Evan Parker ought to be knighted for re-mastering and reissuing this, one of the great British orchestral jazz records. Utilising stalwart British jazzers alongside wildcard improvisers like saxophonist Parker, guitarist Derek Bailey and percussionist Tony Oxley, Wheeler brilliantly fuses gorgeously limpid melodies ("Ballad Two") with free-form interludes. Great cliffs of brass echo Gil Evans, but note the subtle nod to electric Miles (those two electric pianos) and the inspired use of Norma Winstone's voice as an instrument. The highlight is the 15-minute "The Good Doctor", its wan lyricism simultaneously underlined and derailed by the explosive and still shocking climactic freak-out from Parker, Bailey and Oxley. Forget Matthew Herbert's big band; this still sounds like the future.

In the autumn of 1969, two unknown English singer-songwriters released debut albums a month apart. One was by Nick Drake. The other was by Keith Christmas. Both were greeted with almost total indifference, although Christmas was considered the more likely to succeed and won tour support slots with The Who and King Crimson. Timeless & Strange compiles material from his first three albums and its release is welcome, for the original records now trade at around 50 quid apiece. With the benefit of hindsight, he has more in common with the less enduring Al Stewart than with Drake. He'd also clearly been listening to Tim Buckley in his baroque phase. His best songs possess an undeniable period charm, but that's not the same as being timeless.

Jimmy Webb nuts will know all about 5th Dimension: others should. In the late '60s and early '70s they enjoyed enormous hits with Webb's "Up, Up And Away" and Laura Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues", peaking with "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" from Hair. If roots R&B fans deemed them too sweetly, sunnily harmonious to be 'soulful', they sobbed all the way to the bank. The young Webb gave them curiously brave lyrics, as on "Paper Cup"; Ashford/Simpson and Bacharach/David happily provided further nuggets like "California Soul" and "Last Night". Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr married, broke away as a duo in '72, and history has sneered at their 'sell-out' vanilla cuteness ever since. But didn't folk similarly scoff at The Carpenters? Gorgeous.

They were indeed both "Chi" (from Chicago) and "Lite", if by that word we mean lushly uptown '70s soul with a sweet tooth. Eugene Record was a terrifically gifted writer/producer/falsetto lead singer, who hit his stride with such gorgeous, ever so slightly kitsch hits as "Have You Seen Her" ('71), "Oh Girl" and the crushingly sad "Coldest Days of My Life (Pt 1)" (both '72). But The Chi-Lites could also do ghetto-funk ("Give More Power To The People", "We Are Neighbors") with cred and panache. If you need to economise, most of the classics are on Volume One.

Diamond Dogs is often cited as the beginning of Bowie's cocaine psychosis period. In fact, it was recorded before he started giving Hitler salutes at railway stations and aggravating Eastern European customs officers with the books on Goebbels he carried in his rucksack, and now presents something of a field day for hindsight-lovers. Or should that be hindquarter-watchers, since everything about Diamond Dogs polarised opinion, from Guy Peellaert's canine cover to the jagged avant-garde mellotron nightmares of "Future Legend" and "Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family". Diamond Dogs was first mooted as a rock musical concept based on 1984. George Orwell's widow refused to sanction it, but it retained the central motif of "we are the dead', dressing it with surreal '70s sleaze. Bowie gave notice his career was going off the rails when he performed before an invited fan club audience for US TV's Midnight Special at The Marquee in October, 1973. A virtual dress rehearsal for his notion of 'at last, the 1984 floor show', it was a great gig, with guest stars The Troggs and Marianne Faithfull adding to the bonkers quotient. But while the idea of a maniacal mainman is convenient, there was still a method to Bowie's a-lad-insane madness. Ziggy Stardust was inspired by the doomed '50s rock'n'roller Vince Taylor; Pin Ups was a '60s tribute covers album, with the Blessed Twig(gy) sharing cover space; and Diamond Dogs went back to old George's Roaring '40s nightmare future. Bowie might not have invented mix'n'match, but he knew how to shoplift at the concept counter with the best of the young dudes. Having dispensed with guitarist Mick Ronson and broken up the bewhiskered Spiders From Mars (the kids had killed the man, see), Bowie hired veteran musos like Tony Newman, Aynsley Dunbar, Herbie Flowers and Mike Garson, while providing his own off-kilter Stooges guitar and screeching, coke-buzzing wall-of-sound saxophone. Tacky taster single "Rebel Rebel" was a sop to the glam sleaze that characterised the end of the Ziggy era. But the rest of the album, recorded in London and Holland (though its maker now lived in America for tax purposes), is often seen as a primer for his raw R&B period and the Brian Eno/Tony Visconti Berlin trilogy. The Aladdin Sane-esque title track fused all three camps with audacious electronic squawk and squit, Bowie striving to make himself as uneasy listening as possible. By contrast, the soulful "Sweet Thing" and the Motown colours of "1984" are akin to sonic bonkers Temptations (in Norman Whitfield's acid phase) with a Philly topcoat. Young Americans before the fact, these cuts are the best in show. This 30th-anniversary edition is much meatier than Rykodisc's reissue, which included the alternative "Candidate" and the sparkling "Dodo". Here you also get a second disc including those songs, the "1984/Dodo" pull, plus the shorter "Rebel Rebel" single, the atypically groovesome "Growin'Up" and two new "Candidate" and "Rebel Rebel" mixes aimed at the clubs. Er, thanks. Not everyone was grabbed by Diamond Dogs' bejewelled collar. Eminent critic Robert Christgau described it as, "Eat, snort and be pervy." Maybe that was the point; an excess-all-areas explosion of whack from the man who would fall to Earth voicing the opinion: "I've rocked my roll. It's a boring dead end. There will be no more rock'n'roll records or tours from me. The last thing I want to be is some useless fucking rock singer." If that absurd outburst proved to be a bitching lie, you could still argue that Dogs was the first bling bling album; a brutally urban, hardcore artefact. The cracked actor persona Bowie substituted for fluffy Ziggy gave up a highly theatrical and hugely expensive concert tour, spawning the more user-friendly David Live, recorded in Philadelphia, and inspired the chilly funk of Young Americans-yet another lost weekend project, given John Lennon's participation. Heard today, it's obvious that these puppies didn't all grow up to be Rottweilers. Dated in some parts, way ahead of its time elsewhere (try bearing OutKast in mind when Bow-wow's frantic cut-up soul vocals kick in), Diamond Dogs now sounds like the work of someone too smart to be pressing the self-destruct button all the way down. Must have been the side-effects of the cocaine, after all.

