"Madlib channels a deep, intertwining lineage of Black music through 'Sound Ancestors' like folklore oration, storytelling with the sorcery of a beatmaker who knows how to make an instrumental really sing" - Guardian writes in a 5-star review of LA producer's newest album. NPR's Piotr Orlov writes Madlib is "communing with the ghosts set to vinyl discs and re-dreamed into life, making a future out of pieces of history", while the producer himself says there's higher powers here - "spirits come into play when you do a certain type of music; sometimes I'm not even doing the music, sometimes that's just sound ancestors".

Portrayal of Guilt are as much a screamo/hardcore band as a black/death metal band, and, on their newest release 'We Are Always Alone' - they've "pushed all aspects of their sound even further to the extreme - the melodic parts are catchier, the heavy parts are more callous - and yet, they blend everything together even more seamlessly" - Brooklyn Vegan argues. It's Stereogum's Album of the Week because "drumrolls explode like grenades. Guitars clang and screech and bay. Ominous clanks and whirrs and hums fill the space between songs. King screams like he’s got broken glass lodged in his throat".

The first widely critically acclaimed album of the new year is the second record by the English post-punk band Shame: "a massively ambitious and accomplished body of work driven by propulsive melodies and lyrics delivered with boundless passion" - the Quietus; "an exhilarating and inspiring listen" - Stereogum; "shadowboxing to Shame’s sonic assault is one of the more satisfying ways to cope with the ecstatic catastrophe of life" - CoS; "a surreal landscape of desperation, frustration, and consideration, and a confident second record from the South Londoners" - Clash Music.

Japanese psychedelic rock band Kikagaku Moyo is the first to release a live album in the Live at LEVITATION series, recorded at the world-renowned event in Texas. Here, the band embodies liberty and groove of folk-influenced progressive psychedelia, reaching well beyond their island. Rich and very easy to listen to...

“The heaviness comes from our ancestors. I am Black and Indigenous. There’s been so much that has happened to us, and I feel this. I don’t feel like I could not make heavy music” - guitarist and saxophonist Takiaya Reed says about her band Divide And Dissolve. She is of Māori descent, and Sylvie Nehill, the other half of the duo, Cherokee. Together they play really intense instrumental ambient metal which aims to "destroy white supremacy”. Their newest album 'Gas Lit' is published by Portishead's Geoff Barrow who said “It totally freaked me out with its beauty and extreme heaviness”. The Quietus speaks to the ladies, and reviews the album - "a powerful, impressively unconventional, predominantly instrumental suite, linking sludge and doom metal with a desolate reading of jazz".

"'BRASS' is the rare, mesmerizing album that can throw that kind of gut-punch, land it—and keep moving" - Pitchfork says in a review of the collaborate album by Moor Mother and billy woods (also a member of Armand Hammer). Pitch points out "together they treat history as a mass grave and a playground, heeding its horrors yet finding room for dark laughs and cautious hope". Tom Breihan said "it’s a work of tingling bad-feelings expressionism. To listen to 'BRASS' is to disappear into a certain headspace".

"Pure genre fare delivered by an artist with a refined, almost clinical approach to storytelling" - Pitchfork writes in review of Boldy James' fourth album of 2020. Produced by LA's Real Bad Man it is a "dope record about moving dope", CoS writes.

"The production is hazy and psychedelic and sounds sourced from crackling jazz records... Roc Marciano's verses are more subtle and tucked-away... masterful delivery and detailed lyricism" - Brooklyn Vegan likes New York rapper/producer's album a lot. Pitchfork says he's "putting his head down and continuing to churn out colorful wordplay over finely chopped loops".

Blood From The Soul is an industrial-metal/hardcore-punk supergroup featuring Napalm Death, Converge, Megadeth, Nasum members, and 'DSM-50' is their first album in 27 years. "The whole story behind this album seems almost too good to be true on paper", Brooklyn Vegan argues, adding "but once you click play you'll see that it's very true, and indeed very good". Listen to the full album on Bandcamp.

