Album

With a new LP imminent, the Minnesota-based folk-country boy reissues albums two and three

The American underground is currently full of unashamedly cosmic bands, like Sunburned Hand Of The Man and Tower Recordings, who mix folk and psychedelia with an unusually fluent understanding of improvised music. Unfortunately, most of their records are difficult to track down, as they're only released in tiny, elaborately packaged quantities. Thanks to Kranky, then, for reissuing Unknown Spin, previously a limited run of 300 CD-Rs. Charalambides are a Texan trio specialising in a kind of desert drone constructed from guitar, wordless female harmonies and spectral pedal-steel.

Eclectic Prefuse 73 man turns his hand to Latin ballads

Last year, in a fatally altruistic gesture, Japanese technocrat Cornelius invited visitors to his website to remix tracks from his excellent 2002 album, Point. PM (it stands for Point Mixes) purportedly compiles the best 12 from around 400 of those submitted, with largely dispiriting results. If Cornelius set out to showcase how the meticulous pastoral textures of Point could be desecrated, then PM is a triumph of sorts: only Masakatsu Inoue's "Pointer Remix", a beautiful hybrid of musique concrète and prickly ambience, really does the source material justice.

Magnificent six-CD compilation of gospel roots

Look closely at the cover of Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, and you'll see a copy of Robert Johnson's King Of The Delta Blues Singers. Released in 1961 but recorded a quarter of a century earlier, the Stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin all plundered it for source material, making it arguably the single most influential album on '60s rock. All 29 sides recorded by Johnson in his short lifetime are included here, and if you don't already own them, now's your chance. That they come with a second disc rounding up 25 of Johnson's contemporaries from Bessie Smith to Son House is a bonus.

Ex-Golden Rough mainman Walker is backed by a full band of buddies on his second solo album, Ashes & Wine, and sounds like someone snug in his own skin. Here he draws on his carpetbag of honky-tonk tricks ("Helpless Guy"), Stonesy strut ("Dissatisfaction"; "Letdown") and the rough-diamond rattle of early Son Volt ("Please Save Your Tears"). Walker's voice is equal parts whiskey and gravel—classic rawk and bottom-of-the-glass country-blues -somewhere between Jagger and Steve Earle. Expressive, literate and ballsy stuff.

Born out of Williamsburg's vibrant underground scene in 2000—and sounding not unlike the soundtrack to a painfully hip party there, Vic Thrill's debut is a fizzing cocktail of world music polyrhythms, camp theatrics and techno wizardry. The influence of Ziggy is evident throughout, but there are also strains of the kitsch disco of Pizzicato 5, the murky pop of The Frogs and snatches of the Happy Mondays and Underworld. Incessant and uptempo for much of the time, it is unmistakably danceable. As if entirely worn out, the record closes with the Grandaddy-esque "Zero Odds".

Beautifully sung, but too poppy for hardcore folkies

Twenty-eight tracks from influential '60s Chicago soul group