Close To The Noise Floor covers the full spectrum from sublime to ridiculous, but the sheer range of sonic innovation, warped beauty and dark humour here is hugely impressive.

Some of it’s inescapably retro, such as The Times’ I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape and Firmanent & The Elements’ The Festival Of Frothy Muggament. However, there are plenty of better-known names, sympaticos such as The Monochrome Set and TV Personalities, as well as an early demo from Doctor And The Medics, Barbara Can’t Dance, whose number one single Spirit In The Sky was the commercial highpoint of this movement.

This second album has the same sickening impact: 11 cold and merciless slashes of amorphous goth-pop that dish out sparse high-wire melodies, as on Harpstrings, Blume and the violent waltz of Velvet, like glimpses of sunlight to a basement gimp.

[Rise] sounds like it’s been designed solely with American radio very much in mind. Things pick up quickly from there though, You Have Come To The Right Place, puts things very much back on track, wilfully over-the-top, a grand façade covering the band’s broken veneer.

The songs are tight and feisty, with guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof and Rick Van Zandt trading off each other with flexibility and style, Howe giving full vent to his range and depth.

A whole album at 100 mph needs skill at the wheel not to start sounding slow, and for all the sensation of manic burn-out, every track has disciplined intricacy, using hairpin turns and jolting tape-slices to sculpt the gush of drums and feedback into prog-garage shape.

Songs such as the rolling The Devil Is In Her Eyes and the carefully layered Isabel’s Daughter are the work of a group who have absorbed much of what’s great about rock’n’roll and turned it loose in the present.

Aat its best this reassuringly svelte and only occasionally sparse eight-track EP is a thing of beauty.

Marlowe’s Revenge proves that his creative well is far from dry.

Civil Wars’ John Paul White and Alabama Shakes’ Ben Tanner leapt at the chance to produce his fourth album in 40 years and results are pleasing.

Envisioning sci-fi detective themes (Chasing The Tail Of A Dream), mariachi manhunts (It’s You) and Wall-E Of Arabia (Connector), it’s an imaginative if one-level album, animating only for the scuzzy motorik blues pop of Million Eyes, Fear Machine and Holy Revelation or the crisp, catchy psych-pop of Miss Fortune.

Cue nuggets of advice from someone who’s had his own share of knocks, self-inflicted and otherwise, as Simpson and the band tackle brassy R&B, Memphis soul and swampy country, augmented by semi-orchestral strings and bound together by his extraordinary baritone.

Though their trademark dynamics of rise and fall, and tension and release are firmly in evidence, there remains a mesmerising sheen throughout that’s utterly hypnotic.

Despite, or because of, its aptly era-appropriate brevity, English Heart is immaculate, and a lot better than it needs to be. Warm and beautiful.

Fans of Santana’s first trio of albums have wished for this project to happen for years. Now it’s here, most are likely to be very pleasantly surprised by how successfully it’s been done.

A lot of this record sounds like Psalm 69 if you turned the drum machine to the ‘Blur’ setting, a snarling hyperspeed punkdustrial vomitorium of choppy samples and churning metal riffs. It’s not all armed audio warfare, though.

d Three Men’s engaging mix of heaviness of duty and lightness of touch resonates timelessly.

Abstract and startling, listen to the hefty groove of Prayers/Triangles or the slow blooming Phantom Bride and feel the earth move beneath your feet.

Cartoony, authentic, moving and daft, and the true heirs to the Ramones, Shonen Knife are just great.

The thick fuzz of guitars is at the metal end of grunge, impact and volume kept almost oppressively in the red. But once you settle into Kentucky’s MO, the band’s songwriting strengths and musical reach are still here.

Washes of keyboards, a thunderous tattooing of drums and great, empty atmospheric spaces make for an inestimable, all-consuming listen, not least in the fragile-sounding Lacuna/Sunrise and the roiling I.M.S.

This album reflects its maker--a restless spirit that now and then stumbles on something special.

Hard truths are faced down and bad voodoo gets annihilated throughout in unflinching, life-affirming, hard-rocking glory.

Their 1997 self-titled release marked their effective rebirth, signalling the end of that period when they used outside writers and became themselves again. But no album since has had quite the consistency and urgency of this, their 17th studio record. Bang Zoom Crazy... Hello.

A gentle fleshing-out of tracks might’ve boosted it, but this is as close as the ever-youthful 74-year-old has yet come to doing an American Recordings. Autumnal, rather than valedictory.

They’re on rollicking form here, mainman Lips playing several face-melting solos (Gun Control being typically OTT) and tackling zombies and runaway trains, alongside the more thoughtful Forgive Don’t Forget and Lemmy tribute It’s Your Move.

Wild, erratic and out for adventure, your mother warned you not to hang out with albums like this.

This album is a vindication of the instinct that less is more. It’s a magnificent testament to a man who has been scarred and damaged by his journey, but whose lust for life remains gloriously intact.