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Eugene Hutz (no relation to the terminally useless Lionel of Simpsons fame) and his band of merry gypsy punks fifth studio album, and their first for Rick Rubin’s American Recordings – Rubin also produces – has split some of the faithful (you know how fans get when everyone else catches on) the naysayers insisting the earlier, independent, releases are more authentic but this is bollocks as Trans-Continental is packed to the gunnels with high octane fiddle and accordion driven Eastern European garage folk topped off with Hutz’s bug eyed Serj Tankian/Joe Strummer flecked vocals which rocks like the Pogues playing pissed polkas.
Ruby Palmer

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Murdoc and Co.’s third effort was always on a bit of a hiding to nothing given the vertiginous heights scaled by their two excellent previous outings (we won’t be mentioning that Damon chappie here, as frankly if you’re not going to join in the general animated merriment then what’s the point?). But fans really can rest assured that the tried and trusted hip-hop based electronica-driven experimental workouts are once again all present and correct, guest slots occupied by Mark E Smith, Lou Reed, Snoopy Doggy Dog Dog (© Father Ted), Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon.
Ruby Palmer

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Sounding a bit like a Bollywood version of Sesame Street sound-tracked by Beck and mixed by King Tubby. No, I tell a lie. It’s ‘60s beat pop with a soupcon of hardcore grunting, oh bugger pigeonholing this is like trying to keep sand in a net - at one point thing get so disturbingly glitchy it was a blessed relief to find the CD player was malfunctioning, and the track in question was merely demented. Germaine Greer has more chance of joining the Taliban than this has of any mainstream success, so if you like your music Cowell-esque this ain’t for you, everyone else should hurtle out and buy it immediately.
Drew Bass

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With uninspired, by-numbers covers littering up the charts thanks to the likes of Cowell and co, the very idea of reinterpreting others’ material is long overdue a reinvention. Well, that moment has now arrived thanks to Peter Gabriel’s bold decision to transform 12 songs – an appealing blend of classics (David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’) and newer favourites (Bon Iver’s ‘Flume’) – with stark, voice-and-orchestra arrangements. It’s an approach that you might expect to pall over 50 minutes, but Scratch My Back is actually a stunning success, with his takes on Elbow’s ‘Mirrorball’ and Arcade Fire’s ‘My Body Is A Cage’, in particular, sending shivers up the spine.
David Davies

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This get’s a bit convoluted, so bear with me here. In 2008 Martin 'Blackdown' Clark and his production partner Dan 'Dusk' Frampton drop a very classy collection of grime entitled Margins Music, it is a critical success and for most people that’s where it would have ended, however, noting the work of dubstep wunderkind Paul ‘Grievous Angel’ Meme, they decide to give him free rein to do what he will with the album the results of which are to be found on this part remix album, part DJ set part dub rework which is a complete joy from beginning to end and an essential partner to the original release.
Drew Bass

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Ostensibly a journey back to the Planet Gong, first encountered throughout the mighty ‘Radio Gnome Trilogy’ (Flying Teapot, Angel's Egg, and You) – I guess now making it the 'Radio Gnome Quadrilogy' – but basically a reconvening of the majority of the ‘classic’ Gong line-up joining main-man Daevid Allen for fourteen tracks of proper wigged out acid-jazz-prog and aside from an ill-advised rap detour on ‘How To Stay Alive’ it’s all delightfully barmy, and does the Gong legend no disservice whatsoever. Fans of Hero The Zero and Planet Gong will adore it, the rest of the world will doubtless just be hugely confused.
Ray Harper

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If, like a few of the greyer bods in the office, you aren’t opposed to spending some quality time with Frank Zappa, especially convoluted prog-classical mental dodgem rides like ‘Inca Roads’ or ‘Echidna's Arf (Of You)’ then get ready for a real treat as Jono El Grande loves nothing more than paddling around in the same Musique concrète as the sadly demised FZ (hell ‘Oslo City Suite’ even co-opts the riff from ‘Pygmy Twylite’), only Mr Grande also has a passing fancy for the likes of Henry Cow and, judging by this at least, Michael Nyman at his most jazzy and angular. FZ once said, 'Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny', in this case it's funny ha ha.
Paul Riley

