A couple of things I played rather a lot over the weekend: the second Brightblack Morning Light album from 2006, which reminds me of unbearably hot afternoons in our old office, and which still sounds gorgeous on a windy Saturday afternoon in March; and “Supreme Balloon”, the 24-minute title track of the new album from Matmos. “Supreme Balloon” – the album, that is – initially seems like something of a departure for the Matmos duo. As the thoroughly eloquent press release explains (I wonder if Drew Daniel himself wrote it?), the album was entirely constructed on antique synths: Moogs, Arps, Korgs and so on, plus a very grand Coupigny modular synth housed at Radio France and previously utilised by, and I quote, “some of the titans of musique concrete”. “Supreme Balloon”, we’re told, is not such a conceptual piece as its predecessors: the traditional Matmos technique of sampling odd sounds, then making thematically consistent music out of them (most famously, I guess, on the operating theatre squelches which became 2001’s A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure), is abandoned here. I’m usually a little suspicious of music which seeks to ellide form and content in this way, suspecting that it’s more akin to stunt art than aesthetically satisfying music. But the rigorous, vigorous smartness of Matmos, and the playful music which comes out of their intellectual processes, has never failed to be enjoyable as well as satisfying. The same goes for “Supreme Balloon”, which is far from just a bunch of tracks made out of synths. In some ways, I think it’s a celebration of how electronic music has a history: that this music, so doggedly presented as futuristic, has a backstory that can match rock for richness. It’s a celebration, too, of how synthesisers have been the tools that powered both the classical avant-garde and the notionally disposable, kitsch extremes of pop and dance music. Matmos, it seems, are intent on collapsing the barriers between high and low art – or maybe I’m overthinking all this, and they’re just having fun with some cool old toys. Listen to the squelching epiphanies of “Polychords”, anyway, and you’ll find something that’s as rooted as much in the work of Chicory Tip as, um, granular synthesists. And while “Mister Mouth” may feature Marshall Allen from the Sun Ra Arkestra on, yep, a breath-controlled oscillator, its frantic squiggles aren’t a million miles from the stuff being made by all those hotwired Gameboy jockeys riding the underside of the nu-rave boom. Matmos are better, mind. “Les Folies Francaises”, meanwhile, is a baroque trinket by Francois Couperin which the press release has the good grace to admit has been “given the Wendy Carlos treatment”. But it’s that title track I’m fixated on: a gently undulating electronic meditation, which floats into the same rapturous airspace as any number of early ‘70s kosmische types (the admitted reference is Cluster, which is a good starting point). I’m reminded too, though, of something fractionally earlier – the salute-the-sun ecstatic wobble of Terry Riley’s “A Rainbow In Curved Air” (Riley apparently turns up himself on a vinyl bonus track, “Hashish Master”, which I don’t have here). It’s compellingly beautiful. A historical recreation, I guess, but one imbued with such love and melodic sophistication that it demands to be treated as the equal of its influences, not as their derivative. It’s an irony that might amuse them, hopefully, that while Matmos have made some fabulous and genuinely innovative records in the past (“A Chance To Cut”, “The Civil War” and “The West” are all terrific), this expansively lovely, historically resonant epic of synth-psych might just be my favourite thing they’ve ever done.

