Various Artists RADIO CRYMI PLAYLIST VOL 1 1988-1998 ANKST No longer the harsh psychedelic Celtic oddballs they used to be, 20 arrives as an opportune reflection on Gorky's' more eccentric origins, rounding up their first six Ankst singles from 1994-96. Check "12 Impressionistic Soundscapes"?like Pink Floyd's Ummagumma with a slice of acid-infused barra brith on top. Gorky's inevitably appear again on Ankst's own Radio Crymi retrospective, a handsome two-CD set also boasting collectable Welsh rarebits from Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Peel darlings Datblygu.

Championed in Smiths-era indiedom by the very paper she wrote for, former NME hack Cath Carroll's Miaow built their cult upon just three EPs before disbanding. Though nothing eclipses this anthology's title track?1987's jangle-tastic Factory single with its blissful Tyrolean yodel and glam hand claps?its supplementary Peel sessions, demos and Carroll's Steve Albini-assisted homage to Elvis' "King Creole" are enough to validate much of that distant, nepotistic praise.

With NYC's bright new hopes (Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) openly worshipping at the altar of scratchy early-'80s UK punk-funk (PiL, Gang Of Four), it now seems doubly outrageous that Department S were denied the release of this like-minded debut at the time?"Whatever Happened To The Blues" alone is 20 years ahead of Radio 4. An even greater shame that singer Vaughan Toulouse (who died of AIDS in 1991) isn't around to savour the overdue recognition this should grant him.

It should be ridiculous, and sure, many of the titles on this compendium of Brit-prog between 1968 and 1975 are hysterical ("McGuillicudie The Pusillanimous"?please!). But cut through the suffocating incense clouds and the pug-ugliness of the assembled rogue's gallery and there's some astonishing fare here. Disc 2 is especially great, featuring as it does the sub-Zeppelin delights of Clark-Hutchinson and Black Cat Bones, Room's ambitious bong-symphony "Cemetery Junction" and Human Beast's lovelorn hippie heartbreaker "Maybe Someday". Thank God for punk and all that, but did we really swap all this for Chelsea and Eater?

For those still thinking Electric Six are hardcore, direct yourself immediately to this reissue of the two studio albums of NYC punk/funk saxophonist/singer James Chance, one of the most confrontational figures in the No Wave movement. Buy is the more 'purist' record: askew Beefheartian rhythms meet Ornette harmolodics topped with Chance's frustrated crooning. Off White was the more 'commercial' album. "Contort Yourself" from the first album is reworked and discofied by August Darnell (aka Kid Creole) to stunning effect. Hear in particular how, on the telephone sex duet with Lydia Lunch, "Stained Sheets", Chance's unstable masculinity surrenders blissfully to Lunch's feminisation of his noise.

Like the audio equivalent of the dreaded Christmas pullover, tribute records torment our fashion sensibilities with the nagging conundrum that, however bad a garment, it's the thought that counts. But there comes a time, especially when faced with Bono fumbling with The Ramones' not-to-be-fumbled-with "Beat On The Brat", when one is forced to drop to one's knees and scream, "WHY?" Okay, a partial profit donation to New York's Lymphoma Research Foundation (the cancer that claimed Joey Ramone in 2001) is a fair excuse, but it's by no means an explanation for the off-target desecration on show here. With the exception of Tom Waits, who reinvents 1976's "Judy Is A Punk" as his own wino-blues howl "The Return Of Jackie & Judy" (returning the favour for their late cover of his "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"), and Marilyn Manson, who at least tries by stripping "The KKK Took My Baby Away" of its original upbeat melody (creating a dingy murder ballad in the process), this is a pointless exercise. Rancid and Green Day's contributions are as gormless as one might imagine but nor do U2, Metallica, Eddie Vedder or the Red Hot Chili Peppers ever deliver anything beyond egotistical karaoke. With the best of intentions, nothing here says anything profound or poetic about The Ramones. To be brutal, this album's charity beneficiaries can be contacted via www.leukemia-lymphoma.org. Send them your cash but, for the love of Joey and Dee Dee, leave this on the shelf.

