For a singer so often sampled in electronic dance music, it’s a high-end twist to replace synth, claps and bass drum with the woodwinds, strings and brass of an orchestra.

Hot on the heels of her newest release, “Higher Than Heaven”, Ellie Golding performed a one night only gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Derrick Skye, and the London Voices Choir.

After a long period of relative inactivity, the last five years has had A Certain Ratio getting the bit between their teeth, trying out new sounds and releasing new tunes at a rate not seen since the early 1980s. It All Comes Down to This is their third album since 2020, as well as the four stand-alone EPs.

For the past almost two years, Maggie Rogers has taken an unexpectedly special place in my heart and musical tastes. Upon reviewing her previous album, Surrender, because of the difference in style and sound to my usual tastes I was caught completely off guard.

Combined with just as unforeseen changes in my personal life, Surrender was an unfounded delight that chimed completely at that point in time. Now it’s not just an album, but a time capsule of those summer months of 2022.

Tallinn is a very civilised city. It’s enough to provoke intense jealousy on arrival from the land of potholes, two year waiting lists and seven pound pints to find that not only do they have pretty much all the infrastructure of their Nordic neighbours, but you can get a beer for €5 to boot.

Lizz Wright has established herself, over a number of steadfastly excellent albums, as one of the very best vocalists of her generation. Not so long after a gripping live album recorded in Berlin Holding Space (2022), her latest offering shines with all the brilliance and originality she brings to her own cross-genre mix of jazz, soul, gospel, country and folk.

“Betsy,” a voice shouts from the audience as the encore begins. The request for “Betsy on the Roof,” from Julia Holter’s 2015 Have You in my Wilderness album, is met – it was already in the set list – but only after “Les Jeux to You” is performed. That originally appeared on 2018’s Aviary.

Gal Beckerman’s 2023 book The Quiet Before makes a plea that if ideas, revolutionary or otherwise, are to grow, there needs to be a retreat from “our current cacophony”. And if there is one artist who is truly living out that principle in his musical life, it is Shabaka. As he said to the audience at this year’s Winter Jazzfest in NYC: “Change is never easy.”

At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.

While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most: particularly rebuilding the rolling breakbeats and deep bass of jungle as a kind of British urban folk music, collaborating with older generations (original junglists DJ Die and Randall of Watch The Ride), and demonstrating how her natural Caribbean-influenced Yorkshire vocal articulation fits perfectly into that. 

A Fabiana Palladino album has felt like a possibility since the early 2010s. Back then she was a session musician touring with the likes of SBTRKT, Jessie Ware and Sampha. In 2017 she was approached by the elusive producer Jai Paul to join his new label, Paul Institute. She released three excellent singles with the label over the next four years, making a name for herself as an unhurried perfectionist with a knack for warped 1980s grooves.

Half-way through this three-CD set, the energy level suddenly shifts upwards. It’s just one track of the 67 collected, but in this context this basic, blunt recording stands on its own. Issued in October 1974, Dr. Feelgood’s debut single “Roxette” was an early sign that British music could change, needed to change.