Young Welsh folk guitar virtuoso Gwenifer Raymond "tries to invent a new style: Welsh primitive infused with folk horror", Guardian writes about their latest choice for Folk Album of the Month. With a PhD in astrophysics and a day job programming video games on one side, Raymond says her folk music is influenced by the countryside, but had to record her new album 'Strange Lights over Garth Mountain' locked down in her basement during the pandemic.

South-African experimental pop artist Desire Marea performed a virtual concert with a host of first time collaborators. They performed gorgeous live renditions from Desire Marea's this year debut 'Desire', making them mesmerizing, jazzy, and atmospheric.

"Lyric Jones uses her art as a balm to soothe the sting of systemic oppression and finds confidence in her ability to rap anyone under the table" - Pitchfork wrote in the review of California rapper's breakthrough project 'Closer Than They Appear'. Here - "her sincerity and musical range are her greatest weapons".

New hip-hop project Small Bills is made of New York rapper Elucid (one half of another new hip-hop duo Armand Hammer), and Detroit multi-instrumentalist/producer The Lasso. Also on their debut album 'Don't Play it Straight' are Moor Mother, Fielded, Nosaj, .k, Koncept Jackson, and billy woods. Brooklyn Vegan compares the album to the awesome Armand Hammer debut 'Shrines', but adds "this album is also a beast of its own. It's overall more psychedelic and more chaotic. It has less warm, soulful production than 'Shrines' and more sputtering electronics".

"An absorbing modern shoegaze classic" - Louder writes in review of 'The Great Dismal', adding the new Nothing record is "an intense and unflinching album which embraces life’s chaotic absurdity and weighs heavily long after its final riffs fade to black". Dark singer/songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and crushingly heavy sludge metal band Thou "feed off each other in a way where they create something none of them could have done on their own" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about their collaborative new album 'May Our Chambers Be Full'.

Greek prog-sludge metal band Kevel picks up pieces of death metal, black metal, and post-metal to make the "ultimate, tumultuous majesty" on their album 'Mutatis Mutandis', Invisible Oranges writes. Dusted magazine goes deeper into the concept - "Kevel articulates an engaging, challenging riff, and then works it, allowing the musical statement to build its own significance". Listen to the powerful and raw album on Bandcamp.

Four young women living in Moscow released 'We Are', a "direct, even brutally blunt, yet invested with a considerable emotional hinterland", the Quietus says in a review of debut album by Lucidvox. These Muscovites "sound like news from nowhere" and although they sing in Russian, the Q hears "a fair warning of awful things to come. But how sweetly they coat the message".

The Quietus made a great collection of the latest French music, going from hip-hop and chansons, to French and North African folk, as well as power techno. There's also a band of children, Les Loustics, with members aged 7, 9, and 12. Listen to the October mix - here.

Ten years after he made it, Jay Electronica released his album 'Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)' last week (cause it leaked), which Pitchfork describes now as a "nearly an all-time classic LP, the kind of record that celebrates an art form while simultaneously pushing it forward". The P branded it "Best new music" and gave it grade 8,7.

"Shamir’s music makes the listener want to wake up. Listening to it is like being shaken awake, blinds thrown open... This music is wildly fun to listen to" - Consequence of Sound writes in a review of Shamir's self-titled album. NME says it's "hugely focused, each song short and sharp and coated in precise production". Under the Radar rightfully says ''Shamir' is a pop album... Succinct. Catchy. Honest".

"It crosses barriers between indie/art rock, post-hardcore/emo, abrasive noise-rap, R&B, dance beats, bedroom folk, and more" - Brooklyn Vegan says about Bartees Strange's 'Live Forever' - "one of those debut albums that truly brings something new to the musical table, and it also very much seems like it's only the beginning". It's Stereogum's Album of the week because "it’s rare to hear someone have so much presence right out of the gate, but Strange owns every decision that he makes... 'Live Forever' is a testament to the power of taking chances in order to make great art".

Louder calls 'When I Die...' is "the most important British metal record of 2020", while Angry Metal Guy says it is "a heart-wrenching album whose simplicity in D-beats, stunning tremolo, sustained overlays, desperate vocals, and just a dash of post and black is truly refreshing". Kerrang insists on lyrics being "at their most personal and most blunt here", while Stereogum simply calls the album "phenomenal".