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Following on from the outright punk clatter of their 2006 debut, Orchestra of Wolves Gallows have muscled up somewhat on this, the follow up album, Grey Britain, prompting some reviewers to label them punk-prog – mistakenly confusing having more than one idea in a song with being ‘prog’ – but in reality this sounds like nothing so much as a mighty ruck between Black Flag, The Clash and Motorhead. They guys even manage to reign in the spittle flecked savagery on ‘The Vulture Act 1’, which is actually rather lovely, and wind things up on the nihilistic ‘Crucifucks’ with some sky-scraping orchestral goose-bumping.
Ruby Palmer

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Grossly overlooked singer songwriter Clive Gregson is one of those musicians that just keeps on keeping on regardless of whether anyone else is coming along for the ride. Initially a founding member of Stiff signings Any Trouble, then half of a successful duo with Christine Collister he has also worked with Richard Thompson, Boo Hewerdine and Eddie Reader and had his songs covered by Nanci Griffith and Fairport Convention, in short you may well have heard him without being conscious of having done so, and this best of is a superb jumping off point for anyone keen to find out more.
Ray Harper

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Those of you that feel that what has most been missed in the, albeit still excellent, solo career of Black ‘Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV’ Francis to date are the sweet female yin vocals balancing out his hoarse yang hollerin’ in the Pixies need miss them no longer as the latest BF project, Grand Duchy, features just such a balancing vocal contribution from new partner and co-writer Violet Clark. Indeed ‘Black Suit’ is possibly the best Pixies track the band never recorded. You have to feel for Ms Clark dealing with the king of control-freakery, but she’s clearly holding her own here and let's hope there's more to come.
Ruby Palmer

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Several millennia in the making and the new Axl Rose solo album is with us (can’t imagine why it’s billed as Guns N’ Roses). When it works, like on the runaway train rackets of ‘Shacklers Revenge’ it almost repays the idiotically long wait, when it doesn’t (like on the hideously overblown ballad ‘Street Of Dreams’), the words ‘polishing’ and ‘a’ spring to mind. For hardcore fans this will be the most eagerly awaited album of all time, and it will be interesting to see how it’s received (indications are good so far), for the rest of us interested bystanders this is, in the main, a pretty good album featuring the mighty Buckethead.
Ray Harper

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Texas dynamo Memo Gonzalez fronts a band boasting members from Germany, Turkey and The Netherlands so The Bluescasters can genuinely be labelled as a world music outfit. Theirs is a passionate and infectious blend of blues, rock soul and funk and Dynomite is their second album for German based roots label Crosscut (the previous outing Live In The UK being released in 2006). Head straight for ‘What’s In A Name’, ‘Slip Away’ or ‘One Day, One Kiss, One Night’ to get that full on Bluescasters feel, if you like your music on the energetic and passionate side then Dynomite should be in your collection.
David Blue

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Recorded when the band were actually known as Pierre Moerlen's Gong and about as far removed from the acid fried lunacy of Daevid Allen’s incarnation of the band as to be an entirely different band. Initially joining the band for the last two parts of their Radio Gnome Trilogy (Angels Egg and You) Moerlan (who sadly died in 2005) went on to take the band in a far more percussion driven jazz fusion direction, best heard on the albums Gazeuse! and Expresso II and later on the three albums collected here Time Is The Key, Live and Leave It Open with guest slots from jazz fusion guitar wizard Allan Holdsworth and Mike Oldfield.
Ray Harper

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Cherry picking moments from the fifteen odd official Gun Club releases (including compilations and EP’s) was never going to be an easy task and certain Gun Club aficionados may find fault with the studio selections on disc one of this ramshackle overview of the Gun Club's career, however it’s the by-and-large unreleased material on the remaining three discs that will entice the faithful, and if you're a newcomers to the world of Gun Club main man Jeffrey Lee Pierce - who underwent surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain and died on March 31, 1996 - and like what you hear then seek out Fire of Love and Miami.
Ray Harper

