The Nextwave Sessions EP careers wildly between moods and atmospheres, and sounds like a band happy to let go and experiment because they’re comfortable with who they are.

As a whole, though, the album’s overall feel is still deadeningly generic.

Mostly, Paracosm is Chromatics if their nocturnal danger was replaced by nocturnal emissions, or Beach House if they got so stoned they forgot to change chords for minutes at a time.

While the music works when it’s slow, sparse and emotional, the band’s debut comes into its own when it steps up the pace.

It’s bonkers, but it’s hard not to be wooed by Moore’s outsider charm.

As ever, he relies too much on accident to achieve interesting textures, flavours and rhythm, and only two tracks--‘Grapes’ and ‘Cheap Treat’--stand out as cohesive pieces.

It’s not an essential listen but it does exhibit plenty of moody gravitas.

His reinvention nears Hot Chip’s disco-pop on ‘Pagliaccio’, flirts with hip-hop via the big beat and looping riff of ‘Turbine’, and blends lyrical emotiveness with slow-tempo electronic touches on ‘SIHFIY’.

The emphasis is on soft, kinetic beats, with melodies pulled out of unpromising materials--discordant synths, laser pulses--and it’s one whacking great testament to what dance music can do with a bit of imagination.

Pond’s fifth album, Hobo Rocket, bristles with unrestrained creativity and sonic exploration, while verging away from pastoral prog towards a harder garage blues slant.

As ever, their relentless chirpiness can grate, but the orchestral indulgence has been pared back, giving ringleader Tim DeLaughter’s songwriting room to breathe.

To The Happy Few might be a fairly transparent attempt to relive Medicine’s salad days, but there are many worse sources they could mine for inspiration.

Uncanny Valley is like listening to a latter-day Oasis album: too weakly reminiscent of past achievements to really satisfy.

Elegant and unusual, this is a gem.

Speck’s mimicry is little more than pale homage to a real eccentric, highlighting the gentle sadness and underlying soulfulness of Pink’s music. PDA lacks this, and comes across as frivolous.

A rough and rabid ride.

The ramshackle energy and unpredictability of their live show has been sanded down into something more clinical and precise.

He and the four gents in his Revue are here to remind you there's nothing more thrilling than the primal howl of proto-rock'n'roll, and this, their third album, is their most convincing sermon yet.

BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.

Johns’ 10-track debut solo album is a placid but gutsy amble that pitches him as Bill Callahan dealing with a lazy hangover the morning after a pub crawl with Guy Garvey.

They’ve kept those colours nailed firmly to the mast, and never more so than on ‘No Money Music’, an aptly named track that adopts the aural scare tactics of Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’.

It’s a bit nuts, but the ominous, shimmering psychedelia of standout tracks ‘Three Frendz’ and ‘Angel Of The North’ elevate the album beyond a quirky, Watership Down-esque curiosity.

Elegant is the way the record confines Diane’s sadness to the past. It doesn’t wallow, it reassesses.

Not only do his [Reid's] noises fail to carry the songs, he often loses the songs altogether. They drift away from him when he should be dominating them. And this album is a missed opportunity.

The result is an eccentric grab-bag of styles and influences, with enough harps on it to keep Joanna Newsom fans happy, and even a retro 4/4 beat dancing in on the aptly named ‘Disco Compilation’.

Ultimately, it’s sketchy and uneven, ridiculous in as many of the wrong ways as the right, but not quite the disaster its tracklisting would suggest.

You may well be charmed by Ghost Outfit’s acidic battery; but there’s so much going on, you may have trouble remembering how their songs go.

The Bardo Story sounds like a collection of rediscovered ’60s and ’70s gems uploaded to YouTube.