“A complete fully translated and transcribed Obsidian Rock Audio Anthology chronicling the ancient spiritual technologies and exploits of prehistoric, post-revolutionary afro bionics and sacred texts from The Great Book On Arcanum by Supernal 5th Dimension Bound 3rd Dynasty young Kushites from Azania.”

Martin Ritt’s 1965 classy screen adaptation of John Le Carré’s bestseller The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an antidote to the full-colour hi-jinx of the Bond franchise that ruled over the spy movie genre in the 1960s.

With all eyes on her in 2018, Jorja Smith’s debut was surprisingly level-headed and mature, filled with the introspection and storytelling of someone twice her age. This new, slender eight-track project feels like a stepping stone in her career rather than a follow up to her acclaimed debut. That being said, it’s a fine collection of songs which finds Jorja in a more world-weary and sombre head space than ever before.

“The Changingman” came to sound a little rich in the years after it introduced Stanley Road, as Weller settled into a style which grew atrophied enough to define “Dadrock”.

Anxiety, injustice and desperate disorder are the themes of these six disparate noirs. In one, The Dark Past, Lee J. Cobb’s psychiatrist draws a crude diagram of the brain with a line dividing the conscious and unconscious, and these films visit the choppy depths under the surface calm of suburban Cold War America, its terrors in the night.

From her indie roots to the Grammy-winning angular art-rock of her self-titled 2014 album and the new wave glam of MASSEDUCTION, St Vincent has refused to allow her work to be pigeonholed.

Blues legends Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside have long provided inspiration for singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, otherwise known as The Black Keys. They provided source material for the opening tracks of their 2002 debut The Big Come Up, while the 2008 EP Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough wore its influence on its sleeve. Literally.

Shabaka Hutchings is a busy man. Not only does he head up the calypso-reggae-hip-hop-jazz mash-up that is Sons of Kemet, there’s also The Comet is Coming and Shabaka and the Ancestors, and plenty else that we don’t hear about, no doubt.

It seems fitting that Brighton, a city of youth culture and protest, is the starting point for a band like Squid. Their debut album Bright Green Field is a real statement: musically complex, energetic and entirely made up of new material.

Rory Graham was always stoically familiar with life’s knocks.