Uncut

Red-eyed ambient metal droning

More party-rocking heartbreak from the Shangri-Las of retro-punk

So gargantuan a behemoth is this whole franchise that even we head-shaking non-believers can recognise the commercial import of these releases. The 3D "lenticular" images on the sleeves are doing my eyes in, but I'll retain the composure to report that John Williams' bombastic scores for the three original Star Wars films are here repackaged (either as box set or three doubles) and digitally remastered. You get archival bonus tracks, posters, screensavers and various Internet links.

Mugison's follow-up to last year's acclaimed Lonely Mountain debut is the score to a Fridrik Thor Fridriksson film, recorded in a church and in his girlfriend's mum's front room in remote Western Iceland. Fridriksson (whose last, Falcons, boasted a song by Keith Carradine) has also used Sigur Rós and Psychic TV in the past (on Angels Of The Universe), so this isn't (quite) as wilfully obscure as you might assume. It's very rough, broken and sketchy, with minimalist acoustic guitars probing spectres of melodies till they crystallise (or don't).

Forty-six of the songs used, over the last couple of years, to sell us shit. A work of undeniable postmodern genius in itself, then. But does it function? In the case of KFC's selections, yes. So soulfully orgasmic are Laura Greene's "Moonlight, Music And You", The Chi-Lites' "What Do I Wish For?" and Jackie Wilson's "Who Who Song" that you'd gladly eat the food to be near them.

Californian noise fiends deliver woofer-wrecking UK debut

Fourth solo disc in new career that's almost as long as his old one

Captain Beefheart sideman and off-her-Trolley vocalist lay their debut album on the table

A solo vehicle for 16 Horsepower leader David Eugene Edwards, Woven Hand sacrifices his other outfit's thunderous bombast but retains the glowering intensity. This follow-up to 2002's self-titled debut is a masterstroke of creeping gothic: spectral percussion, skeletal guitar and Edwards' ominous voice, lent added weight by the religious significance of the lyrics (especially the startling "To Make A Ring"). Of his contemporaries, only Nick Cave and Willard Grant Conspiracy's Robert Fisher sound as eerily portentous.

Two years on from first album Delicate Shades Of Grey, Anglo-American duo Cicero Buck return with a more confident set of folk-pop songs. Songwriter/vocalist Kris Wilkinson is particularly effervescent on the tough "Gonna Fly" and the rippling Nashville skiffle of "Little Songbird", while Muscle Shoals veteran Jack Peck adds brass to the dusty twang of "Black Road".