Though a drummer, Marvin Gaye's achievements are seldom thought to lie in the rhythm bed. He was notably adrift during disco, his technique too liquid, too subtle for four-on-the-floor pummelling (or maybe not...!) Aside from the title track, few tunes on The Funk Collection are recognised floor-fillers, but sweet Jesus, do they groove?! Dig the proto-rap of flop 45 "Ego Tripping Out" ("Oh, it must be said, I'm greatest in the bed"), Frank Blair's wicked percolating bass on "Funk Me", and the rippling "World Is Rated X" (not, unfortunately, the fruity synth mix that appeared shortly after he died). Much of the best stuff here is also on The Master, an awesome career-spanning collection with some fascinating rarities, chiefly "Piece Of Clay"?among Marvin's most marrow-stirring performances, and unavailable elsewhere. Whichever you choose, to hear him is to marvel.

Argue the toss, if you like, over the pre-eminent genius of the first three Go-Betweens albums, or the two recent reunion sets. But when the tossing's over, the three Go-Betweens albums composed circa 1986-88 in a rush of creative late youth and London poverty will always be the beauties, the gold standards. The ones you reach for to convert others to the fond and tender charms of Brisbane odd couple Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. Almost two decades on, these records aren't 'interesting', or 'influential', or 'era-defining', or whatever reissuers-on-the-make intone while feeling for your wallet. This is music fresh as the first time you played it; glorious, literate, lovelorn, unforgettable. Indeed, if we could all age as gracefully, there'd be nothing to fear from being 90. From the heel-kickingly flirtatious "Spring Rain" and McLennan's heart-shredding "Apology Accepted" to the cello-led dignity of Forster's "The Clarke Sisters" and a peerlessly yearning "Bye Bye Pride", to the sun-soaked chromatic peaks of "Streets Of Your Town", it's startling to remember these albums span a mere three years. Of their contemporaries, only The Smiths worked as much magic in the same short time. Essentially, this is where it all went right, or righter:the wise, lugubrious Forster and bittersweet, lump-throated McLennan on peak songwriting form, and a band hitting its uncluttered stride thanks to Lindy Morrison's nimble drums and Amanda Brown's oboe, strings and harmonies. In hindsight, it seems irrelevant that Tallulah was nobody's favourite at the time, or that 16 Lovers Lane, all radiant crescendos and dark elegies, was thought worryingly 'glossy' by the elect. In fact, the only Go-Betweens releases better than these records are their generous new configurations. Each lovingly assembled reissue comes twinned with a 10-track bonus disc that gets it right all over again. Covetable B-sides and rarities leap impishly from the sublime (a sorrowful "When People Are Dead", a lilting "You Won't Find It Again") to the sweetly ridiculous (McLennan's sturm und drang freakout "Reunion Dinner", Forster's wonkily oddball 'Little Joe'), and very nearly feel like three whole extra Go-Betweens albums. They never had hits. It doesn't matter.

Generally regarded as the poor man's Kraftwerk, quirky Belgian trio Telex penned one memorable tune: 1979's "Moskow Diskow", a funkier "Trans-Europe Express". Two years earlier, as Electronic System, Telex's resident synth boffin Dan Lacksman produced this little-known space-disco curio that would've sounded ahead of its time had Giorgio Moroder not made the superior "I Feel Love" and "Now I Need You" for Donna Summer the same year. That said, propelled by tootling Moog basslines and sprinkled with laser whooshes, "Flight To Tokyo" and "Cosmos Trip" are undeniably charming. Above all, Disco Machine should provide perfect sample fodder for today's lazier producers.