The pseudonymous Dean Blunt gets up to so much tomfoolery with identities and is-he-joking levels of irony, sometimes it’s easy to forget that he — solo and with the also not-quite-real Inga Copeland as Hype Williams — has built a really formidable catalogue over the years. And 2014’s Black Metal really is the keystone in that catalogue. In a sense it’s just DB murmuring obfuscatorily over a set of subdued grooves that sometimes sound like Durutti Column or The Velvet Underground, sometimes like lo-fi hip hop, and sometimes like post-punk dub. But that’s great! First up, it’s a masterclass in minimalism — every track has the guts to pick a deeply peculiar mood and not embellish it or divert from it. Second, DB is a world builder, and sketch-by-sketch you are drawn into his unique laws of physics and geometry. And third, slyly, sardonically, subtly he was breaking through barriers for Black British musicians, and redefining what “alternative” music means. That last part isn’t relevant to how the record itself sounds — it stands alone, but by doing so, it prepared the ground for other individualists to find their own spaces too.

– Joe Muggs