With the gallows electro of Xiu Xiu’s extensive canon echoed by numerous critical darlings of recent years, of course provocateur par excellence Jamie Stewart would pick now to release his most preposterously tremulous and knuckle-whiteningly transgressive work. ‘The Oldness’ has suffi cient cloud-clutching glaciality to make James Blake practically Skrillex by comparison and ‘Smear The Queen’ is both brutal and balletic, but it’s torrid sexual psychodrama ‘Black Drum Machine’ and the scintillatingly cacophonous and controversy-baiting ‘I Luv Abortion’ that truly startle. Frankly, we absolutely must fling this filth at our pop kids.

Iain Moffat