SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN is a band in the loose sense of the word; it's better described as a banner under which a collective of musical freaks have gathered. So when they toured Europe in September 2006, and ended up in the same room as Psych/Kraut/Hard-rockers CIRCLE in Tampere-Finland, they decide to jam together and record all of it. This session was edited down to a total of 40-minutes which wanders ongoing through free folk, psych, improv, spaced out- hippy jamming & noisy-rock bizareness. The collaboration of both America's & Finland's weirdest, is nothing less than sensational.

On the heels of their latest full-length, Abandoned Language, MC Dälek and beat-master Oktopus unfurl a collection of dream-like instrumentals, ten-ton remixes (including Enon’s unforgettable “In This City”) and scarce gems from the last seven years. Deadverse Massive Volume 1 is no odds n’ sods collection, but rather an addendum to a body of work that already rests comfortably atop underground hip-hop’s proverbial heap. Over the ominous grind of metallic friction and industrial-strength beats, MC Dälek flows like silk on glass, foregoing all the usual hip-hop lyrical conventions for something darker, more textural, and infinitely memorable.

Sixty-one tracks deep and sprawled over three CDs (two thirds of which is exclusive), this new compilation from the Chicks On Speed stable is a vibrant cross-section of what's what in the world of leftfield female music - cramming the likes of Bjork, Gudrun Gut, Le Tigre, Cobra Killer, Ana Da Silva and The Slits into the same catalogue number. Spanning the decades, 'Girl Monster' has appearances from the 1970's onwards - providing a relatively coherent vision that calls on punk, electro, avant-garde, pop and rock, and features a vast set of liner notes that seem like a music lover's notice-board. Picking things to discuss seems a little pointless given that there's nearly four hours of material harking from a spectrum of origins... but we'll give it a go anyhow. Starting with CD 1, a brief intro gives way to the buzzing electro rush of Scream Club featuring Peaches, sounding much like you'd expect a song called 'Fine As F*ck' to, before Le Tigre pop up on the sloganeering 'Hot Topic'. Blasting through, Barbara Morgenstern judders away on 'Mountain Place', Ana Da Silva gets all ethereal on 'Full Moon', The Slits get low-slung on a live version of 'Typical Girls', whilst Planningrock aim for Kate Bush on the bonkers 'Changes'. With other obvious highlights including Bjork's 'Storm' siren call, the post-punk rabble of Delta 5 and Gudrun Gut's loping Warhol nursery rhyme ('Girl Boogie') - this is a triple CD set that justifies it's length admirably. Pretty in pink!

Arch doodler David Shrigley has compiled this double disc collection of 39 songs from 39 artists, with each contribution drawing on Shrigley's lyrics as appeared in 2005's Worried Noodles songbook. The roster of contributing artists is impressive to say the least: Deerhoof, Grizzly Bear, Franz Ferdinand, Liars, Dirty Projectors, Scout Niblett, Final Fantasy, Mt. Eerie, Hot Chip and Max Tundra to name but a few. If all that wasn't enough to reel you in, the discs come housed in a particularly fancy book format. Of course, it's the music that's foremost here, and right from the get go you'll find yourself potholing your way through an Aladdin's cave of hip leftfield indie rock, with particular highpoints on the first disc coming from David Byrne, Yacht, Psapp and Grizzly Bear's Animal Collective heads-up, 'Blackcurrent Jam'. Disc two yields a similarly sumptuous line-up, kicking off with Dirty Projectors and Deerhoof offshoot The Curtains before spiralling out with Max Tundra's singularly weird electronic pop. The second disc belongs to Mt. Eerie however, whose 'Sentimental Song' is just immensely beautiful - often jarringly so against Shrigley's whimsical lyrics (e.g. "Why is there a picture of a penis on your fridge door? / It makes me feel awkward whenever I'm in your kitchen."). Lovely.

