Scratch dances merrily over the electronics, but the two parties rarely connect in a cohesive way.

It's chaotic and confounding. It will frustrate as much as it delights. And no, not everything they throw at the wall manages to stick. But my, what a lovely mess they've made.

It's managed that rarest of feats, a techno record with a heart.

America is a profound statement; splicing Fuck Buttons with Sigur Rós in a state-of-the-union address balanced between hope, despair and an accomplished collision of strings, brass, soaring choirs and beats.

This is a slew of hackneyed teenage poetry, trowelled onto a bed of sift-rock cliché.

It's thrilling. It's pantomime. It's what Ross does best.

Like all the great British pop records of the past five years, Devotion combines the present and the past to make a record that sounds both contemporary and timeless.

The only clanger is 'Do It'.... This aside, it's a nest of treasures.

Instead of an album hurtling 100mph in one of those directions, Fragrant World feels like the work of a band with stabilisers on.

Get lost in the haze.

The record as a whole is full of wan acoustic guitar tunes in desperate need of that mysterious quality of oomph.

If you don't already know the Mac, treat this as your way in. You won't be coming out in a hurry.

It's great.

Solid singer-songwriter fare with more longing than your teenage years.

A Canadian producer who manages to strike a balance between the sturdy emotiveness of pop and the shimmering beguilement of ambience.

Gatekeeper's Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkel crunch elements of '80s post-industrial dance, horror/sci-fi soundtracks and computer game music into an enjoyably garish whole.

Melodies bristle, harmonies surge, hooks fly dense as bullets in The Raid and Joe Keefe's lush stoner vocals trace out stories of neighbour-annoying hedonism, missing home and boozing and rocking all the way to the afterlife. Fun-drenched.

Flawed, but impressive.

The result is a weighty collection of tunes that toughens up the band's predilection of a softly rendered, Cure-indebted jangle and nudges the harder edges of Green Day's stadium punk.

While its synthetic atmospheres initially intrigue... The music wavers indecisively between structure and formlessness, ending up as curiously misshapen objects, half-finished designs.

The TNGHT EP packs five explosive instrumental hip-hop tracks, every one dripping with each producer's trademark sonic flourishes.

The Killer starts out monumentally grave, but by its close the sunlight is flooding in.

These songs contain the record's protest element as well as its exemplary musicality: heartbreaking soul choruses, classical samples and '80s rocksteady rhythms.

It's a lot to take in, sure, but each listen is as fresh as the first.

Shrines is a euphoric treat in its own right, made all the more thrilling by its heady potential.

One quibble is that Gossamer never really comes down off its Haribo rush, which gets exhausting. That said, when they do ease up, as on the boudoir-funk 'Constant Conversations', it resembles the two-a-penny synthpop that clogs the blogosphere.

Not be the most inspiring stuff, perhaps, but it is bloody good fun.

Brain-rinsingly psychedelic without needing to tell you about it, they deserve to sit at the table with Current 93 and post-Syd/pre-stadium Pink Floyd.