- Another year, another little EP from Moonbase (formerly Moonbase Commander - did the makers of the 2002 videogame finally send a cease and desist?). These little tasting menus are pretty-much unique to Moonbase: he gathers up a bunch of MCs and divas and gussies up a small selection of vocal-bass bangers. More substantial than a producer slinging another single on Soundcloud but never committing to a full album, it fits with the image of someone who’s got a bit to say but doesn’t want to be shackled to the sound of the scene at the time.

- Melbourne’s Efficient Space are set to reissue the complete recordings of Karen Marks, nearly four decades since their original release in 1981. Having featured the song Cold Café on their compilation Sky Girl, it's great that Efficient Space has now made available the entirety of her discography.

- After wading through the murky, turbulent waters for a minute and once intial shock and awe of grindcore evaporates, you can feel a layer of residual grime on your skin as your ears ring with tinnitus. Once you first dip your toes in, the dams of blast beats, tortured vocals, bandsaw guitars and a genre wide Stone Cold double middle salute to conventional song structures will ensnare you. To be able to separate the well written from the simply extreme, however, can be hard. That’s where, for me at least, Full of Hell comes into their own.

- After finishing their tour for 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, The National were gearing up for a lengthy hiatus until singer Matt Berninger received an email from director Mike Mills. The proposition was to collaborate on two separate projects of the same title: a short film and a long album. The ensuing product from the band is their sixty-eight-plus-minute album, I Am Easy To Find. Perhaps owing to its filial connection to the film, this sixteen-track offering from The National is their most cinematic LP.

- There’s something very well-measured about Lucy Roleff. Listening to her music, everything appears to be in its place. I think it might stem from her work as a painter and illustrator. Her second full-length, Left Open In A Room seems almost like a picture exhibition: each finely plucked folk-tune with its elements arranged like a still life.

- The Liverpudlian art psych outfit Clinic were a sure-bet in the 2000s in terms of output, putting a new studio album out every two years like clockwork. For each release, their small but passionate audience was often rabidly enthusiastic about the mysterious music produced by these strange men, most noted for wearing surgical masks on stage. Then following their 2012 record Free Reign, came seven years of unexplained silence, finally broken by their new album Wheeltappers And Shunters.