From where we are right now, AKKU Quintet have delivered another propitious release for 2023. And this is a hairsplitting testament that our fellow comrades have let loose this year.

Throughout the album, Niño combines his musical ideas and those of his other participants into a seamless whole, as if the music here was created through one, collective mind.

In Blood is a remarkable achievement for a band this long in the tooth, you never want to skip a track and it always seems to be over too soon.

After over 20 years of existence, it’s so good to hear Explosions In The Sky still creating glorious and exciting music and End is one of their finest albums to date.

With stronger vibrations, War of Being is a powder keg, waiting to explode.

The band definitely is dialled in to the darker side of psych, but offer it up with sunny melodies, exactly the sort of music I latch onto.

Torpor has taken its mix of doom, sludge and drone to a new level as it produces one of the top albums in the UK underground this year.

It is quite an intoxicating combination that works both with a single listener in his enclosed environment or on a club dance floor with the not-so-standard beats leading the way.

Low Desert Surf Club will be without exaggeration new (long lasting) dope for the fans of stoner rock/metal.

Gold came up with a set of songs that are fully formed, based on truly strong songwriting and musical presentation, coming up with one of the better modern psych-pop albums of the year.

The kind of record that falls naturally to close reading among its fans and irritated shrugs among naysayers.

It’s another fine collection of songs to add to her ever-increasing canon.

As the nights draw in, and the temperatures drop, these songs will warm your heart. Highly recommended.

Not your typical blast of feral screeches into the uncaring night, a record that injects a spark of life – even joy – into a field that so often is too intransigent.

More than anything, Variations will give fans and newcomers, discovering Keith’s Post-ELP years, and explore how much he was loved and completely ahead of his time.