Album

Cornelius – PM By Humans

Last year, in a fatally altruistic gesture, Japanese technocrat Cornelius invited visitors to his website to remix tracks from his excellent 2002 album, Point. PM (it stands for Point Mixes) purportedly compiles the best 12 from around 400 of those submitted, with largely dispiriting results. If Cornelius set out to showcase how the meticulous pastoral textures of Point could be desecrated, then PM is a triumph of sorts: only Masakatsu Inoue's "Pointer Remix", a beautiful hybrid of musique concrète and prickly ambience, really does the source material justice.

Various Artists – Goodbye, Babylon

Magnificent six-CD compilation of gospel roots

Pink Sunshine

DVD-Audio 5.1 Surround Sound version of Coyne and co's biggest-selling album

Dearth Row

Four major US R&B releases show the once-thriving scene to be in a creative trough

Charles Webster – Remixed On The 24th Of July

Matthew Herbert and others retool the sublime avant-house dreamscapes of 2001's Born On The 24th Of July

The Ladybug – Transistor

Classy return to form following 2001's disappointing Argyle Heir

Desert Sessions 9 & 10 – I See You Hearin Me

Sometime Queen Of The Stone Age Josh Homme indulges extracurricular interests, with PJ Harvey and others

The Cramps – Flamejob

Alan McGee may have had bigger fish to fry in 1994 (namely the era-defining debut of five scallies from Burnage), but that didn't stop him investing well-spent time and money on this, The Cramps' sixth album proper. A good job, too, since Flamejob is a blast; its tunes every bit as colourful as their preposterous titles (eg; "Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs"). If anything, it sounds even more current today, with The White Stripes reigning supreme, than it did 10 years ago in the shadow of their mono-browed labelmates.

Various Artists – Alan Lomax: Popular Songbook

When Moby sampled Vera Ward Hall's "Trouble So Hard", he was merely the latest in a long line of musicians to use as a source the field recordings made in the Deep South between 1933 and 1959 by the folklorist Alan Lomax. The Popular Songbook collects together 22 such tracks and, perhaps to your surprise, you'll find you know almost every one of them—if not in these original versions then in covers by artists as diverse as Clapton, Miles Davis, Steve Miller, Dylan, Led Zep and The Grateful Dead. File alongside the Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music.

Piano Magic – The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic

Limpid nocturnal longing on seventh album from shifting collective
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