We’ll start with 25 to 11. Except that they’re not ranked in any order, because that would be next to impossible.

Update Because I missed out one record by mistake, this year’s list now goes up to 26. You will have to guess which one it was yourselves.

An Endless Sporadic – Magic Machine

Like the late, great Frank Zappa at his most inventive this instrumental album mixes disparate genres with gleeful abandon. You can sense the musicians enjoying themselves whilst making this record. The result resembles a soundtrack for an imaginary space opera adventure, and the ever-changing music certainly takes you on an exhilarating journey through many musical moods and styles.

David Bowie – Blackstar

There is pretty much nothing I can say about this enigmatic and sometimes bonkers record that hasn’t already been said by plenty of others. Let’s just say that David Bowie was part of something that held the fabric of the universe together, and his passing is the reason 2016 has gone increasingly pear-shaped.

Cairo – Say

The new project by former Touchstone mainman Rob Cottingham featuring the now-departed vocalist Rachel Hill combines melodic rock and metal with touches of electronica. While there are obvious parallels with Touchstone, the feel is closer to a heavier version of Rob Cottingham’s 2014 solo project “Captain Blue”.

Duski – s/t

Aiden Thorne’s Cardiff based quintet blend contemporary jazz with elements of progressive rock and ambient soundscapes, sometimes very mellow, sometimes times rocking out. Most of the music is still recognisably jazz, especially when the saxophone is dominant, but there’s also much in the melodies and textures for a more adventurous rock fan to appreciate.

Dave Foster – Dreamless

The second solo album by the guitarist of Mr So and So, Panic Room and The Steve Rothery band is a more song-focussed affair than his first, with Dinet Poorman on vocals for most of the album. With the same rhythm section it has a similar vibe to The Steve Rothery Band with Rothery’s guitar swapped for female vocals. A couple of songs also feature his Panic Room colleague Anne-Marie Helder.

Ghost Community – Cycle of Life

The début album by the supergroup made up from past and present members of The Reasoning, Also Eden and Crimson Sky is an ambitious blend of prog-metal and melodic rock. There are definite echoes of The Reasoning in the melodies and song construction, though it has an overall coherence the last couple of Reasoning albums lacked.

Haken – Affinity

A record that’s clearly identifiable as progressive rock, but reinvented for the twenty-first century rather than a reverential pastiche of the music from a generation ago. It’s the sort of thing that should appeal as much to those bought up on Muse or Elbow as to old-school fans of Pink Floyd or King Crimson. This is state of the art modern progressive rock at its best.

Josh and Co – Transylvania Part 1: The Count Commands It

Essentially a solo album by Bryan Josh of Mostly Autumn with guest appearances from Olivia Sparnenn and Anna Phoebe amongst others,it’s a very different record from the earlier “Through These Eyes”. It’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek saga about vampires, complete with an end-of-level monster, set to music with more than a touch of Scandinavian folk-metal about it.

Knifeworld – Bottled Out Of Eden

Kavus Torabi’s completely bonkers eight-piece psychedelic rockers take things to the next level with their third full-length album. This time they bring the horn section centre-stage and make them the focus of the record, with nstrumental passages that recall Frank Zappa’s early 70s big band work. There is nobody else quite like Knifeworld.

Maschine – Naturalis

The second album from the project led by guitar virtuoso Luke Machin is a step up from their first. One part progressive rock, one part jazz and one part metal, there’s a far greater maturity of composition on display here; the undoubted technical skills of the musicians serve the songs rather than the other way, with great use of dynamics and atmospherics.

Metallica – Hardwired to Self-Destruct

The thrash-metal veterans bounce back with their strongest record for many years, long after many had written them off as has-beens living off past glories. It’s a return to the killer riffs approach of their early years, with a production than mercifully isn’t compressed into oblivion this time around. It could have done with a little editing, but they haven’t sounded this good since The Black Album.

New Model Army – Winter

The veteran folk-punks still have something to say, burning with the energy of punk and the musical substance of hard rock. “Winter” is a dark, angry record that sums up the state of the world in 2016. “Burn the castle down”, sings Justin Sullivan, railing at the elites who do not care about the ordinary people except as a resource to exploit.

Paradigm Shift – Becoming Aware

The british four-piece create a blend of progressive metal and jazz-fusion driven by propulsive but melodic basslines and enveloping piano textures that never descends into self-indulgent noodling. The result is a hugely melodic record that represents a modern and forward-looking approach to progressive rock rather than a homage to decades past.

