Clark fits neatly?too neatly, perhaps?onto the Warp roster of electronic mavens. While his earlier records flirted with the avant-acid perpetuated by the label, Empty The Bones Of You is rooted solidly in Warp’s creepy quasi-ambient department. As such, there’s plenty here that’ll appeal to fans of Boards Of Canada and of The Aphex Twin’s more peaceable moments. The discreet melodies, the muddy off-kilter beats and the generally disconcerting air are beautifully realised. But the overall result is rarely quite as haunting or individual as Clark must have envisaged.

Lucinda Williams’ recent World Without Tears showed that hitting 50 doesn’t need to mean a softening of the musical faculties. With his rasping, serrated voice, visions of turmoil and ruin in the heartland and characters caught in various stages of despair, Ovans wears his Dylan influences proudly, but this follow-up to last year’s career r

The transition from cult phenomenon to proper success is a perilous one, as many briefly fashionable groups will testify. A year ago, The Rapture were approximately the coolest band on the planet, chiefly thanks to a raging disco-punk single called “House Of Jealous Lovers” made with the equally hip production team DFA. Since then, the music world has been alive to the possibilities of what we might reductively call an early-’80s revival. Grimy New York warehouses, etiolated funk and marginal legends like Liquid Liquid have become critical touchstones. The Gang Of Four are referenced in most reviews of new bands, and mediocre talents like Radio 4 have been elevated way above their station.

The Rapture, meanwhile, have spent most of 2003 missing the boat, embroiled in a nasty tug of war between major labels for Echoes, the album they largely finished months ago. Now it’s finally arrived, the good news is that these four diffident men based in New York have made a record which transcends any scene’s fleeting credibility. Yes, there are explicit links to dancefloor/punk fusions of the early ’80s: tunes which combine propulsive rhythms with difficult angles; guitars seemingly strung with cheese wire; a pervading atmosphere which alludes to peculiarly nerve-wracking parties.

It’d naive to deny the influence of, say, PiL on the title track. But there’s so much more to Echoes. For a start, The Rapture are commendably eclectic in their influences. One moment they’re engaged in a tense update of early house on “I Need Your Love”, the next they’re revealing their hardcore roots on “The Coming Of Spring”, as redolent of Fugazi as it is of The Pop Group.

The Cure and the Happy Mondays are in here, too. Less predictably, three exceptional ballads, “Open Up Your Heart”, “Love Is All” and “Infatuation”, are weirdly reminiscent of the jagged, visceral songs on Big Star’s Sister Lovers, even if Luke Jenner’s cracked vocals essay love rather than desolation. It’s this surprising emotional core, buried in the DFA’s fluent, genre-splicing mix, which makes Echoes such an enduring record. A humanity which contradicts the chilly academic posturing habitually associated with NYC white-boy funk, and which suggests The Rapture will survive long after scenesters abandon their copies of No New York.

Imagine Stephen Foster?or at least Van Dyke Parks?armed with a laptop and you’re close to understanding the extraordinary charm of Californian duo Matmos’ fifth album. Like 1999’s The West, The Civil War negotiates a fragile entente between Americana and electronica, but does so on a bigger, constantly astonishing scale. Fireworks explode, battlefield drummers march across John Fahey’s porch, Dr John is reconstructed out of glitches, an entire track is made from samples of a rabbit pelt, and “The Stars And Stripes Forever” is reduced to a postmodern shambles. Drew Daniel and Martin C Schmidt’s purposes seem to be both satirical and affectionate, but it’s the latter that ensures this is among 2003’s best albums: one that appropriates the indefinable feel of its sources as well as their historically resonant sounds.

Guitarist Barthelemy has spent much of his career working with orchestras, both jazz and classical, and on this album he teams up again with the 13-piece Orchestre National De Jazz. Stylistically various, the programme here ranges from wild free-form to tightly arranged passages, sometimes in pastiche mood. Whether this adds up to a convincing whole is problematic. At its best, this is exciting, exploratory Euro-jazz; at its worst, it seems somewhat aimless.

A Derbyshire-bred, Manchester-based group formerly known as the Dakota Oak Trio. DOT loiter pleasantly at the dewy, bucolic end of post-rock. Fridge are, perhaps, their closest contemporaries. And just as Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden’s solo output outshines his work with Fridge, there’s a sense DOT’s Dave Tyack and James “Pedro” Rutledge make much better records on their own. Plenty of ramshackle virtuosity, crafty folktronica hybrids and limp singing amongst these 10 tracks, but the earth remains resolutely unshattered.

Formerly linked to the late-’90s big beat movement, Barry Ashworth’s Dub Pistols have become one of the UK’s leading exponents of political dubtronica. Jamaican Studio One veteran (and sometime Massive Attack collaborator) Horace Andy adds guest vocals to opening track “Sound Clash”, eclipsed in the surprise stakes only by the appearance on “Problem” of former Specials frontman Terry Hall, making his first outing over a ska beat for decades. Electro, jazz, dancehall, hip hop?everything’s here, mashed up in a smoky dub haze.

Trying to pin down The Method is like attempting to bottle buttered fog, but one thing’s certain?there’s madness in there. This four-strong crew met six years ago when promoting (and DJing at) their own eclectic club night and a similar, anything-goes philosophy underpins their debut LP. It’s hip hop, but also absorbs rock, electro-funk, orchestral lounge, punk and nu R&B. “Baby You’re So Funky” is Beck gone big beat, while “Sexy Potatoes” makes like Barry White guesting on 3 Feet High And Rising. Elsewhere, Beastie Boys, Happy Mondays and Prince breeze by. Bewildering, but (almost) brilliant.