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David Gilmour’s 2006 tour-closing show formed part of the 26th anniversary celebrations of Polish trade union federation Solidarity – an organisation whose actions did much to encourage the spread of democracy across Eastern Europe – and this epic live set (available in 2CD, 2CD/1DVD, 2CD/2DVD, 3CD/2DVD and vinyl versions) is more than worthy of the historic occasion. The Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra enhances ‘A Pocketful of Stones’, ‘High Hopes’ and several other Floyd/solo classics to glorious effect, but it’s the 25-minute take on ‘Echoes’ that proves the standout, even surpassing the original studio recording.
David Davies

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As the major label end of the record industry continues to self-destruct in front of our very eyes bands continue to look for other ways to get their music out there and Genuine Sun must surely be the first band ever to be promoted alongside penetrants and lubricants (and no, Blaster Chemicals are nothing to do with sex aids), but if that means more people might get to hear the grown up rock of Return then that’s no bad thing. AOR gets a pretty bad press in the UK’s ‘cool’ obsessed music media but done well it’s capable of shifting tons of units and Genuine Sun’s Foreigner-esque melodic rock is certainly done well.
Ray Harper

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There has been much huffing and bluster in the press of late concerning Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s ‘new’ direction, like everything recorded before Supernature wasn’t a dramatic departure from what had gone before or that chart success was the sole arbiter of quality, which is bollocks. One of Goldfrapp’s finest moments was the, far less successful sales-wise, Felt Mountain and this feels like the album fans were expecting to follow that before the glam stomping arrival of Black Cherry. Those looking for a genre to shoehorn this into can try retro psych/folk, just don’t expect more of the same next time around.
Drew Bass

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A ten disc SACD/DVD set which has pretty much everything any self respecting post Gabriel/Hackett Genesis fan could ever desire including the Genesis, Invisible Touch, We Can’t Dance and Calling All Stations albums – available separately if your wage packet won’t stretch (or if you just don’t want the largely rubbish post Collins Calling All Stations effort) – mixed in 5.1 and expanded to include extra DVD’s packed with all manner of eye-candy including videos, rehearsal and live footage, interviews, tour doc’s and all topped off with a case bound 48 page booklet. The perfect Christmas gift for your Genesis loving partner.


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Recorded live with Benjamin Rippert, Bugge Wesseltoft and Philippe Nadaud over a six month period in 2006 – being created in fact whilst last years career spanning Retrospective compilation was being released – this set should finally lay to rest the lazy, and wrongheaded, assertions that Garnier is just a DJ, introducing radical reworkings of older material alongside some brand new jams Public Outburst is part squiggly electronica, part hip hop, part drum and bass and a wholly jazz-mungous, walloping great monster of an album which, after lulling you into a false sense of security on opener ‘63’, grabs you by the wobbly bits and refuses to let go.


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For those of you that have been living in a large soundproofed hole for the last six months this is the ‘foul-mouthed, noisy and hairy’ side project of Bad Seeds' Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos – who, as a recent press release quite rightly pointed out, are ‘damn well old enough to know better’. Recalling Cave's notorious old outfit the Birthday Party, guitars are overloaded and drenched in grunged up effects, drums are pummelled and Cave is in fine testifying form, as they run the gamut from fast and fierce to slightly slower and, umm, fierce. Makes you feel delightfully grubby just listening to it.


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You just know that an African-American left handed rock guitarist is going to get ‘those’ comparisons – it’s a journalist thing, we can’t help it – but in truth Eric Gales has far more in common with the muscular blues-rock of Stevie Ray Vaughan (who was himself compared favourably to Hendrix back in the day), and yes, he does have the chops to stand alongside both of the above marrying bluesy licks, lightning runs and grungy pyrotechnics, he can sing a bit too. Older readers will hear everything from Robin Trower to Albert King here but Gales is definitely his own man and a prodigious talent to boot.


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Those of you that recall the great Oasis vs. Blur wars fought a decade past will doubtless recall Oasis were widely held to have emerged victorious, but longevity will always out where talent is in question and whilst Liam Gallagher is now officially the least talented member of a band who have spent much of the interim time struggling, his opposite number has continued to balance experimentation and chart success, flitting between world music, R&B, hip hop, rock, pop and reggae and this is no exception - part Parklife, part Clash style London dub, part Gorillaz lope, part melodic pop, apocalyptically gloomy and 100% British.