HEAD OVER HEELS TREASURE VICTORIALAND ALL 4AD The cocteau twins were the most incandescent yet impenetrable of the post-punk bands. The contrast between Robin Guthrie in particular and the music he made, with its gossamer showers of guitar, was always marked. No effete dandy, his truculent refusal/inability to shed light on the Cocteaus' creative process was always coupled with jeering derision at critics' attempts to fill the void with their own, adjective-laden praise ("'Gossamer showers'? You wanker!"). Liz Fraser, meanwhile, always seemed strangely disconnected from her own wordless, ethereal offerings, as baffled as the rest of us. For those who demand a strict, nutritional quota of 'content', the Cocteaus were always problematic, and there were some who condemned them as an airy confection. Yet while it's hard to grasp what their music signifies, and despite its whimsical titles ("Fluffy Tufts", "When Mama Was Moth"), it's still rapturous and manages to pull you in deep. Garlands, their 1982 debut, sees the Cocteaus in the thrall of post-punk's first wave, the Banshees and Public Image Ltd. There's also a black streak, a disturbing undertow running through their work, in songs like "Blood Bitch" and "Blind, Dumb, Deaf" which were in accordance with those more abrasive musical times. But there's an ambience to their music which set them apart. 1983's Head Over Heels was an affirmation of Guthrie and Fraser's romantic bliss, to which titles such as "My Love Paramour" and "Sugar Hiccup" attest. It's an ecstatic affair, guitars blazing like Van Gogh sunshine, with all the toxins of the debut album banished. A snowblind-white counterpoint to Siouxsie's dark, gothic hauteur. Treasure (1984) saw Simon Raymonde fully on board, and was a thing of pre-Raphaelite splendour. Made in a year when post-punk had all but withered away to be supplanted by the peroxide mediocrity of mid-'80s new pop, its remote, crystalline beauty was all the more conspicuous. If this was the Cocteaus in full flow, 1986's Victorialand saw them ebb a little?it's subdued, more like buoys bobbing out at sea than crashing waves of guitar. Whether you regard The Cocteau Twins as analgesic or stimulant, they are the still-vital link between the post-punk of their own era and the post-rock which they anticipated.

FREAKY STYLEY THE UPLIFT MOFO PARTY PLAN MOTHER'S MILK CAPITOL It's a curious quirk of fate that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are at their most musically potent when they're least innovative. Last year's career-topping By The Way succeeded with a fairly traditional brand of Californian rock. But back in the '80s, they invented the kind of smutty, jittery rap-rock that's still so lucrative?and unappealing?today. A good time for this extensive reissue programme, then, if only to confirm our old prejudices about the band. The eponymous 1984 debut is a tinny opener, dominated by Flea's savagely irritating bass style. The following year's Freaky Styley is an improvement, with the funk quotient upped by producer George Clinton and a surprisingly tolerable cover of Sly's "If You Want Me To Stay". The more metallic Uplift Mofo from 1987 finds their trademark style fully formed: extreme masochists are directed to the desecration of "Subterranean Homesick Blues". By 1989's Mother's Milk, MTV-boosted mega-fame and attendant drug disasters (including one dead guitarist) had arrived. Some live Hendrix covers tacked on the end provide scant reward for the diligent.

On the point of celebrating their 10th anniversary, Mouse On Mars remind us of their legacy of quiet brilliance, which began with the subtly wrought polyrhythms and distressed tones of 1994's "Frosch" EP. What's strange about the pristine and media-neglected likes of, say, 1997's "Schnick-Schnack" is not that it hasn't dated but that it still bubbles like it's fresh and steaming in the soundlab, future sounds still awaiting wider development and distribution. As relentlessly inventive as Autechre, yet less daunting.

APOCALYPSE DUDES BURNING HEART A bunch of carefully unappealing Norwegians styled as gay bikers, Turbonegro achieved a certain notoriety in the mid-'90s thanks more to song titles like "Rendezvous With Anus" and "I Got Erection" than their fairly grim musical hybrids of Judas Priest and The Ramones. In the wake of numbskull contemporaries The Hellacopters finding international success and guyish tributes from Queens Of The Stone Age and The Hives, the inevitable reformation and reissue programme is well underway. Forced to choose, Apocalypse Dudes is infinitesimally more varied and accomplished than Ass Cobra. But after a while, it's hard to decide what's more boring: the hairy-palmed musical slogging, or the risible attempts at outrage.

This Jimmy Page-era gem captures The Yardbirds in their hard psych-blues pomp, mixing bought-in British hit factory items like the Fabulous Flakes' "No Excess Baggage" with pre-Zep blueprints like the trance-rock "Glimpses" and "Only The Black Rose". Fans will gravitate quickly towards the sessions, which include bizarre covers of Nilsson's "Ten Little Indians" and Manfred Mann's "Ha Ha Said The Clown". The Beeb cuts are equally intriguing as the band tackle Maurice Chevalier chanson, Bobby Dylan and the riffy blitz of "Dazed And Confused". Listen up, all you White Stripers.