Karl Bartos

Contemporaries of Sebadoh and Pavement, San Diego’s Trumans Water missed out on the acclaim awarded their lo-fi rivals on account of their unwillingness (or inability) to write a hummable tune. Instead they practised a kind of freeform artcore that took Beefheart and the wilder end of Krautrock as first principles. After seemingly releasing an album a week, they dropped off the radar completely?until now.

Not much seems to have changed in Trumansworld. They are still as scratchily psychedelic and wilfully obtuse as ever, with ‘songs’ like “Meteorites And Troglodytes” turning rock on its side before pushing it over a cliff and recording the resulting din. Hints of melody surface now and then, but the group never allow it the upper hand over their patented harmolodic rock.

Elusive cult figures on the German techno fringes, Dopplereffekt are frequently namechecked by electroclash front-runners such as Miss Kittin, despite having carved themselves a unique niche in electronic music which nods more to avant-garde ambient and classical music than disco sleaze.

A couple of the six lengthy tracks on their second official album nod to dancefloor rhythms and structures, but they are bookended by great buzzing clouds of sculpted, pulsing, highly textured machine noise rejoicing in titles such as “Niobium Resonators” and “Higgs Mechanism”. Whether precious high-art boffins or playful postmodernists, there is a dedication to purity and originality here which other techno acts pay lip service to but rarely deliver.

Favourites of both Fugazi and the Super Furry Animals, Dead Meadow have a reputation for bone-crunching volume at their live shows. That doesn’t translate here, but their riff-sprawling heaviness does captivate. “I Love You Too” and “Everything’s Going On”, for instance, emerge midway between Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd and make testosterone aggression sound hazily dreamlike. Singer Jason Simon’s airy vocals are stoner-rock incarnate, but their gloomy acoustics show they’re not one-dimensional riff-mongers. Still, best experienced/endured live.

A survivor of the Great Electroclash Fiasco of 2002, Merrill “Peaches” Nisker’s second album is a triumph of style and content. Performance artist, potty-mouthed rapper and sexual assertiveness lecturer, Peaches also makes pretty useful music these days. Fatherfucker pillages Missy Elliott, Suicide and “Justify My Love”-era Madonna, and even outfoxes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (notably “Kick It”, a duet with Iggy Pop). All her talk of dicks and tits, meanwhile, is funny rather than provocative.

A British duo lurking behind a remotely beautiful moniker, Aurelie’s music ranges from Eno-esque piano pieces to the likes of “Mariposa”, with its lush swathes of guitars and effects that ghost in and out like changes in climate. The exception is “Divisible By Three”, which is practically Mot

From the all-star fable casting Ole Bob as Jack Fate?”a fallen rock legend well past his prime.” They said that, not me. This includes several exotic covers of his songs, from an Italian folk version of “If You See Her, Say Hello” to a Japanese “My Back Pages”. “One More Cup Of Coffee” is tackled, amusingly to some of us, by Turkey’s recent Eurovision winner, Sertab Erener. There are also four new songs by Bob: a new version of “Down In The Flood”, a new “Diamond Joe” (not his ’92 song of the same name), “Dixie”, and a bluesy “Cold Irons Bound”. Diplomatically? A must for Dylanites.

Featuring the first new material from former My Bloody Valentine fulcrum Kevin Shields in 12 years, this is a bit special. Air’s soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s 1999 directorial debut The Virgin Suicides proved to be one of the most durable of recent years (and it’s been simultaneously reissued by the same label), and this?for her new film?comfortably matches that for understated, dreamy grandeur. Shields’ four contributions are everything you’d hope for, and MBV’s “Sometimes” also lends a grungy kind of grace.

The film, shot in Japan, “contemplates unexpected connections” and stars Bill Murray and Scarlett (Ghost World) Johansson. It’s a love letter to Tokyo. Quite how the music interfaces with that notion remains to be seen, but it’s all very spectral, brittle and beautiful. Air themselves offer a new track, “Alone In Kyoto”, and Death In Vegas are remarkably restrained on “Girls”. There are also distracting, delicate wisps of things from Squarepusher, Phoenix, and the more-interesting-than-their-names-might-suggest Brian Reitzell and Roger J Manning Jr, whose “On The Subway” and “Shibuya” are wonderful. The set closes with The Jesus And Mary Chain’s ’80s indie landmark “Just Like Honey”.

But it’s the Shields numbers everyone will be gagging to hear, his decade-plus of reticence having firmly established him as the Syd Barrett of shoegazing. How to describe these sonic equivalents of near-invisibility, which somehow hint at every emotion under the sun? When MBV were at their peak every review was either dauntingly highbrow or freakishly over-effusive. It’s hard to resist similar impulses this time around. Perhaps I should just give you the titles?”City Girl”, Goodbye”, “Ikebana”, “Are You Awake?”?and say that if for too long you’ve been pining for Isn’t Anything and Loveless like a war widow, a strange dark joy is about to re-enter your head.

This melancholic accompaniment to the David Gordon Green slow-burner draws succour from the nocturnal chambers of alt.country’s heart. Will Oldham’s “All These Vicious Dogs”, Sparklehorse’s “Sea Of Teeth” and Mogwai’s “Fear Satan” are more than willing to cry into your beer. David Wingo, whose lyric yielded the film’s title, couples with Michael Linnen for three tracks; Mark Olson and Paul Jones also peer for clouds among the silver linings. I’m writing this on the hottest day of the year, and it sounds inappropriate. But, rest assured, there’ll be times when it sounds entirely right.