Radiohead – A Moon-Shaped Pool

Despite swapping guitars for string arrangements much of the time, this is Radiohead’s most accessible album for a while, with a greater emphasis on songs and tunes than on avante-garde experimentalism, and some of the cinematic string arrangements are gorgeous. It almost makes you wonder if they’ve been listening to The Pineapple Thief or Halo Blind.

Suede – Night Thoughts

A dark concept album about death nnd water that bears more than a passing resemblance both in theme and in mood to Marillion’s “Brave” as well as their own career-defining “Dog Man Star”. Even though it’s not quite in the same league as either of those records it’s still the best things they’ve done for years.

Voodoo Vegas – Freak Show Candy Floss

An album of no-nonsense twin-guitar hard rock that does what it says on the tin. When working within a fairly traditional form, you have to be very good at what you do to avoid sounding like a derivative pastiche of other, better bands that came before. Voodoo Vegas pass that test with ease. To put it simply, they rock.

His unwavering humanitarianism and willingness to speak truth to power can be genuinely prophetic, especially when he speaks about subjects such as the current refugee crisis. Rather less attractive is his anti-science and anti-technology Luddism, which can be as deeply reactionary as his humanitarianism is progressive.

His recent joyless piece on Bowie was one of the worst things I’ve read on the subject; Giles Fraser came over as claiming Bowie was bad because he sang about space, and that was a sinful distraction from more important things. Keep your head down and focus on your chores, rather than look up to the sky or dare to dream. He compounded that by singing the praises of Paul Weller and Billy Bragg, who set gritty social realist lyrics to what to my ears was always drab and colourless music. I have never had much time for puritanism, in whatever form it manifests.

His piece published on Holocaust Memorial Day about the last letter from convicted war criminal Adolf Eichmann is on far more solid ground.

“There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders,” Eichmann’s letter pleaded. “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”

In other words: not my fault, I was only obeying orders. His self-delusion was unassailable, even at the end. Eichmann’s request was denied and two days later he was hanged in Ramla prison.

In her famous account of the trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described Eichmann as a small-minded functionary, more concerned with the managerial hows of his job than the moral or existential whys. According to Arendt, Eichmann wasn’t a man for asking difficult questions, he just got on with the job of managing timetables and calculating travel costs – thus her famous phrase “the banality of evil“

I can’t help but think yet again of Iain Duncan-Smith’s regime at The Department of Work and Pensions. No, his treatment of the disabled, callous and inhumane as it is, cannot be compared in scale to the industrialised mass murder of eleven million people. But when it comes to the banality of evil, and the indifference to suffering caused as a direct result of his actions because it all happens out of sight, the parallels are obvious.

You know you have a seriously doughnut-shaped record collection when one of the giants of 20th and 21st century music passes on and you realised don’t own a single one of their records. But his biggest hits were still stuck in my head this morning, “Life on Mars”, “Space Oddity”, “Starman”, “Heroes”. His standards are part of the air we breathe. And his artistic legacy is woven into the DNA of just about every genre of popular music that came after him. To quote Matt Stevens, he’s in the same league as Miles Davis and The Beatles.

Like Lemmy, David Bowie was a one-off who did it his way without following trends. One thing that made him unique was they way he stood outside and above narrow musical tribes; he simultaneously belonged to nobody and to everybody. He combined both ground-breaking style and genuine musical substance in a way unmatched by anyone else. He left whole genres in his wake; artists who based their entire sound around just one period in his ever-changing output after Bowie himself had moved on to something else. He also had great taste in musicians to act as a foil. Just look at the guitarists he worked with over the years; Mick Ronson, Robert Fripp, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nile Rogers, Earl Slick.

Even though I’ve never been a hardcore fan, it’s difficult to imagine popular music without him. So enough of those who would police other people’s grief, whether it’s a snobbish disdain or some elitist claim of exclusive ownership as a “true fan”. It’s one of those times when if you have nothing positive to say, it’s better saying nothing. Music clearly never touched some people’s souls, even if when some of them started their writing careers supposedly as a music critics. Can’t they even sit on their self-righteous thinkpieces for a couple of days?

David Bowie was one of the true greats, whose work had a huge impact on music and on wider culture. Let us celebrate and remember that.