Thomas Blake

Iona Lane’s Swilkie is a masterful album full of heartfelt emotion and breathtaking songwriting, and the additional disc of live recordings casts the whole album as a journey from solo endeavour to collaboration, from the bud of an idea to a fully-realised work of art.

On Annie A’s ‘The Wind That Had Not Touched Land’, the boundaries between song, sound art and poetry disappear in a flicker or a haze, and the results are quietly mesmerising.

With Taba, Satomimagae has created a work of art full of wonder and mystery that builds upon itself in the most surprising ways. It speaks a different musical language, but learning that language is a joy and a reward in itself.

Following their 2012 debut, Màiri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts reunite on ‘Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia’. It’s a beautiful and glimmering album on which they also demonstrate how to wring intense emotions from the most minimal of ingredients.

When Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society get together, a singular kind of magic emerges that epitomises the creative spirit of the Chicago scene but is nevertheless unique. ‘Totality’ is the fullest possible rendering of that magic and an essential piece of work.

All of the tracks on MIIEN feel like journeys, proof that MIEN truly understand the psychedelic assignment. They have the will and the talent to take us into the unknown and do so in unexpected and diverse ways.

Zoé Basha’s impressive debut album, Gamble, contains a wealth of complex emotional layers, but at its heart is the joy of making new and truly exciting music.

It’s over five years since the last Sacred Paws album, but Jump Into Life is well worth the wait. It feels like the most fully realised example of their intriguing vision, tapping into a truly global set of influences to produce something complex and personal.

In the hands of Jonathan Nangle and the Crash Ensemble, something beautiful has emerged from the long gestation of ‘Blue Haze of Deep Time’, which should become a touchstone of the ‘slow music’ movement.

Folklore Tapes deliver one of the strongest and strangest in their Ceremonial County series. The Bohman Brothers provide the perfect primer for creating weird, place-specific atmospheres, while Jennifer Reid represents folk music as a living tradition, as entertaining as it is political.

New Thing, the scarily accomplished debut album from Avery Friedman, inhabits a complex emotional realm where nervousness can coexist with (and inform) ideas of sexiness, sadness, tenderness. Her world is fragile but appears to have arrived fully-formed.

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is proof that you don’t have to forsake traditional aesthetic notions of melody to make something experimental…this is music deep and alluring enough to get lost in and sparse enough to find yourself in.