Nastasia crept to prominence last year with her superb second album, The Blackened Air. For Run To Ruin, the formula remains broadly similar: a creaky but precise gypsy orchestra; sensitive production by Steve Albini; doleful vocals that recall a superficially composed Kristin Hersh. Nastasia, though, writes better songs than Hersh has in years, and this time they’re less couched in rustic whimsy, more intimate and needling. Witness the sexual tension-packed “You Her And Me”, where a road trip turns into an unnerving psychodrama. Spare, beautiful, outstanding.

Thank God for The Cramps. Though a quarter-century old, singer Erick “Lux Interior” Purkhiser and guitarist Kirsty “Poison Ivy Rorschach” Wallace’s unique musical Molotov cocktail of ’50s rock’n’roll riffs shaken and stirred with comic book imbecility and B-movie vulgarity is as window-rattlingly grand as ever. “Dr Fucker MD” and “Elvis Fucking Christ!” really are as good as their titles deserve, while “Fissure Of Rolando” is as frisky as anything from 1986’s career high, A Date With Elvis. You thought they didn’t make them like this any more? The Cramps just have!

Imagine the quiet experimentation of Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock developed further, but with Morten Harket on vocals. There is the same blurred angst familiar from A-Ha, but in a chamber jazz setting (acknowledged lyrically on “Polder One”) with tendencies towards systems music and minimalism. The gorgeous chord changes of “The Gap” coexist with the weeping cyclical guitar motif that lights up “Plainfield” or the restless freeform drumming on “Nightsweeping”. Surface tranquillity is balanced out by elements of lyrical disturbance, most clearly on “Waterspace”. (“I could break your spine”). The sort of record David Sylvian should be making.

After his collaboration with Simon Wickham-Smith yielded the semi-legendary Lake in the early ’90s, subsequent hook-ups with Acid Mothers Temple and Damon & Naomi have compounded Youngs’ reputation as one of the foremost toilers in the avant-garde underground. Recorded in his adopted Glasgow, his fifth solo outing employs a bag of tricks from 12-string acoustic through five-string banjo, ring modulator, square wave generator and theremin, sometimes within the same song (see 17-minute closer “Machaut’s Dream”). Youngs’ voice, fragile yet tough, is the perfect warp to the hypnotic weft of Eastern drones, circular riffs and raga-like meditations.

Man, this is awesome. Sunn O))) are two druidic Americans who play crushingly slow doom chords much in the style of their mentors (and Kurt Cobain associates) Earth. White 1 is an hour-long, three-track exploration of the transformative properties of monolithic drone rituals and bowel-quaking sub-bass, a little like Black Sabbath with all the tunes, energy and humanity ruthlessly purged. By Sunn O)))’s standards, it’s actually quite accessible. So spluttery drum programs propel “The Gates Of Ballard”, while “My Wall” features a Wodanist invocation from Julian Cope, who perfectly vocalises this wonderful band’s might and inherent daftness.

This full length debut of music box chimes (“Both Mirror And Armour”), sampled Japanese folk songs (“Sakura”, “Takeda”) and proggy Vangelis-inspired electronics (everything else) has a neo-pastoral charm which, at face value, would align it closely with the output of labels like Memphis Industries and Tummy Touch. The reality is more complex?though Folly may lack the painstakingly assembled layers of sound favoured by Boards Of Canada and Four Tet, FortDax’s classical and folk stylings similarly gesture towards an Arcadian, pre-electronic, even pre-electric age, untethering the music from the technology used to create it and confusing the notions of futurism usually associated with electronic composition. Quietly, cleverly beautiful.

Frequently, Jaga Jazzist sound like Tortoise cubed. The Stix, their second album, is a hyperkinetic extrapolation of the Chicago sound; that slippery and inspiring hybrid of post-rock, jazz and electronica. Jaga Jazzist’s spin, though, is to remove much of the post-rock?and with it much of the ponderousness inherent in some Tortoise disciples. Instead, the likes of “I Could Have Killed Him In The Sauna” focus on the innovative arrangements and sophistication of Charles Mingus and Gil Evans’ big bands, but update them with a digital fusillade that’s always integrated, never tokenistic.

Distant musical cousins to Stereolab, Broadcast here offer a taster of their next album proper, haha sound. The superb cover artwork from Julian House, a rarity in the CD era, is an indication of the unbridled sense of experimentalism contained herein, a sort of Sixties-tinged, retro-avant-garde jouissance.

Combining fragile indie-pop with multiple and fractured effects, from distressed keyboards to free jazz rhythms, Pendulum culminates with the extraordinary “Minus Two”, in which samples of their music are put through a musique concr

Numbers’ debut album Life drew its inspiration from the angular irregularities of Devo, Gang Of Four and The Contortions, taking on the mores of late capitalism to the delight of shark-finned fashion monkeys everywhere.

