Late-night albums: records for after midnight

Paranoia in slow motion. The Bristol trio's masterpiece is dark, narcotic and impossibly heavy in the low end, the definitive after-midnight record.

Trip-hop's noir blueprint. Crackling samples, spy-film strings and Beth Gibbons's haunted voice make this sound like a 3am film you can't switch off.

Late-night London turned into sound, rain, distant voices, garage beats heard through a wall. There may be no album that captures the feeling of a city at night more completely.

The most influential mood of its decade. Spacious, intimate and strange, Blonde drifts like half-remembered thoughts, an album to get lost inside rather than sing along to.

Groove as meditation. Every song sits just behind the beat, unhurried and warm, neo-soul at its most sensual and its most patient.

A falsetto and a guitar in an empty cabin. Hushed and wintry, it's the sound of being awake and alone with your thoughts.

Built almost entirely from silence and space, whispered duets over the sparsest possible backing. Quiet music that fills a dark room completely.

Slowcore romance for the streaming era, one mood, beautifully sustained, made for headphones and long nights.