartet Zoh Amba, Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismaily and Jim White; their debut album, ‘There is a Garden’, is blistering, beautiful free jazz with an uncommonly sunny and accommodating outlook.

Their talent as vocalists and harmonists is at the heart of Landless’s immense appeal. Lúireach is a reliquary of rich, dramatic tales and a celebration of resolutely feminist togetherness, yet another triumph for the fantastically productive Irish folk scene.

Marina Allen strikes the perfect balance between clarity and abstraction on Eight Pointed Star, fabricating a beautifully coherent but mysterious collection of songs that combine a gift for songcraft with something approaching lyrical genius.

Featuring Agnes Martian, Laraaji, Music for Connection and Hair and Space Museum, Coincidence is a record bursting with the joy of spontaneous creativity. It is both an uncompromising demonstration of free and experimental spiritual jazz and a document attesting to the power of collaboration.

Buck Curran’s ‘One Evening and Other Folk Songs’ is an album of hidden depths. His talent is an alchemical one: seemingly quotidian musical ingredients are turned into rare metals in his hands, and with this eclectic but hugely talented band, the results are doubly impressive.

Eric Chenaux’s recent solo offerings offered a strange and beautiful alchemy quite unlike anything else in popular music. Delights of My Life is a continuation of that magic formula but with a more collaborative focus. Chenaux’s spellbinding run of form shows no signs of stopping.

Sealladh highlights Rachel Newton’s gift for subsuming visual reference points within a musical purview, coming up with melodies that are disarming, deceptively simple and utterly beautiful.

At Fargrounds stops you in your tracks with the sheer excellence of Jacken Elswyth’s playing and then with the breadth of its implications. This is instrumental music that has a lot to say, and it says it with verve, lightness, and great skill.

Littoral Zone feels like a landmark album in Adam Ross’s career, a kind of synthesis of the most impressive elements of his full band and solo work. In a fair world, this literate, funny, humane album would cement his status as a national treasure.