Since a listening copy of 'Comicopera' turned up a few weeks back, it's hardly left the office stereo. At 62 years of age the ex-Soft Machine drummer could have easily called it a day by now, he's made his mark on the music scene both as a member of one of progressive rock's most important acts and also as a hugely creative solo artist in his own right. But at an age where most artists shrivel up only to emerge for cash-in live shows or charity appearances, Wyatt just seems to get better and better and with "Comicopera" he has pieced together his most beguiling album to date and quite easily one of the years most incredible releases. 'Comicopera' is divided into three acts, the first 'Lost in Noise' being the most straightforward sonically, highlighting Wyatt's talent for writing leftfield pop music of the most sublime kind. The second act 'The Here and the Now' is jazzy and playful, while the third 'Away with the Fairies' is the most unusual, with tracks sung in Italian and Spanish and sparsely accompanied by discordant, dark instrumentals. Wyatt has long been championed by critics but largely ignored by the record-buying public so it seems right that Domino, drunk with their successes with the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand have put their funds into something truly remarkable and culturally important and given one of the millennium's most fascinating albums adequate support. With songs such as the loungey 'Just as You Are' the comical 'Be Serious' and the melancholy 'You You' straddling such oddities as 'Cancion de Julieta' and the Gamelan-inspired 'Pastafari' there seems no doubt that a new generation of Wyatt listeners will emerge from the mists and will discover a world of genuinely forward-thinking music. The rest of us will simply be dying to hear what the great man does next, one gets the feeling that 'Comicopera' is just the beginning of a very rewarding relationship. Absolutely essential purchase - and without any question one of the year's very best albums. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (Boomkat)

Five years since the band's last full-length record 'An Evil Heat' comes the next part of Oxbow's retreat from the now hugely trendy metal genre. Fair enough they've never made straight-up metal, but 'The Narcotic Story' is their most smouldering record to date, closer to the twisted blues of Tom Waits than the grind of many other acts on Hydrahead. Fronted by the hulking charisma of Eugene Robinson, one part scholar and one part bodybuilder (he has a penchant for getting his kit off on stage too) the band have always managed to awe when playing live, and these tracks get closer to that experience, subtly filling the music with a latent energy and each lyric with a deep aggression, an explosive feeling that never quite lets itself come out on the record, rather you are left to imagine it after the fact. Indeed listening to 'The Narcotic Story' is like reading a book, it has definite chapters and no stand out tracks, embedding its songs in soundcapes and a mire of effect - I was hardly surprised when I read that it had been recorded by the legendary Joe Chiccarelli who most notably produced Frank Zappa. As opposed to the albums produced by Steve Albini, who would leave the songs raw and open, Chiccarelli helps the band cover the songs in a mist of gloom and suicidal intent which brings out intricacies in their music I've never really noticed, and at times their sound is close to the doom you might expect to hear on the Southern Lord label, albeit filtered through a cocktail of prescription drugs. A beguiling chapter in the evolution of a quite singular band, and one for fans of Mike Patton's sprawling adventures, this is an album that requires you to take notice and probably take something else too. Epic stuff.

Gigantic. White-hot stars suddenly huff off their outer layers of gas and debris and collapse into their own gaping void of everlasting density and nothingness. Hammered into shape in the glowing furnace of their most recent European tour, these monolithic tracks are the closest Birchville Cat Motel has come to capturing the gargantuan shoegazing nirvana of their monsterous current live assault. A ritualistic, full frequency, bulldozing of superheated twitter and swirl, swimming in a turbulent undercurrent of molten, sub-metallized, dream-rrrock. A hurricane of sound singing the everlasting lullaby of the universe.

A quartet from San Francisco heavily influenced by the experimentalism of psychedelia, classical minimalism, and garage rock excess, started as an experiment in rhythmic primitivism and group improvisation. The current roster brings a more structured rock approach to its performances, utilizing a traditional lineup of drums, bass, organ, guitar, and vocals. "Wooden Shjips are from San Francisco, but the concentrated ferocity of the freakouts on their two very-underground releases-a white-label ten-inch EP (the band gave away the first 300 copies) and a clear-vinyl single ("Dance, California")-arrives via the '70s Germanic-guitar lunacy of Guru Guru and the confrontational repetition of VU."-David Fricke, Rolling Stone First 2,000 copies of the CD include a bonus disc with their early vinyl output and an unedited version of "Dance, California"

Hailed by jarvis cocker as 'the best lyricist working in the us today', jeffrey lewis has turned his hand this time to reworking a selection of songs by the legendary anarchist punk band crass!! these new versions, in jeffrey's glorious folk rock, psychedelic style, lose none of the political power of the originals and sound fresher than ever. super deluxe die cut package with changeable sleeve and fold out comic book featuring jeffrey's awesome artwork. cd only on rough trade.