From time to time, pop music spawns something you can be proud of. Something whose intrinsic value reaches beyond the “guilty pleasure” status. Lily Konigsberg knows, and it is probably high time we talked about her.

At first, but only at first, and at a distracted initial spin, DROTT’s Orcus drifts towards the foggy moors of art rock and post-progressive, right where their boundaries blend together, and you can’t help but hear King Crimson’s Discipline.

Manic Street Preachers have always been a band striving for epic. The Ultra Vivid Lament is no different. An open, far-reaching valley nestled in a grassy space surrounded by low peaks.

As soon as “Hidden hands” kicks in and its open chords stamp a sonic wave in your silence, you remember why we miss live gigs. Its vaguely post-punk stride proceeds at a jangle pace; as if Modern English (“I Melt With You” era) tried to imitate The Byrds. Motorists are a live creature, and that is rather obvious towards the middle of the album (“Through to you”, “New day”), but one should not underestimate the drive this Canadian trio manages to convey by means of an original take on well-crafted riffage.

There was a time in the early ‘90s when two unlikely points on the map of the United States became the centre of the musical world.

Superheroes and metal music: who would have thought? Well, lots of people, apparently, as the blend of gifted stock characters and the hefty offspring of rock music is anything but new or original.

Let’s get straight to the point: this album is irritating and it’s kitsch. It’s not your standard kitsch mind you, it’s the kind you’d find if you mixed Gilbert & George with 1970’s American Bible Belt depression and then forced it though an English boarding school.

This is everything but a claustrophobic piece of sonic art. On the contrary, this is Stott at his best, a composer whose futuristic music is well-rooted in today’s world.

Lewis Pesacov’s music carries a rare and delicate voice in today’s contemporary classical music.

Two evenings of experimental and daring music transport festival-goers at St John-at-Hackney and Kings Place.

You of All Things re-elaborates without overturning or, worse, overdoing.

One can’t help but being drawn in by the output, rather than the method, by the pure creative act, instead of the artistic potency

An overall homage to three decades of glitch make this record one of the most interesting electronic debuts of the year.

Forget the minimal techno you have known so far, because Kangding Ray has managed to manipulate the very essence of the genre to combine the raw (the glitch) with the refined (the melody).

The notes slip into unpredictable colours, the moods change in a rapid display of pleasant precariousness, but the sound remains rooted to a core that is unchanging and easily identifiable throughout the record.

This is an uninterrupted, dynamic journey to the purity of sound, to decomposition, rather than its opposite, to the destruction of music in the search of silence

Afrofuturism and retroactive joys dominate this special Record Store Day release.