Hank Williams recorded around 170 songs between 1946 and his untimely death at the age of 30 in 1953. Subtitled "An Introduction To Hank Williams", this album isn't a greatest hits, omitting, as it does, many of his most successful releases. Instead, it concentrates on the poetic and reflective side of his output, ultimately the touchstone for his reputation as "the hillbilly Shakespeare". As such, it succeeds in conveying the essence of a unique talent and a classic of country music.

Before the demons got the better of him, the esteemed Peter Greenbaum was Bethnal Green's answer to the hard Delta blues masters. His version of the Mac were as influential in their day as any crossover rock band. Singles hits like "Albatross" (the original and a Chris Coco remix both figure here) and the autobiographical "The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)" turned Green into a transatlantic superstar who could write his own material and do justice to Little Willie John or Elmore James. Chuck in the ineffable "Oh Well?Parts 1 & 2", add some "Rattlesnake Shake", and you could be back in the Roundhouse circa 1969.

Coming up with a comprehensive history of the music that led up to Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88"?widely regarded as the first true rock'n'roll record?is a virtually impossible task, but this compilation makes a damn fine stab at it. Concentrating heavily on the blues but also taking in country and bluegrass, jug bands, vaudeville, gospel and old-style R&B, this boxed set features exemplary sleevenotes, painstaking track remastering, and stunning covers. One hundred tracks including Leadbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson, Alberta Hunter, The Carter Family, Frank Crumit, and Little Richard spread across four CDs?soon to be available individually.

Crucial to the development of the "Canterbury Scene" and British progressive rock in the late '60s, Soft Machine quickly developed into a semi-improvisational, jazzy avant-rock outfit. Featuring material recorded by several different line-ups, including the classic Dean-Ratledge-Hopper-Wyatt quartet as well as the short-lived, brass-augmented septet, Backwards (so-called because the tracks are presented in reverse chronological order) does not contain any exclusive material but does capture the band at its most creative. Several of the tracks suffer from questionable sound quality, but there's no denying the warmth and energy of these performances.

If the story is true, Nilsson conceived of this album during his first acid trip. Working on what was ostensibly a children's project freed this sometimes over-precocious maverick from his sardonic contrariness, resulting in a work of genuine warmth and humour. Pitched to a well-lubricated ABC executive on a long-haul flight, The Point became an animated television feature narrated by Dustin Hoffman, eventually evolving into a West End stage show featuring ex-Monkees Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz. Completing the first cycle of Nilsson's albums, within a year Nilsson Schmilsson had been recorded and a brand new career begun.

Recorded in 1963 but suppressed until now for needless legal reasons, this angelic album of 10 ballads represents Scott at his peak. His Kallman's syndrome arrested his hormonal growth, so his voice is literally androgynous. With his troubled life, he has every right to self-pity in songs like "Why Try To Change Me Now?"; that he avoids it completely is testament to his artistry. He is an outsider who seeks love ("They Say It's Wonderful"), and when it comes ("I Didn't Know What Time It Was") trembling elation has never been captured better by a voice. This record is vital.

Following the big star Third Album aka Sister Lovers, a fine example of the art of soul-baring with all veins showing, the ever contrary Alex Chilton decided that was his dry run at a proper solo disc. Recording with James Luther Dickinson and various peripheral Big Star alumni at the legendary Sam Phillips and Ardent Studios, Chilton gathered the pieces of his occasional forays into Tennessee bars and constructed a typically bizarre burnt offering. This 1980 album, Chilton's solo debut (unless you count 1975's Bach's Bottom, which you should), starts with a lazy version of KC & The Sunshine Band's Florida funk epic "Boogie Shoes". Thereafter, Chilton wanders further into the dark recesses of dirty disco during "My Rival", a gloriously splenetic counter-attack delivered with a quill full of poisoned skewers. Big Star-like in places?"I've Had It" and "Hey! Little Child" were leftover morsels?Sherbert also dipped into spooked Southern country on Ernest Tubbs' "Waltz Across Texas", "No More The Moon Shines On Lorena" and the title track, which resurrects Hank Williams' corpse and wakes it up with a blast of Spectorish noise. Disc 2, Live In London, is a relic from the old Dingwalls daze, 1980 to be precise. Punchy, punky and patchy, it benefits from raw takes of Chilton's old Box Tops hit "The Letter", a blowsy "Train Kept A Rollin'" and the inevitable "September Gurls", knocked out impromptu with a local pick-up crew. Eager for the recognition, but never keen to have his hem touched too hard, Alex Chilton remains an enigma. Which is why we love him, presumably.