Nocturnal Koreans is a testament to their continued relevance.

Day Of The Dead not only represents a triumph of admin on the part of its curators, but the sweetest love letter to the Grateful Dead imaginable. Deadheads will adore it; the unconverted may find themselves a lot more Dead-curious.

It’s a shame then that the music too often tips into the bland, with too much fey folkiness to handle in one sitting.

Santana IV rolls back the years to the time when the band melded spicy percussive Latin grooves with searing blues-rock. Seraphic-voiced Ron Isley fronts a couple of tunes but it’s the spacey, psychedelic instrumental, Fillmore East, and addictive salsa-rock of Anywhere You Want To Go, that impress the most.

Particularly bad is For The Kids, which could come straight from an amateur production of High School Musical (complete with repellent husky spoken-word middle eight), while the just up-to-scratch Beck track, Time Wind, and his presence on the record as a whole, only really serves to illustrate how poor the songs now are.

There are touches of My Morning Jacket in the vocals too, but in chief it is the already-mentioned artists who dominate Dolls Of Highland and if you’ve been missing them a lot, then this is an album not to be missed, filled with yearning and melody.

One hates to say it of a pleasant record, but much of it seems like background music for shiny-looking bars, where people pose around before the action starts.

Lacking a common language (they were forced to communicate via sign language) the sessions--recorded in a garage on the outskirts of Lisbon--have nevertheless resulted in a winning hybrid of styles.

For all the exuberant looseness of their recordings, most remain essentially song-based, skilfully produced and slyly focused.

While there is little new ground being broken on this debut album – DJ Spinna and Onra have both pursued similar territory--Kaytranada adds a pop nous and Dilla-like beat-making precision to the equation.

British Road Movies comfortably flits between exhilaration and devastation, with the production careful to mimic the song’s subjects. It’s an album that firmly points Jackson in a new direction, allowing her to flourish on her own terms.

The sound overall holds the germ of the sort of ominous, steady-paced material that goes over well in stadium support slots.

There’s the odd filler track, such as Phantom Bride--an experimental shriekathon, which even guitar parts from special guest Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains can’t save--but those aside, Gore is an album with the depth and emotional range that Deftones fans have come to expect.

Alas Salvation is defined by being undefinable, and thrives off the surprises it delivers over its 40-plus minutes. If the execution isn’t perfect, it nevertheless reveals a scope of ambition that should serve the three-piece well further down the road.

Take your cues from Twin Peaks and find solace in their best effort yet.

It’s warm, rewarding and a very, very comfortable listen. And therefore definitely not pysch.

Their previous album Tincian revolutionised new Welsh language music and won Best Album at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for its troubles. The follow-up is equally as dark with a dystopian edge that suggests we’re all doomed. Yet there is a salvation of sorts in the band’s glorious three part female harmonies and in lead singer Lisa Jên’s centrifugal force-of-nature presence.

Shauf’s musical ability is impressive, tackling all but the strings, but his vocal tone, much like a bore at a party, is unwavering, Elliott Smith-esque and never with the variety you’d expect meeting 10 new individuals.

Their best album in some considerable time.

Another fautless collection from Nadler, fast becoming one of the most distinctive voices in American music. There’s comfort in melancholy, as someone once said.

While producer Tucker Martine provides inspired, inventive backdrops, Blau’s powers of interpretation make these familiar songs (To Love Somebody, No Regrets etc), very much his own; an unexpected marvel.

Summer Of ’13 is a welcome changing of the guard from an occasionally miserablist stalwart and hero. Disregard it at your peril.

It’s by no means intended as a “greatest hits” package--you may rue the absence of ringers such as Warm Leatherette or Do The Mussolini (Headkick) – but as a snapshot, you can’t fault its clarity.

A Splash Of Colour will resonate most with those who frequented the Groovy Cellar on a Friday night. The rest might find that three discs is an overdose.

Baird has created an album that moves flawlessly from ruby to flint to kaleidoscope without breaking.

It has all the majesty one expects from the contributors, and all the ingredients that one expects to result in its pieces being used for indie film soundtracks and the like.

In the now vastly-populated electronic marketplace, this is an album well worth investigating as an example of passionate scientists adding the music’s past immortal strategies to the planet’s ever-buzzing soundtrack to take it proudly into the future, rather than contenting themselves with replicating hoary old blueprints.

Much of it, admittedly, treads familiar, fanbase-appeasing ground, though the beautifully-crafted, Jeff Lynne-esque Losing It has broader mainstream potential and even the uninitiated are advised to heed the title of the atypically graceful, string-kissed Come And Listen.