Herbert assembles a 16-piece big band whose playing he attempts to subvert with electronic processing, but sadly he has done little with the resources available.

The arrangements suggest “hello Third Stream” and their utterly conventional nature places Herbert closer to John Dankworth than Sun Ra. Various vocalists try to liven up the torpor, but even Arto Lindsay’s patented Tropicalia croon on “Fiction” has little effect, and at its worst (“Chromoshop”) one thinks: bad Leonard Bernstein. By far the most affecting track is “The Three Ws” sung by Plaid’s Mara Carlyle, which tellingly makes virtually no use of the big band.

Huey Lewis’ Plan A was Clover, one of the great unsung San Francisco hippie bands of the early ’70s (and backing unit for Elvis Costello’s debut LP). When that didn’t work, the fallback was the 1980s AOR hit-machine he called The News, who gave us “The Power Of Love” and other radio favourites before Lewis abandoned music in the ’90s and adopted Plan C-an acting career. Now he’s rediscovered that effortlessly soulful voice and gone back to Plan B. At best, its good-time blues rock evokes memories of the likes of Boz Scaggs and Nick Lowe. It’s strictly bar-room fare. But of the very highest class.

Paddy McAloon’s solo album is like no other record you’ve heard. It’s strange, beautiful, serene, perverse and almost unbearably sad.

Prefab Sprout’s last album, The Gunman (2001), was a tad too… limpid. That band (who do have an album due this year) is about McAloon’s delicate melodies and deft lyrics. Though there have been murmurs for years of him doing unreleased, insane, maverick concept albums in his spare time, nothing of that ilk had yet emerged.

Well, here it is. He’s got in touch with his inner Zappa/Prince/Rowland and composed a bold, astonishing piece of music that will do your heart in. Mostly instrumental, it’s Vivaldi meets Badalamenti, and its stately irrelevance to musical trends is so fabulously fearless you feel like whooping. If this is a grand folly, it’s as grand as they come.

It’s all about the 21-minute title track. After that, there are six less strong instrumentals (with forlorn names like “Fall From Grace”, “Orchid 7” and “I’m 49″), wherein McAloon proves he’ll be Britain’s finest soundtrack composer before long. And there’s one song?”Sleeping Rough”?where, by now unexpectedly, he sings, “I am lost, yes I’m lost…” It’s all the more effective as we’d given up on hearing that plaintive voice.

But…that opening. I’ve just told him it’s like Philip Glass, Eno or Tubular Bells and he didn’t seem offended. Over strings, brass and what you might call “ambience”, a woman (one Yvonne Connors) reads sentences compiled by McAloon from radio chat and news shows. His eye problems mean he can’t read much now, so he’s become addicted to radio talk, culling from it juxtapositions of the personal and political. Love’s plane comes down behind enemy lines. She gives you a name; you grow into it. Tramp or prince, you learn the language. I’m paraphrasing. The whole idea of Megahertz is, I think, that you read into it what you will.

It’s big enough to allow that. If you have any love of the romantic gesture, the flying-in-the-face-of-fashion operatic swandive, you’ll bask in this work of gentle genius.

Just when we thought there was nothing left in the moribund corpse of trip-hopping soundtrack Euromuzak, along came Allison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory to breathe extraordinary new life into its petrified limbs. So farewell, then, Stereolab. And adieu Portishead while we’re about it. Felt Mountain was one of the great sonic events of 2001, not least because it was so much more than the chic reassembling of parts?and because its songs were as unsettlingly rich and strange as they were cool and clever. Who could forget the jolt of the opening to “Paper Bag”, “No time to fuck/But you like the rush”? Indeed.

And now, two years later, there’s another jolt. Brilliantly, Goldfrapp and Gregory have chosen not to repeat themselves. Sure, the duo intermittently drop back into the pastoral post-trip hop of Felt Mountain, but the tone of Black Cherry is set from the opening bars of first track “Crystalline Green”. Welcome to the brave neu world of funky glam disco, ‘frapp-style.

Electro-funky and headily lovely, “Crystalline Green” is just one of the album’s several masterpieces. Dirty, squirty synths drive “Train” and the Chinnichap-meets-Amii-Stewart “Strict Machine”, the first a kinky Helmut Newton postcard from Hollywood Babylon, the second a cheeky electroclash item built around hilarious ’80s-style sexual/electrical metaphors. Best of all, maybe, is “Twist”, the sexiest song of 2003 so far. “Put your dirty angel face/Between my legs and knicker lace,” purrs Allison to her paramour. I defy you to resist this squealing teen dream of a song, with its pounding stomp-beat and growling synth fills.

