A 3CD set featuring 17 singers, 34 tracks and over three hours of uniquely rewarding music, my Album of the Year, Voices Fall From The Sky by the NYC-based musician, improviser, composer, educator and author William Parker, represented an inexhaustible treasure trove for lovers of song.

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s The Window offered yet more astonishing examples of her captivating art, whether breathing new life into Buddy Johnson’s ‘Ever Since the One I Love’s Been Gone’ or dusting down a hidden gem such as Cole Porter’s ‘Were Thine That Special Face’.

2018. Another year when strong presences who have shaped and defined the music for decades, and whom one had fondly imagined might be around for ever, are gone from our midst. Unique vocalists Aretha Franklin and Nancy Wilson have passed away. And trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Tomasz Stańko. And a true original of the piano, Cecil Taylor.

2018 has been a quietly encouraging year for fans of music that doesn’t kowtow to mainstream norms. There were fine debut albums from feminist art punks Dream Wife and dancehall queen Miss Red, as well as King of Cowards, a cracking sophomore set from Newcastle’s energetic stoner rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.

Matthew Bourne has been a significant experimental and collaborative presence on the scene since 2001, when he won the Perrier Jazz Award. This project with musician-producing duo Nightports (Adam Martin and Mark Slater) is the first of a series planned by Leaf Label, all following a simple rule that only sounds produced by the featured musician, in this case Bourne, can be included. To give himself the widest available palette, pianist Bourne assembled a selection of instruments from honkytonk to hoity-toity, which offer a fascinating range of textures.  

Kosua was released only last month, but its journey began two years ago when George Thompson, aka Black Merlin, released Hipnotik Tradisi, a beautiful and captivating document of his travels through Indonesia, seamlessly blending field recordings, found sounds and studio experimentalism.

It’s been an odd year for albums. The one I’ve listened to most is Stop Lying, a mini-album by Raf Rundel, an artist best known as one half of DJ-producer outfit 2 Bears. It’s a genially cynical album, laced with love, dipping into all manner of styles, from electro-pop to hip hop, but essentially pop.

The problem with being an increasingly senile but still rabidly enthusiastic music fan is that you find yourself declaring that an autumn release is Album of the Year only to realise – after glancing back through old Facebook posts – that you repeatedly made the same claim for another record back in the spring. So which one does the glass slipper actually fit? It’s tricky to decide because they couldn’t be more different.

I’ve noticed a stark shift in transition of the kind of music I want to spend my time listening to over 2018. I’ve slowed down. I’ve started listening to Radio 6. I’m a little bit in love with Mary Anne Hobbs. And I bought a record player.

If you believe the bulk of the “books of the year” features that drift like stray tinsel across the media at this time of year, Britain’s literary taste-makers only enjoy the flavours of the Anglosphere. With a handful of exceptions, the sort of cultural and political notables invited to select their favourite reading overwhelmingly endorse titles from the UK or US. For our book-tipping elite, it seems, a hard literary Brexit happened decades ago. Yet publishing history tells a different story.