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Those of you keen on your techno but who prefer not re-mortgaging your house for limited edition 12” white labels will be overjoyed to see this rarity peppered collection of masterful, sometimes minimal, sometimes jazzy, occasionally acidic and often wry techno gems from legendary French DJ Laurent Garnier – an ace face in the late-'80s Madchester scene who later helped found F Communications. Dance music may be in the doldrums right now but tracks like ‘Acid Eiffel’, ‘Man With The Red Face’ and of course techno lodestone ‘Crispy Bacon’ still sound as groundbreaking as they did back when black boxes were far sexier than guitars.


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Often, wrongly, lumped in with the whole acoustic nu-folk scene, although what she does certainly qualifies as British folk music, occasionally mentioned, also wrongly, in the same breath as angry young women like Alanis (she’s far more literate), Thea Gilmore is a managers nightmare, positively overloaded with talent but totally unclassifiable, which in our neat little world of genre boxes is a major problem. So, for the record, Gilmore is possibly the finest lyricist to emerge from the UK in a decade, is as prolific as fuck (this is album seven and she has at least three more ready to go), and the fact she is not a huge star is a bloody travesty.


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Only a daft sod would consider purchasing an album because the word ‘supergroup’ was bandied around reviews (certainly nobody here is given to wearing their pants outside their trousers), but in truth if people of the calibre of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Big Star's Jody Stephens and the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, Marc Perlman and Kraig Johnson are involved you can’t go far wrong can you? Actually no, you can't, and whilst fans of the above bands will generally be able to tell who has written which song - even if they don't sing it - this still has a very pleasing overall coherence.


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Whilst the NME dubbed shoegazing movement had more than it’s fair share of mundane floppy fringed chancers it was not without it’s inspirational moments, many of them supplied by this man and his then pals The Cocteau Twins and, as you might imagine, on the first run through Continental’s ten instrumental tracks you do find yourself awaiting a bout of Elizabeth Fraser’s ululations. However on second and third listens you find yourself sucked deeper and deeper into the bewitching crepuscular sound-scapes, standout track ‘The Day Star’ building into a positive hailstorm of layered guitar howling.


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Giving old friend Kate Bush a run for her money on the reticence stakes, On An Island is David Gilmour’s first new music of any kind since 1994 Floyd release The Division Bell. But it has been worth the wait, as On An Island is bewitchingly beautiful – and never more so than on the title track, which combines heavenly Crosby/Nash harmonies and an extraordinary extended solo. More subtle and diverse than recent Floyd product, there is room for poised instrumentals (‘Then I Close My Eyes’, featuring Robert Wyatt) and string-touched rockers (‘Take A Breath’). Gilmour’s sublime guitar is the constant.


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Celebrating the former Deep Purple front-mans fortieth year in the business, Gillan’s Inn is a quirky beast, being a DualDisc (CD one side DVD on the flip), on which he has chosen to reinterpret tracks cherry picked from his long career. So we’re not exactly breaking new ground here – and die-hard fans may baulk at some of the reinventions – but guest stars like Tony Iommi, John Lord, Ian Paice, and Roger Glover and the DVD footage (including your choice of Joe Satriani, Jeff Healy or Steve Morse guitar solo’s on 'Smoke On The Water', live and studio footage and Gillan's commentary on every track), ensure fans will find much to love.


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OK, so it’s easy to sneer at sixty odd thousand people cheering maniacally just because Billie Joe yells ‘England’ (which he does, a lot), the earnest DVD interview links raise more than a few unintentional laughs and Tré Fool (sorry Cool, yeesh) is officially the dopiest human being on the planet bar none but Green Day only know one way to play live and that’s to run around like nutters, cranking out punk derived full metal clatter and whilst us old buggers will moan that we’ve seen it all before the Milton Keynes audience clearly had an absolute blast. If you loved American Idiot you will adore Bullet In A Bible.