The yang to “Twist”‘s yin is the enshrouding melancholia of the title track, with its slow descending chords and shimmering mellotron padding?loss, allegedly, that comes straight from Goldfrapp’s heart. How it must have bled.

I doubt there’ll be many better albums released this year.

A synapse-burning marvel of hip hop knowledge and glitch science, Scott Herren’s second LP as Prefuse 73 confirms him as the underground Timbaland. One Word Extinguisher is an endlessly fascinating maze of sound. Frequently, it seems as if Herren has compacted the entire history of hip hop (plus plenty of R&B and jazz) on his hard drive, then cut and pasted them into ultra-dense new forms. As on his debut, he manages to combine the micro-detailing and radical kinetics of the best electronica with the thump and immediacy of classic hip hop. But the rap-mangling that characterised Vocal Studies+ Uprock Narratives has evolved into a sound that seems direct and graceful even as it explodes in a thousand fresh directions. This decade’s Endtroducing…, possibly.

Away from the lusty twang of her country albums, Neko Case leads a double life singing with Vancouver’s The New Pornographers. The contrast could hardly be greater as she abandons Patsy Cline impersonations to sound more like Debbie Harry. The songs of chief Pornographer Carl Newman surge with contagious power pop energy and wit in which obvious reference points are Blondie, Cheap Trick and The Beach Boys at their more surreal (“Testament To Youth In Verse” is more “Vegetables” than “Good Vibrations”). There’s nothing profound about Electric Version. But classic pop has seldom sounded so much fun.

The banner of Cosmic American Music has been co-opted so often in the past few years that it’s become virtually meaningless. It’s strange, though, how few players in the current Americana boom have chosen to graft country songforms onto billowing psychedelia. Especially when Canyon’s UK debut proves how effective it can be.

There are obvious parallels to fellow travellers My Morning Jacket and The Radar Brothers, even Uncle Tupelo, but the way these songs spiral from earthbound laments into grandiose spacerock is original and often remarkable. Looks like the alt.country cabal just found their Pink Floyd.

Hutchings’ standing in Britain’s folk pantheon is indisputable. Co-founder of Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and The Albion Band, he’s also an arranger, producer and broadcaster whose tireless work ethic has recently involved poetry readings at London’s Globe Theatre, spreading the word to schools and working on BBC4’s tribute to ex-Fairporter Richard Thompson. Human Nature exposes the often tenuous relationship between man, plants and animals via a stellar guest list (Ralph McTell, Rory McLeod, Ken Nicol among others), string quartets and bursts of brass. Partly traditional but often beautifully soulful, it’s the sound of a man still twisting the familiar into brave new forms

Rhodri Marsden’s debut Free French album Running On Batteries lay criminally ignored among the rubble of Britpop, but now the dust has settled he’s back with an all new line-up and another set of smart, catchy, hook-laden songs. Opening track “Scatterbrain” combines the melodic nous of Brian Wilson with the cerebral approach of Scritti Politti, but after that it’s a headlong rush into brighter, more upbeat territory with witty lyrics and intoxicating melodies.

Intellectually cohesive yet enjoyably throwaway.

When Cerys Matthews parted company with Catatonia-largely because she was in danger of becoming a one-woman embodiment of the band name-few people would have guessed that she’d up sticks, move to Texas, dry out, get married and then make a country album.

In fact, she first hooked up with producer Bucky Baxter (better known as Bob Dylan’s long-time pedal-steel guitarist) at his Nashville studios, and while Bucky knew diddley squat about her, he took the gamble. Legend has it that Matthews was accommodated in a log cabin with no running water, bathroom or kitchen, miles from the nearest offy. Lacking distraction, she wrote the songs that form Cockahoop.

So is it any good? It’s certainly accomplished, with new country licks types like Richard Bennett and Jim Hoke lending an almost Ry Cooder flavour to proceedings. Matthews’ obvious love for country?well, she is a Celt-means that she comes across like the Dolly Parton of the Valleys. The opening “Chardonnay” sounds like her autobiography, the missing years part, but this song about a love affair with the bottle was written by Roger Cook, who pens tunes for Crystal Gayle.

The disc picks up a more folky patina with a fine cover of The Handsome Family’s “Weightless Again”. Keeping her roots showing, Cerys also includes old Welsh hymn “Arglwydd Dyma Fi”. Her original fans will be drawn to the more Catatonic, soul-bearing tunes, such as “Only A Fool”. This album, though, should find Matthews a new audience to add to her pop heroine one. The Nashville skyline just got itself a new resident.

A Teutonic quartet whose work surfs the boundaries between electronica, live instruments and lo-fi chamber music, Bergheim 34 are so named because they once shared a house at 34 Bergheimer Strasse in Heidelberg.