The UK rock/metal publication Metal Hammer called Canadian rapper Backxwash one of “modern rap's more avant garde artists” after hearing her EP 'Stigmata' and her debut album 'God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It. MH's online output described her debut as "thrilling trap metal" and "fucking brilliant". Complex sees two reasons for it - her lyrics are cathartic, but also dark, aggressive, and loaded with goth and biblical imagery; her music is powerful and dark, with plenty of classic rock and metal samples.

"It’s an album of earth tones -- oranges, dark greens and browns -- that comes just in time for autumn" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about the new album by British comedian and musician Matt Berry. "A lonely, lovelorn quality... a heartfelt album" - the Times says. "Matt Berry is on wonderful form" - Clash Music reviews.

"'Untitled (Rise)' hardly yields highlights because the quality never wavers... It manages to be as lyrically unflinching as the music is compelling... You’d call it the album of the year if its predecessor wasn’t just as good" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis writes in a review of Sault's new album, anonymous neo-soul-funk band's second double album in just over 12 weeks, and their fourth in 18 months. The new album is "more obviously dancefloor-focused – its influences shifting from house to disco, from the perspiration-soaked post-punk funk to smooth 80s boogie, from sorrow and soothing to empowerment and resistance".

"Their hypnotic orchestral folk songs 'come howling after' an unfathomable god" - the Guardian writes about singer-sogwriter Anjimile's debut LP 'Giver Taker'. Paste Magazine says "Anjimile’s story is an uncommon one, but an uplifting one nonetheless: A trans person—in the midst of battling his own demons—excavates the most troubling parts of his past and ultimately seeks out catharsis". The Line of Best Fit says Anjimile "channels the hurt through extraordinary delicate songs where harmonies wrap around each other with a spectral quality, and the dripping rain of picked guitar strings decorate the walls".

Moroccan-French quartet Nadya! released their debut album - a "fusion of contemporary rock and funk and ancient traditional Moroccan musical forms including gnawa and chaabi", the Quietus says in their review of fresh sound on ancient music on 'Bab L' Bluz'. "And while influenced by music from across North Africa there is a fluid thread... to what they describe as the origins of the music, gnawa trance, and Malian blues".

Their first incarnation, in the 1990s, was a dance band Sub Sub made of ravers, then the Manchester trio reincarnated as a indie-rock band Doves in the 00s, now their third coming, after a decade long hiatus, is a pop-rock band, obviously happy to be making music. And critics love it. Stereogum chose 'The Universal Want' as their latest Album of the week because "their roughshod-then-glimmering anthems always sounded like something magical striving to break its tethers and take off". It's also Alexis Petridis' album of the week because "it's all heartfelt, well done". NME gave the album four stars (of five) saying they "bring thumping fairground anthems, and words of hope". Clash calls it "a long-awaited treat, it deserves a warm welcome".

"Regrowth’s sound is a grand, intense form of hardcore — huge, anthemic, emotionally wracked, full of big-gesture hooks. They scream hard, play big riffs, and put busy textures into their sound... The songs on 'Lungs' are long and ambitious and sometimes beautiful. They can be heavy, but they always have hooks" - Stereogum writes about the debut album by the Sardinian band.

Dutch-Iranian singer Sevdaliza's 'Shabrang is an album of sad music bringing joy through sheer beauty. The album is slow, but her voice gives it strength. It's pop music, but its sadness makes it alternative. Technically, there's not much music here, but its emotional maximalism gives it richness. A case of beautiful alter-pop music...

"'Mach's Hard Lemonade' favors brevity, and there's something very effective in our information-overload times about a 9-song, 22-minute album that never lets up and lends itself to replays" - Brooklyn Vegan stated about Mach-Hommy's new album. Both of the essential elements are upped on this one -"Mach-Hommy's production sounds bolder and richer than usual on this album, and his rapping is louder, clearer, and more attention-grabbing, but he hasn't abandoned the psychedelic, radically left-of-center sound that's made him such a cultishly loved artist in today's rap underground".