Here is a playlist of the essential 100 (or so) tunes to come out of Scotland.

This best of Scottish soundtrack for 2018 is an eclectic  and subjective journey into hip hop, alternative, dance, house, electronica, indie, punk, post-grunge, post-rock, nu and old folk and often a combination of some or all. 

It's a mix of the known, little known and the unknown, immediate pop anthems and challenging left-field projects.

The final list painstakingly compiled over the year was whittled down from a not very shortlist of 350.

Part 4- 25-1

=25 North Atlantic Oscillation - Downriver

Sam Healy's previous incarnation Sand has always been a favourite. This year the underrated Edinburgh artist has created a fresh slice of classy hypnotic weirdness under another guise mixing pop, rock, folk and electronica.

=25 OK Button – The Message

Scottish three-piece produce a smooth but barbed debut dreampop single with the unforgettable R Rated mantra, "Motherf****** won't bring me down".

24 The Reverse Engineer - Drome

Dave House is an imaginative Edinburgh-based experimental sound artist who specialises in incorporating found sounds and field recordings into his aural sculptures. This 7m jewel is a hypnotic collision of abstract and form with dancefloor textures.

23 Sweaty Palms - Captain Of The Rugby Team

An explosive R-rated garage rock anthem rant from the four-piece Glasgow combo's debut LP about everyday misogyny that carries a contagious hook that will take over your brain. "You are a sorry …."

22 Young Fathers - Holy Ghost

The video to this mesmerising cut from their third album was made by Oscar Hudson who won 'best director' at the UK Music Video Awards last year, and delivered footage which rapper/producer Graham ‘G’ Hastings dubbed 'Shot in Infra-Dead'.

21 Pelts - Another Place

Graham McCarey and Natasha Radmehr at their best in this boy/girl vocal joust over a dark and gorgeous indie pop paen of the type Snow Patrol used to make. Glasgow six-piece as Deacon Blue of iffy folk, perhaps.

20 Aidan Moffat & RM Hubbert ft Siobhan Wilson - Cockcrow

A Scottish Fairytale of New York for 2018 with national treasure Moffat playing The Pogues' Shane MacGowan and Wilson playing Kirsty MacColl, in a soaring emotional wringer of a song about an ageing relationship.

19 Buffet Lunch - Do You Like My Trousers?

Delightfully and hilariously wonky Pavement vs Half Man Half Biscuit anthem about purchasing clothing by the four-piece Edinburgh post punk combo. "I bought them at the shop."

18 Stone Bench and BorodaBeat - My Way

A fiendishly catchy fusion of old and new skool, marrying rock guitar, hip hop beats, tight rhymes, a punch-the-air punchline hook and an irresistible scratch finale from Edinburgh's Elmi Tha Mos'Hi, Konda & Blasfima Sinna. As far from Frank Sinatra as you can get.

17 Lists - Haven Lea

Rapturous strings swell behind a golden falsetto in this folk-infused beauty from the mysterious Arran/Edinburgh singer-songwriter who is a previous favourite on this annual playlist. It had 2m plays on Spotify as of October.

16 Crystal - Heaven

The Glasgow-based four-piece came to prominence when they won a contest to support pop star Paolo Nutini at one of his Edinburgh Hogmanay shows in 2016. Two years later and they have produced a classic catchy grunge epic about someone battling the inner turmoil of questioning their belief system.

15 SOPHIE - Is It Cold In The Water?

The Scots bred producer comes over like a warped Annie Lennox with an equally warped effect-laden synth on one of the many highlights on her scrape-the-stars debut album.

14 Colin Macleod - Dream

Classy cinematic beauty with flicks of Springsteen & Blue Nile from the singer-songwriter who overcame a childhood aversion to sheep to take up farming on Lewis.

13 Nieves - Exist and Expire

The title track from the Glasgow alt-rock combo is a delightfully overblown but successful attempt at an old skool U2-style epic.

12 Kathryn Joseph - There Is No God But You

The Inverness-born singer-songwriter continues to touch the stars with this disturbed, devastating and emotional song featuring a whirlwind piano apparently written in response to a serious illness in her family.

11 Anna Meredith and Scottish Ensemble - Stoop (Spring V)

The most compelling cut from the London-born and Edinburgh-bred composer's twists on Vivaldi's Four Seasons marries discordant electronics with ferocious strings. “I’ve treated it as if Vivaldi and I were doing a collaboration,” she says.

