A few years ago, I spent an afternoon in Camden interviewing a mildly psychedelic indie band called Simian whose first record had been pretty good. To be honest, it was a rather frustrating experience: the singer was quite interesting, if detached, but he didn't get a chance to say much because the drummer just wouldn't shut up. With hindsight, the weird power structure made sense. The singer hasn't done much since, while the drummer - James Ford - has become a dark force in British music, producing Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons and making hip little dance records as Simian Mobile Disco with his old bandmate Jas Shaw. "Attack Decay Sustain Release" is the first Simian Mobile Disco album, and it's also the first artist album - as far as I can remember - to emerge from London's New Rave scene that privileges dance over indie. It's a scene, I think, that a lot of people desperately want to fail; perceived as a dayglo joke hatched by a bunch of dissolute art students in Shoreditch. Nevertheless, I'd prefer New British bands to try and mix things up a little instead of merely trying to sound like The Libertines. The Klaxon's album, "Myths Of The Near Future", was a very good art-pop album, but one where the dance imperative was very much secondary to an indie aesthetic reminiscent of early Blur. No such issues with "Attack Decay Sustain Release". It's a brisk, confident collection that assiduously draws on the dance music that has crossed over to indie kids in the last decade. So "Tits & Acid" is a reminder that The Chemical Brothers' schtick was exciting once upon a time. Daft Punk and that whole French filtered house sound is clearly a big influence, and I can detect Orbital in the lush techno of "Wooden" and "Scott". Plus there is, fairly inevitably, the sound of early '00s Hoxton: taut electro complete with blank-eyed dominatrix vocals on the admittedly excellent "Hustler" (inescapable in certain worlds last year, and a paean to shoplifting records). Old rave appears in this invigorating mix, too, and mercifully seems to be used affection rather than kitsch value: some big breakdowns, not many airhorns. "It's The Beat", notably, is indebted to Technotronic, but the vocal by The Go! Team's Ninja is so full-bloodedly joyous, it's difficult to see Simian Mobile Disco as cool kids being ironic. What they aren't, I suppose, is tremendously original. Better, perhaps, to think of "Attack Decay Sustain Release" as the return of stadium dance: the sense that two men behind laptops can make a whole festival rock. If that happens, what happens afterwards could be really interesting. . . In the meantime, have a look at this if you have a moment - I know it's a questionnaire thing, but there is a chance of a prize.

I have a real backlog of stuff to write about at the moment, and I need to do some kind of a round-up in the next day or two, hopefully before Easter. There's great doom, psych and drone from Earth, Vibracathedral Orchestra and Dungen. There's a lovely pair of reissues from ambient's spiritual master, Terry Riley. I have a couple of fun techno - or am I meant to call them new rave? - albums by Simian Mobile Disco and their feted French remixers, Justice. Oh, and I'm meant to hear The White Stripes' "Icky Thump" any day now. Today, though, I'm going to do the sensible thing and write about what's playing right now - the new album by Richard Thompson. Thompson is a notable presence on the new album by Rufus Wainwright, and Wainwright described him brilliantly to another Uncut writer last week. "I’ve admired [him]for years," he said, "and also been frightened of [him], musically, because he’s so fierce and heterosexual. I was excited to bring some of his muscle into the arena." It proves to be a terrific pairing , as Thompson's guitar cuts through Wainwright's orchestral fantasias with a sort of clean precision, and with much more sensitivity than the quote suggests. He's hardly Tony Iommi, you know? Anyway, Thompson has been on a hot streak these past few years - productive, innovative, politically engaged - after some rather toothless and overproduced records in the '90s. After 2005's solo acoustic set, "Front Parlour Ballads", his new one is a meatier, full band affair. It's called "Sweet Warrior" and the narratives often deal with that old dilemma of folk song: how to poetically represent soldiers as noble and heroic, while at the same time acknowledging the grimness and futility of their business. Thompson handles the paradox with guts and rage, most explicitly on "Dad's Gonna Kill Me", a dense, furious story set in Iraq. It's one of the many highlights on a long record that's remarkable for its intensity, craft and passion. The melodic richness is striking: "Poppy Red" wouldn't have sounded out of place on his last album with Linda Thompson, "Shoot Out The Lights". But there's also a sense of a virtuoso still finding that new sounds can be teased out of his guitar. The office favourite, at the moment, is "Bad Monkey", which I'm fairly recklessly calling a cross between "Marquee Moon" and "Hoots Mon" by Lord Rockingham's XI. It begins as stomping big band rock'n'roll, but gradually Thompson starts firing darts into the dancehall, playing increasingly dissonant solos in the face of rampaging brass. By the end, he's making notes bend and wander in a way that I'm technically incapable of describing, but may have something to do with North African scales. It's ridiculous, which is not normally one of Thompson's attributes. It's also bloody brilliant.