Earlier, I’d been telling someone that when I saw Pete Doherty at a small Soho club called Jazz After Dark, back in January 2006, it had occurred to me, no doubt somewhat fancifully, that this was to some perhaps small but nevertheless vital extent what it might have been like to see the fledgling Dylan in some bar in Greenwich Village, when the 60s were still young. This was at a launch last night for Asking For Flowers, the excellent new album by Canadian alt.country singer-songwriter, Kathleen Edwards, whose records to date have invited comparisons to the best of Lucinda Williams and post-Wrecking Ball Emmylou Harris. On Asking For Flowers, which is produced by Tom Scott, who helmed Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac and has elsewhere worked with Wilco, Lucinda, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty, Edwards is backed by a pretty stellar cast of veteran session men, including drummer Don Heffington, bassist Bob Glaub, pedal steel player Greg Leisz and her husband Colin Cripps on lead guitar. Tonight, it’s just her and Colin on stage at the Gibson Guitar Studio, just off Tottenham Court Road, where she’s playing the second of three showcases to promote the new album – yesterday she was in Paris, tomorrow she’ll be in Stockholm. Even without her ace band, the songs she plays are richly evocative in the story-telling manner of Lucinda or Josh Ritter, and her natural charm and wonderful voice are wholly beguiling – especially on the stinging “You Always Play Me In The Cheapest Key”, the bittersweet “I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory” and the bereft lament of “Scared At Night”. After their short set, we have a drink and although I’m meant to be on my way across London to the Rhythm Factory in Whitechapel Road, where Pete Doherty’s playing a solo show, supported by Television Personalities, I hang around while Colin tells me about some dates he and Kathleen played with Bob Dylan in Montana that took them in three days from Jackson’s Hole, to Big Sky and Billings, Colin giving the impression of Dylan moving at lightning speed across the state, everyone racing just to keep up, breathless in his slipstream. An hour or so later, I’m fighting for space at the bar of the Rhythm Factory after a probably predictable kerfuffle over the guest list and where on it my name might be. I’m talking to Terry Edwards, who I know from Gallon Drunk and Tindersticks. Terry’s DJ-ing tonight and is soon off for a stint at the decks. It’s around 11 o’clock when a bunch of people who look like they sleep in bus shelters start shuffling around the small stage, most of them with their heads down, like they’ve dropped something they can’t find on the floor and are having trouble remembering what it is they’ve lost. This turns out to be Television Personalities and I think what they might have just been looking for is their drummer, who’s apparently gone missing, just as they’re meant to be starting their set, which they begin without him, Dan Treacy – that’s him in a black overcoat and woolly hat, glowering at the crowd with what quickly becomes mutual hostility – not much bothered by his absence. They’ve just kicked into something resembling a tune when a burly fellow in what appears to be several T-shirts and a string vest clomps on stage, settles behind the drum kit, which he then proceeds to batter with some abandon, sounding not unlike a man hammering fence posts into unforgiving ground. What Television Personalities are now playing is a cheerless dirge that I think is called “All My Dreams Are Dead”, which is not inappropriately titled since it soon leaves me wholly without the will to live. Before it’s over there are loud boos from most quarters and the first of several pints splashes onto the stage, making Treacy’s evidently grim mood grimmer by the minute. “You’re shit,” someone loudly tells him, a critically blunt but not entirely inaccurate assessment on the evidence before us. “I may be shit,” Treacy replies somewhat forlornly, “but at least I’m getting paid for it. How much do you earn?” he then asks, and is then inclined to moody silence when when he’s apparently quoted a sum which probably roughly equals his lifetime earnings. It goes on and gets unfortunately no better, the third number coming to a messy halt when the band appear to realise none of them are playing the same song. The crowd are now noisily antagonistic and Treacy looks painfully exposed and evidently frustrated by the chaos around him, of which he is principal author. It’s something of a relief for everyone, then, Treacy included I’d wager, when they finish and quit the stage, my sympathy going with them. Another hour or so later, with Pete strumming listlessly through a vagrant version of “Albion”, I wish I’d left with them, Pete having turned in a fitful performance, sadly lacking anything like the lustre of the better times I’ve seen him play. The Rhythm Factory is something of a safe haven for Doherty and Babyshambles and tonight it’s full of hardcore fans, who bellow along with everything – a mash-up of old Libertines songs, “What A Waster” and “Can’t Stand Me Now” among them and meandering bits and pieces from Down In Albion and Shotters Nation. For the most part, he’s lazily satisfied with starting a song and then handing it over to the crowd whose gurning singalongs at least have the merit of enthusiasm, which is something Pete is showing little of. There’s a not bad “Back From The Dead” at one point, and a very good "Unbilotitled", but the mood here is one of distraction rather than engagement, a rather glum drift towards the inconsequential - as if he’s finally getting as tired of these songs as much as some of his fans are. Tonight's restless rowdy throng are perhaps too easily pleased and clearly want only the stuff they can join in on without having to give any of it too much thought,but most of these songs have been around for as long as anyone can remember, and surely in need of urgent replacement. He’s going to need to pull off something memorably special at the Albert Hall to get everyone back on side, something of which he’s entirely still capable – even if much of tonight remains best forgotten. I probably would have left in a more disgruntled mood, but the last thing I hear Terry Edwards playing is great and puts me in good humour for the long ride home – Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London”. All together now, AHHHHH-WOOOOOO.