The four members have now all scattered to different German cities and make their music remotely via file-sharing-a detached form of collaboration which may sound like a gimmick but is increasingly common and has little obvious effect on the sounds within.

With distant echoes of Stereolab and a lightly experimental edge, the band’s second full-length album is a work of quiet beauty and artfully mashed-up electro-folk.

Inessential, perhaps, but unassuming in its charms.

Portland’s poutiest love to send out conflicting signals. That crossover phone-ad hit (“Bohemian Like You”) disguised the fact that they’re a filthily wondrous live band who could eat The Strokes for breakfast. Now their fourth album, named after a Kurt Vonnegut book, arrives with production from ex-Durannie Nick Rhodes and backing vocals from Simon Le Bon. Which leaves them sounding more electro than grunge. Then Tony Visconti helms a couple of tracks, Nile Rodgers guests and Evan Dando co-writes a song. It could get confusing:you have to stay with Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s dry-as-sand voice as it leads you through the modernist maze. “Hit Rock Bottom” is pure T. Rex. They could’ve been new rock messiahs, but chose to be pop-art prophets. It’s arrogantly risky. That’s their best feature. Still cool.

Part of the Montreal-based musical coalition that includes Godspeed You! Black Emperor (several members are included here), Set Fire To Flames wander familiarly disquieting terrain as titles like “Buzz Of Barn Flies Like Faulty Electronics” suggest. This was recorded in an abandoned farm in Ontario, with natural sounds incorporated into the recordings. Here, drones, strings and trance rhythms hang together by a beautiful thread, evoking authentic and imaginary landscapes.

Scandinavia, implausibly, continues its ascendancy as a source of fine music, with Sweden’s Logh (pronounced: Log) falling off themselves-a beautiful mesh of ennui and understated angst. The very antithesis of The Hives, they’ll appeal to lovers of Low, Wheat and early Floyd. Every note sounds like it was wrenched painfully from their innermost emotional core, but for all the sobriety and greyness, it’s ultimately uplifting, warm and watery. It’s the second track, “Yellow Lights Mean Slow Down, Not Speed Up”, which flags up their knack for patience, tease, and the telling breakout guitar fling.

Like finding a suicide note after its author has decided not to commit suicide.

In recent years, electronica’s innovative momentum has stalled. The clicks’n’cuts/glitch texturing of Pole and To Rococo Rot has ended up a creative cul-de-sac with bored bedroom geeks. Thank your hard drive, then, for 25-year-old London boy Kieran Hebden, who is Four Tet. As with To Rococo Rot and Iceland’s M

Getting out of the big corporate rat race, and taking a lengthy sabbatical, seems to have sharpened Maria McKee’s view of her craft. Always blessed with a vivid, exciting vocal power, she’s starting to mature into a kind of modern Jackie DeShannon, since High Dive is packed with big, epic pop, produced for full-on effect by husband and collaborator Jim Akin.

Standouts include a new take on “Life Is Sweet” and some audacious and complex ideas explored in “Non Religious Building” and the emotional range of “Love Doesn’t Love”.

She may look like a Carson McCullers character but McKee’s Southern gothic is still polished by the LA dream.

It’s fair to say that Mia Doi Todd has garnered good notices for this, her first album, and that there’s an opinion abroad that she’s something special. It’s difficult to see quite why she should have been seized on in this way for her simple, repetitious music is predominantly listless and washed out, typically swinging back and forth between two chords.

Monotonous, her voice fails to sell her rather earnest lyrics. Perhaps Todd is an acquired taste. Certainly ask to hear some of this before buying.

Jewish-Canadian electro-rapper ‘Chilly’ Gonzales has carved a short but cultish career out of sporting a velour tracksuit and injecting his idiosyncratic hip hop with a humour both sharply self-effacing and thoroughly silly.

This is a compilation with a difference, since every track has been not only re-recorded but reworked from scratch. Gonzales’ ribald rhymes are thus disguised or obliterated by surprisingly sensitive, often sumptuous musical arrangements that run the gamut from klezmer to Studio 54 funk.

Z is a revelatory experience for fans and a treat for neophytes.

With Squarepusher as a brother, Aphex Twin as patron and Ed DMX as label boss, Andy Jenkinson’s debut album was hardly likely to be alt.country. Sure enough, Ceephax Acid Crew fits comfortably into the Aphex-patented Braindance genre:lush melodic constructions whose intricacies don’t obscure their debt to rave.

Graceful stuff, thrown into relief by a second CD that compiles some of Jenkinson’s infrequent EPs, mentions “Acid” in eight out of 14 titles, and brings his squelchier, brutalist predilections to the fore.