This remix album allows the usual suspects (Gold Chains, Kid606, Kit Clayton et al) to remodel tracks from Life in their own image, and very enjoyable it is, too. Gold Chain’s punkish overhaul of “Prison Life” chugs along amusingly while Kid606 transforms “We Like Having These Things” into something like a glitch dancefloor anthem. Electronicat’s take on “Driving Song” ends up sounding like a faint echo of industrial titans Ministry, and Kit Clayton cleverly fits “Information” with a distorted “bashment” undertow.

This may be the sound of overprivileged white America dribbling stylishly on its bib, but thankfully it also sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Choose Death.

For 15 years, the socio-political message of Michael Franti has always been equally as important as his musical medium. Now he seems to be steering his once righteous and rootsy Spearhead toward MOR territory with this dilute mixture of dancehall reggae, calypso and bossa nova, underpinned by ’80s funk-rock dynamics.

Sly & Robbie throw their agreeably groovy weight behind “Bomb The World (Armageddon Version)”, but “Never Too Late” sounds like an unhappy mix of Randy Newman and Arrested Development, and sometimes Franti sounds like a clap-happy Seal.

Revolutionaries and relaxation are ill-suited, it seems.

Glass opens with “To The Author”, which is immediately followed by an alternate version of the same song. A mixture of hard disk-tweaked jazz and krautrock separates these from the second part of the album, remixes of tracks from 2002’s One Bedroom. “Interiors” is retooled by Broadcast, while “Hotel Tell” gets two remixes?one from Detroit techno legend Carl Craig, the other from Stereolab (reciprocating drummer John McEntire’s production work for them) confusingly retitled “Tea And Cake”. The disc is rounded off with an animated video to accompany the band’s cover of Bowie’s “Sound And Vision”, which also featured on One Bedroom.

Prog, at its best, is English music’s epigonic and projected marriage of postmodernism and magic realism. Steve Hackett has spent a quartercentury out of Genesis painstakingly divining how to perfect it.

This is his umpteenth glorious failure. Hackett’s blizzard of textural ideas lacks discipline, the melodic ear remains tinny, but as ever there’s enough contrary cheekiness and blas

Having washed up in the wake of Oasis’success, stadium-filling Welsh pub rockers Stereophonics are clearly only too aware of the shifting temper of the times, hence their reinvention here as keepers of the soul-funk flame. Their fourth album sees them attempt the same move The Charlatans made with their last LP, but less successfully. Kelly Jones’ laryngitic bellow?which makes Rod Stewart sound like a castrato?is applied to Stones-y epics and sub-Weller workouts, both of which strive for rock’n’roll authenticity but ultimately just prove how lacking in soul the trio really are.

Everything Prince Paul (Paul Huston) touches turns to gold. He proved himself as the man behind Stetsasonic, De La Soul and Handsome Boy Modeling School. This good-natured jab at the music industry, which failed to understand his (brilliant) 1999 concept album A Prince Among Thieves, calls on the likes of De La Soul’s Trugoy, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Guru and The Beatnuts. And, of course, it all works. Kokane’s attack on gangsta braggadocio, “So What?”, is excellent. The unknown collaborators are great (particularly W Ellington Felton on the beat-driven blues of “Beautifully Absurd”). Chuck D and Ice T duet on the title track. Even the skits are funny (Chris Rock helps out). All that is good in hip hop is here.

Londoner Helene is as interested in the textures of her songs as their words, making this closer to the haunted soundscapes of The Walkabouts’work with Phill Brown [Talk Talk] than the acoustic singer-songwriting ghetto. Collaborating with Owen Turner of guitar mavericks Magoo, Helene’s breathy voice sits on arrangements including violins, guitars and glockenspiels, at their best conjuring sinuous fairy tale enchantments. Her lyrics, meanwhile, are daydreams of death, disenchantment and vengeance. If “Murder Can be Necessary”is more petulant sneer than felt, fatal impulse, this is still impressive night music.

Faced with pyrotechnics-by-numbers outfits like Mono, no wonder Mogwai left the guitar-pummelling field. But Mono’s bone-crunching post-rock is too derivative to be convincing. The frequent squall-and-calm tricks are predictable, while their bludgeoning attacks are lumpen and drab. It’s often forgotten that white noise aggro needs tension to instill terror, and Mono neither frighten nor create foreboding. Meanwhile, attempts at Slint-style math-rock on “Sabbath”are woefully inadequate. Finally, oddly, apocalyptic hardcore sounds dated.