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David Gray
Life In Slow Motion (Atlantic/iht)

His seventh album (yup, you read right, hands up who thought it was just White Ladder and maybe one or two more?), and for those of us who have followed with interest the mans career either side of his ‘eight times platinum in the UK’ smash this is yet another in a long list of proper grown up pop music, indeed possibly his best since White Elephant, erm Ladder. Working for the first time with a producer (Madonna’s buddy Marius De Vries), Life In Slow Motion is beautiful varied collection of lyrically thoughtful, sonically muscular songs, which prove beyond doubt, if proof were needed, that Gray is one of our finest singer songwriters

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Goldfrapp
Supernature (Mute)

The return of the divine Ms G and the cuddly Mr G (that’s Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory respectively), with an album pitched more or less equidistantly between the glacial beauty of their first album and the rude disco squelch of their second, sort of like Kraftwerk in a head on glam pile up with Kate Bush and Siouxie Sioux – although the comparison does neither Alison’s vocal range or Will’s arrangement skills justice. But a word of warning, dip into this sexy, exotic, pulsating stew at your peril, as you’re likely to come over all of a dither and need a sit down with a nice cup of tea

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Gorillaz
Demon Days (EMI)

There’s something about presenting your music in cartoon format that gets some music fans (and critics), in a bit of of a tizzy, perhaps because many people confuse cartoon images with comedy – perhaps they haven’t seen graphic novels like Alan Moore’s From Hell? Whatever, and neatly sidestepping the fact that the Gorillaz website is chock full of laffs, Demon Days is seriously dark stuff, beautifully realised, effortlessly executed and overflowing with bucket loads of great ideas. Once again Damon Albarn proves to be the very best kind of a musical sponge, hoovering up influences and leaving a trail of quality recordings in his wake.


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Garbage
Bleed Like Me (WEA)

Four albums into a massively successful career - their eponymous debut sold four million, the follow up Version 2.0 barely less - and Garbage roll out another collection built around their unique mixture of 'ultra modern production and traditional songwriting' and, in the main at least, it’s back to the initial blueprint - after third album beautifulgarbage's dalliance with Spector-esque production and '60s bubblegum pastiche. Riffs crunch, drums thunder and pop hooks abound. In fact quite why Garbage aren't up there with U2 and REM is a constant source of confusion to many, as there's no better rock outfit making pop music today.


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Go-Betweens
Oceans Apart (Lo-Max)

Refloating the good ship Go-Between in 2000 - after the intervening solo years found both men struggling to rediscover their muse - Robert Forster and Grant McLennan then promptly struggled to rediscover what it was that made their previous outfit such a class act, and whilst both The Friends Of Rachel Worth and Bright Yellow Bright Orange had flashes of the old magic the overall results were mixed. Five years on and we now have Oceans Apart and praise be if both men aren’t back firing on all cylinders updating their youthful muse into delightful, thoughtful, intelligent proper grown up pop songs


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Laurent Garnier
The Cloud Making Machine (F Communications)

The latest offering from the leading Gallic exponent of thudding dance-floor mayhem is in fact not a dance album at all, but that dance-floor scoundrels refuge ‘the soundtrack to an imaginary film’, wherein the glorified DJ bins the decks and get’s all arty on our collective asses. Only when you’re as full of ideas as Mr G - see also his previous excellent, and sadly overlooked, album Unreasonable Behaviour - then you probably have films roaming around in your head on a regular basis (which must be a bit disconcerting). so the act of sound-tracking one is in fact eminently reasonable, and the end results, whilst tailing off slightly at the end, are once again effortlessly fine.


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Alex Gold
Back From A Break (Xtravaganza)

It’s been pointed out before and doubtless will be pointed out again that dance music is currently dead (rock is still the current ‘new black’, but beware, it’s on the wane), naturally real music fans don’t buy into genre wars in quite the same way ‘style makers’ do, something is either good or it ain’t and, on the whole, this is. No big surprises mind you from this progressive trance DJ much lauded in Ibizan circles – the title refers to his recovery from a serious paragliding accident which left him with a broken back – but his first artist album is none the worse for all that, and hits all the buttons you would both expect and hope for


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