The results are a timeless, genre-smashing work with a psychedelic soul.

Lead track The Love Within opens the record and remains a bizarre mess; Kele Okereke's distinct vocal parting for a mostly one-note synth line that causes a genuine flinch. All is perhaps not lost: Fortress is a somewhat pretty, minimal electro ballad while Different Drugs speaks for the entire record; flirting with a series of ideas before simply fading out of sight and mind. We expected so much more.

Blackstar is an absorbing (if consciously arty and perhaps a shade self-indulgent) listen.

Suicide Songs sees the trio perfect what they started to build on their debut.

Overt beats don’t appear until the sixth stanza, bass conspicuous by its absence pretty much throughout, yet whilst the themes can occasionally run away with themselves through lack of definite direction or concrete dénouement, 3.5 Degrees remains an accomplished debut.

Apart from a few tonal blips (Taken By The Tide may well be a smuggled-in Band of Horses track, and 1985’s piano ballad proves an idling mid-point), Curve... is a remarkably slick experience.

Rest assured, although still more cerebral pleasure than triumphalist pop breakthrough, this uniquely accessible record is a subtle delight.

Mystical and psychedelic, with a real knack for texture and detail in the midst of a big, blown-out prog adventure, this is an album best served whole.

Only occasionally does the grandeur threaten to run away from them, as on the over-blustery Pale Kings; otherwise, their form is more or less impeccable, with the swooning vocal melodies of Backchannels and the off-kilter creep of Filaments among its standout elements.

With fearless approach and razor sharp delivery, Adore Life is so bruisingly intimate that it feels like a surgical hand taking grasp of your gut. When Savages speak, you listen.

Just when it all seems familiar, you're struck by a specific detail and realise you’ve started to smile.

Not to Disappear is shattering throughout: a brooding sound board, crackling guitars, unsettling beats and Tonra buried in there somewhere, documenting unspeakable hurt, graphic and unfiltered.

At times this feels like a celebration of what can be achieved with three chords and an earnest tale, intelligently told.

The Andalucian trio's fourth album was recorded live to eight track tape and you can tell: the arrangements are raw, the production barely there, the sound an abrasive, all-consuming clatter. It's an elementary mix but there's a blackened spirituality within its shadows.