10 Young Fathers - Turn

“Don’t you turn my brown eyes blue,” goes the Kayus Bankole falsetto, between warp-speed Alloysious Massaquoi and Graham 'G' Hastings rhymes. “I’m not like you, I’m nothing like you.” And so they prove it on their third exhilirating album.

9 Salt House - Charmer

The folk trio of multi-instrumentalist Ewan MacPherson, violist/fiddler Lauren MacColl and singer-songwriter Jenny Sturgeon recorded this and their latest album in the restored Telford Church on the Berneray, an island and community in the Sound of Harris. Robert Burns' Now Westlin’ Winds, is the inspiration for this spine-chilling nature love song. I swear you can sense the tranquility and bristling fresh wind of the island beach on this.

8 Walt Disco - Drowning In Your Bed

This most glamorous of Glasgow bands, barely out of their teens (if at all) are a euphoric mix of Duran Duran flamboyance, Suede dynamics and The Smiths swagger. This unpredictable block rockin riff barage anthem throws in an urgent police siren and brings the long-neglected saxophone back.

7 SOPHIE - Infatuation

The inspired experimental-pop producer summons up the ghosts of Prince in this less-is-more atypical cut from the debut album usurped by madly warped falsetto and a perverted dreampop sensibility.

6 Zoe Bestel - Eye For An Eye

The soothing, soaring voice of the 20-year-old songstress from Dumfries and Galloway hides the fact this is a melodic teardop about the 2015 air strikes in Syria. “Will we ever change? Or is this what we’ve become."

5 The Proclaimers - Angry Cyclist

Thirty years after 500 Miles the indefatigable Leith boys have created a spine-tinglingly relevant and passionate anti-bigotry anthem not just with cuttingly observed words, but lush, driven instrumentation and that crucial breast-beating Reid twins singalongability that makes this their Letter From America for 2018. "Old prejudice hasn't gone, new energy drives it on."

4 Lazy Money - Bore

This starts like Love-era Roddy Frame stuck in a room with Portishead, but this 4.39m swooning and arresting break-up ode, throws whiffs of trip hop, rap, R&B, a haunting violin and just when everything feels safe, a shattering Rated R bilious rant. It's the standout track from the debut EP from Toby Flynn, 17, Marc Britovsek, 20 and Kirsty Brown, 18, from Nairn.

"Bore is a personal favourite, it was written around a voice memo Kirsty sent me," said Flynn. "Kirsty and I are not in a relationship, but the song is very much written to appear like we are - we chose to base it off of previous relationships we have been in."

3 Sega Bodega & Jasper Jarvis - daddy

This could easily do for the Glasgow-raise producer what Come To Daddy did for Aphex Twin, both in sound and vision. This mutates dancefloor beats and time signatures with what sounds like Polynesian chants, jagged Death Grips vs industrial effects and explosions for his harshest, hardest yet most exhilirating three-and-a-bit minutes yet.

2 Ela Orleans - The Cave

The Glasgow-based Pole has garnered a reputation for the avant garde, and this experimental approach has turned a little known Gaelic song into a spellbindingly mournful piece from her Displaced and Adjusted audio-visual composition, marrying addictive, ghostly electronic loops with the beautiful voice of Ainsley Hamill and the sensitively delivered percussion patterns of Alex Neilson. Call it Gaelictronica, if you like.

"The lyrics are Gaelic traditional folk songs or poems," said Orleans. "I appropriated them and added music taking them sometimes quite far from the original. That's the subject of my PhD as well.

"We are planning to release it at some point. "There is a film I made for it as well, so we hope once we find a good home for the record we can tour it quite easily."

1 Blanck Mass - Odd Scene

It will not be to all tastes, but this is the most extreme, out-there, exhilirating and inventive track I have heard for some time, let alone this year. This five-minute sonic masterclass from the former F*ck Button, Edinburgh's Ben Power, mashes electro drone with hardcore punk and black metal before exploding in glorious gothic splendour. And when you think it is all done, a thrashing finale. It makes Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails seem like Justin Bieber.

It is taken from an experimental EP that Power, known for his strictly electronic arias, says may well be a one-off and won't be featured in any forthcoming releases.

"I grew up in punk and hardcore bands so this kind of thing comes as second nature," he said. "I like to constantly keep things moving sonically so this isn’t necessarily a shape of things to come, but more the shape of things right now."

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018 Part 1 (100-76)​

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018 Part 2 (75-51)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018 Part 3 (50-26)

This is the Spotify playlist.

This is the YouTube playlist.