A bit of a catch-up today. First, thanks for the nice response to the Bjork preview I posted on Friday. I've been comparing "Volta" today with the new Timbaland album, "Shock Value". I think Timbaland's work on "Volta" is the first time he's allowed his beats to be tampered with by another producer - in this case, Bjork. Listening to "Shock Value", it's a good job he did. A year or two ago, in one of his rare interviews, I seem to recall Timbaland expressing a certain amount of boredom with making music, and a vague lethargy seems to pervade a lot of "Shock Value". Unlike so many of his records from the late '90s and early '00s, it feels as if he's content with being extravagantly-paid and perilously well-connected rather than being a beat maven who makes spacey, authentically weird pop music. Amidst the cameos from Fall Out Boy, Elton John and 50 Cent, the sub-standard off-cuts from Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, and a pretty good turn from MIA, it's his old muse Missy Elliott who stands out, bringing a vivacity to "Bounce" that's mostly lacking elsewhere. At the height of Elliott's success, it was always assumed that the radicalism came from Timbaland. But I wonder whether he needs someone to spur him on to take those risks, especially these days? Maybe that's why his work with Missy and now Bjork (those extraordinary digital symphonies for Timberlake notwithstanding) are so exceptional? Apologies that you'll have to wait a while longer to hear this Bjork stuff. Unfortunately, I can't satisfy those of you who demanded, "LEAK IT OR I WET YOU!". Apart from the fact it's not terribly ethical, my copy is watermarked and can be directly traced back to me. While the prospect of being "wetted" by Bjork's people might sound quite enticing to some, I have other stuff to do, today at least. . . Like follow a couple of links people have sent me. The spiritual advisor of Millenial Reign sent me a link to their Myspace after seeing me mention Fucked Up here. Millenial Reign are a Fucked Up spin-off, and purport to be keeping the Clevo flame alive. Clevo seems to be '90s hardcore from Cleveland, as far as I can tell, though I must confess I've never heard any of the bands they reference. Still, this is top class grunting which reminds me a bit of the sludgy end of Black Flag, which is fine. Better still, Simon just alerted me to the fact that one of my favourite free folk types, Wooden Wand, has posted a new song on his Myspace. "Delia" is tremendous mystic songcraft, a step on from Wooden Wand's great Dylanish album from last year, that features a couple of Sonic Youth chipping in. I'll report more when the album - it's on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label that I banged on about here - turns up. Finally, it seems Wooden Wand - James Toth, that is - has a pretty pagan/churchy doom metal band, too. They're called Totem and they sound terrific right here. Enjoy.

Last night, I went to see the first 25 minutes of 28 Weeks Later – the follow-up to Danny Boyle’s British zombie film, 28 Days Later. It’s becoming common practice for film companies to screen what footage they can of a movie while the director still tinkers away on the special effects. It’s not an entirely satisfactory method of previewing a movie, and you can never quite shake the suspicion that you’re not seeing all the film because – whisper it – well, it’s crap. That said, 28 Weeks Later – which opens next month – looks promising, thanks in no small part to the work put in by director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. He directed a movie called Intacto that came out in the UK in 2003; a cracking and imaginative thriller about a group of people with the ability to transfer, and steal, luck. With 28 Weeks... he works to equal Boyle’s fantastic opening sequence to 28 Days... – remember Cillian Murphy walking through empty London streets? We get a shocking prequel/flashback showing what happened to a group of survivors during the initial outbreak of the Rage virus that turns its victims into zombies. Cutting to the present day, the repopulation of London is being overseen by an American-led NATO force and one of the survivors from the prequel, played by Robert Carlyle, is reunited with his daughter and son. Fresnadillo deploys a series of beautiful helicopter shots to illustrate the deserted London, looking down on the City, landmarks just drifting by underneath, empty, ghost-like. It’s a great start, anyway, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the film. Out next week is Boyle’s own new film – Sunshine, a sci-fi movie about a group of astronauts sent on a mission to reignite our dying sun. Boyle embraces the inevitable sci-fi comparisons by foregrounding references to the genre’s canon – Alien, 2001, even Silent Running. And it looks fantastic, full of seductive images and effects. We’ll publish our full review online next week. I also caught a screening of Blades Of Glory, the new comedy from the mighty Will Ferrell, here teamed up with Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder, and on release in the UK from next week. It’s a major improvement on Heder’s last film, the disastrous remake of School For Scoundrels with Billy Bob Thornton. Heder and Ferrell play two rival ice skaters, banned from singles tournaments for brawling on the winners' podium, who’re forced to team up to enter a competition. Ferrell’s a pompous, preening egomaniac! Heder’s a sensitive, caring type! They hate each other! Cue… conflict! Yes, it’s one joke movie hung around their wildly different personalities – but Ferrell and Heder have enough chemistry between them that the brisk 98-minute running time never flags. Delighted, also, to find back on youtube the brilliant Saturday Night Live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBqPHJhmFHo Pirates Of The Caribbean film for glimpses of Keith Richards as Cap’n Jack’s dad, Teague Sparrow. Sad to report, I can’t see the old bugger anywhere, but his presence in this third and final Pirates movie is pretty much all that’s going to get me in to see it after the disappointment of last year’s tiresome Dead Man’s Chest. Anyway, if you see Keith -- tell him we said hello. See you next week.