As regular readers may have spotted, I’ve been droning on about the second Howlin Rain album since the end of last summer, when an early copy reached me by mildly nefarious means. I’ve regularly postponed blogging on “Magnificent Fiend”, mainly because Rick Rubin signed up the band in the States and the release date has been unusually volatile (it’s now due out in April in the UK, possibly a little earlier in the US). The other reason for the delay, though, is that I’ve played it so much, it’s weirdly become harder to write about. It’s time, though, to attempt to do it justice: though I usually try and avoid crude empirical hype, it’s hard for me to imagine many better rock albums will be released in 1974. Or even in 2008. Howlin Rain, if you’re a newcomer to this world, are the second band of Ethan Miller, previously best-known as the frontman of the searing psychedelic marvel that is/was Comets On Fire. A couple of years ago, Miller hooked up with bassist Tim Gradek and the great John Moloney from Sunburned Hand Of The Man on drums to make the first Howlin Rain album: a consummate Southern Rock set, cut through with some raging solos from Miller. For the second Howlin Rain album, Moloney seems to have mainly gone missing. Two members of Drunk Horse are onboard now, and there’s a rollicking keyboardist pushed upfront in the mix, too. The result is that “Magnificent Fiend” has a fuller, more rounded band sound than the debut. It’s more nuanced and rich – though it still rocks intensely. One of the things I love about Miller – and it’s never been more apparent than here – is the sheer unalloyed joy which he brings to his music. Even in the subtlest moments of “Magnificent Fiend”, he still has this grappling, full-blooded exuberance. Much of the music that he’s inspired by is perilously easy to pastiche, but Miller exudes love and, in those savagely ripped vocal chords and radiant solos, a punkish, beautiful lack of irony. So “Magnificent Fiend” begins with “Requiem”, a flurry of piano and lonesome jazz trumpet, before crashing into “Dancers At The End Of Time”, driven by one of those slashing, glottal riffs that Miller loves (distinct echoes of stuff on the last Comets album, “Avatar”). It’s fantastically overdriven, but drops to a delicate, funky break before Miller lurches back in, singing himself hoarse. The organ swirls, the sci-fi mythologizing comes thick and fast, the solos ramp up, there are gorgeous twin leads. Not for the last time, I’m reminded of The Allman Brothers – specifically “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”. For this is a great jamming band fighting hard – and succeeding – to find great songs at the hearts of their freak-outs. “Calling Lightning Part Two” is an effortlessly sunny sequel to “Calling Lightning With A Scythe” from the last album, at once blissed and propulsive, and with a nostalgic “Dazed And Confused” (Linklater, not Led Zep) lyric where Miller muses, oddly touchingly, “I remember our school, but little of our crimes. . .” Then there’s “Lord Have Mercy”, which rolls in with some lovely bluesy piano, and gradually builds to a memorable gospel-tinged chorus (And damn, I really wish that Spiritualized album you all keep banging on about could measure up to this. . .). After about three and a half minutes, it slows back down, then starts climbing to an inevitably hysterical climax – which arrives about a minute later, an extraordinarily uplifting gospel freak-out, with massed chorus, and – finally – an insane Miller solo which my colleague John Robinson brilliantly spotted as being a dead ringer for that of Steve Howe on Yes’ “Starship Trooper/Wurm”. I’ve been playing this for six months now, and it still blows my mind every time. After that, “Nomads” is a meditative come-down; maybe one of the first times in his career that Miller hasn’t sounded like he’s about to lose his voice. The subtle shading is richly satisfying, with ebbing guitars – a little Grateful Dead here, perhaps - circling a Fender Rhodes, and it’s amazing, for those of us who first fell for Miller through the cacophonous psych-punk noise of early Comets, to hear how much range he has now. “El Rey” elegantly builds up the intensity again, a hairy and tender classic, with added horns, that sounds marinated in the traditions of Muscle Shoals and the ‘70s southern intersection of rock and soul. “Goodbye Ruby” is a snaking, breaks-driven boogie that charges through a sequence of mighty solos (If you’re being seduced by the allusions to the jam stuff on Stephen Malkmus’ “Real Emotional Trash”, this should be your next stop, incidentally). Again, it’s the elevating, passionate spirit of the band which really shines through, an infectious joy at playing rock music. Towards the end of “Riverboat”, there’s a long and beautiful instrumental passage which reminds me of “Layla”’s coda, rescored for antique synth. Eventually Miller howls back in. “Furious misfortune is upon us,” he warns. But for all the apocalyptic imprecations, I can’t help but feel massively uplifted whenever I listen to this quite tremendous record. After keeping it ourselves for so long, it’s a relief to finally share the love.