‘Single Shot’ is certainly a strong contender for one of this year’s better jazz releases, has a great deal of crossover appeal, and transcends the genres from which it was born, and by which it was influenced. A stunning odyssey into jazz-funk-fusion.

Stuart Benjamin asked the guys behind Australian band Hashshashin some questions. “If I had to describe it to someone I would say something like “heavy progressive rock with psychedelic, experimental, drone and Middle Eastern/Oriental influences.”

On The Dry Land is a heady mixture of psychedelic pop, avant-garde folk, English Hymnal, and electronic experimentation. Imagine a world, if you would, where all the kids bought Syd Barrett’s ‘The Madcap Laughs’ instead of ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ and wanted to be like the quirksome Floydian frontman rather than the Bermondsey Odd-bod.

Diploid’s “Is God Up There?” is a full bellowed Edvard Munch style scream at a world which, in 2016, rapidly seems to be going down the toilet. Stuart Benjamin caught up with Reece and Mariam from the band for a brief Q&A about mass murder, serial killers, death, and Prince.

Bold and challenging, the punishing grind of the record is split into two parts both of which crunch down on your body as effectively as the heavy broken-glass encrusted boots of a team of angry riot-police trying to destroy a wasp nest.

The Fall Dance has real cross-over appeal, don’t think of it as a just a jazz record, but think of it as a great record. The playing is just superb, it’s a wondrous thing to hear. A totally sublime experience.

Above all else this album is great fun, from the thunderous psychedelic explosions of ‘The Ascetic’ and ‘Immolation’, through to the laconic slow pulse of ‘Disintegration’ there’s never a dull moment or anything that feels remotely like filler. If you have any feeling for psych at all, you’ll lap up the whole damn lot of it. I loved it.

“Sludge! Sludge! Glorious Sludge! Nothing quite like it for Barnaby Rudge!” So wrote Charles Dickens and what he didn’t know about Sunn O))), well, it wasn’t worth knowing in all honesty. Dickens would have loved many of the Doom/Sludge albums that hav …

An effortless, authentic West Coast psychedelic fuzzy-rock sense which Cosmonaut inhabit totally across the ten tracks on this long-player, check out ‘Discophilia’ if you need further convincing. Anyway, I’m convinced and I’m buying.

All the tracks revel in their ability to deliver shock-and-awe music like nothing else. It’s music which simply cannot be pigeon-holed. Brilliant. – By Stuart Benjamin

This is pop as it should be (but rarely is), multi-layered music and obscure lyrics that draw from modern life or classical history/literature and driven heavily by piano/keyboards and lively percussion. – By Stuart Benjamin

Before you can say “Crikey Granny, you’ve really got to check out these two Japanalicious bands!”, the whole thing is over. More please – ‘cos it’s terrific. By Stuart Benjamin

There can be no doubt that this record, and the accompanying film, One More Time With Feeling, were very difficult things to make and yet it seems totally necessary that they exist. He could, very easily – and I wouldn’t have blamed him for a second – have decided not to do anything at all. But that might have been true paralysis of feeling perhaps, and counter to the great creative spark that burns so brightly in this artist who writes so engagingly about all of human experience. By Stuart Benjamin

Grown up electronic music for a thinking audience, at times drawing on influences such as Another Green World period Eno, or late Virgin period Tangerine Dream, and Madsen is a clever enough guy to tip his hat to his predecessors without being overpowered by them. By Stuart Benjamin

You Boys and Your Magick Juju is something of a positive evolution for my-Ra Superstar, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they give us something totally damn hot. Ones to watch. Although, to be fair, the Illuminati already are… By Stuart Benjamin

It’s hard to write a critique of what is – in a lot of ways – a deeply personal record. I listened to it all summer as an antidote to some of the more epic, bombastic, music that usually soundtracks the season and I don’t regret one second of what I heard. – By Stuart Benjamin

In summary, 2016 has been a really shitty year for all kinds of reasons, ‘One Hyde Park’ gives you twelve perfectly presented pop packages that will make you feel better. – By Stuart Benjamin

Death Club 7 certainly have an ear for pop – and regular readers of my reviews know I have an enduring love of pop, and an enduring disappointment of the homogenous mince grinder that modern pop has become. King certainly deserves a wider audience. It may be hard work trying to build it. But in a world of anodyne popsters, Death Club 7 bring dark relief. By Stuart Benjamin

There’s an intangible something that makes these songs, and this album, a cut above any other doom records you might have listened to lately. – By Stuart Benjamin

FGWMWS is the place to go if you like Napalm Death, The Locust, or indeed Melt Banana – with the experimental nous of a Mike Patton side-project thrown in for good measure. Exemplary. Astounding. It’s beyond brilliant – I can’t wait for a full album. – By Stuart Benjamin

Russia might not spring to mind when you think of alternative rock, but clearly if there are other bands as accomplished and mature as Dvanov, it’ll be a seam well worth mining. By Stuart Benjamin