Record Label/Freestylers Records
Format/Single
Street Value ***

The growling, scuzzy 'Cracks' is okay with grumbling acid breaks and parps but it's a squarely nostaligic thing. Listening out for further techno/house twists on new album, 'Calling Me Home'. It does a passable job.

Record Label/4th Note Records
Format/EP
Street Value **

Brouhaha play arty, muscular funk. Grizzly guitar riffs are adorned with mad horn arrangements and underpinned by drums courtesy of Animal from the Muppets. Off beat film samples make perfect sense in the midst of it all, adding a little bit of B-Movie kitsch to tracks like Thunderbone.Brouhaha sound like a thousand TV cop show themes put through a blender – and I mean that as a compliment!

Record Label/Counter
Format/Single
Street Value ***

If memory serves us correct Michael Johnson used to be in the Lilys – the retro-band that had a sizeable hit in the UK with ‘Nanny in Manhattan’. Not that he had much input there, if truth be known, which will come as no surprise to those who have heard his likeably deranged whoops and grunts on the ‘Ape School’ debut. And what we have here is everybody else’s take on those whoops and grunts – a remix EP featuring the best of what Ninja Tune and Counter records have to offer: Daedelus, Pop Levi, Yppah. They were good tunes then. They’re good tunes now. Only they’ve dropped a little more acid.

Record Label/One Little Indian
Format/Single
Street Value ***

We love Asobi Seksu. That’s a given for any self-respecting music lover and we’re absolutely smitten with Yuki Chikudate’s dreamy and generous sugar-candy sighs leaping out of the speaker like the kisses of an angel on occasion – but there’s a point at which those sweeping glacial dreamscapes occasionally collapse under the weight of their own luxuriousness – and this is one of them. Choc full of sleigh bells and not just for Xmas. Sounds lovely but it just doesn't do anything.

Record Label/Sunday Best
Format/Single
Street Value ***

This jaunty little indie track sounds like Toploader playing the old Grange Hill theme. Dusty rhodes keyboards skip along under Manu’s French accent bringing to mind a quotation by iconic Victorian art critic John Ruskin: “One cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin” Happy and sunlit, Rev Tilsley scores top marks for penguinicity

Record Label/Moshi Moshi Singles Club
Format/Single
Street Value **

27-year-old Norwegian producer Joachim Dyrdahl aka diskJokke was discovered by Prins Thomas and kicked off his career releasing singles on Thomas’ label Full Pupp. After 2008’s critically acclaimed debut album, Staying In, he’s back with Rosenrod, the new single on Moshi Moshi Singles Club on August 24th.

Record Label/Colourschool
Format/Single
Street Value ***

The 80s revivalists continue their rummage through the vault of neo-psychedelia with a rather frantic burst of energy. Intense, determined and as hopelessly overwrought as Got Talent’s Susan Boyle. Packs in elements of Sparks, The Teardrop Explodes, The Cult, Hüsker Dü, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and The Associate’s ‘Party Fears Two’.

Record Label/Neapolitan
Format/Single
Street Value ***

What a chirpy, fizzy, happy happenstance comes tumbling out of Merseyside. On the evidence of ‘I Go I Go I Go’ alone the noughties is about to embrace the kind of breezy, kooky electro-pop that made bands like Red Box, Blacmange and Stephen Tin Tin Duffy such an unorthodox pop joy in the 1980s and Simian such a one-hit-wonder in the 90s. Here’s comes summer!

Record Label/Sunday Best
Format/Single
Street Value ***

The boys who first came to our attention for taking in waifs and strays like Terry Hall and Ian Brown and contributing to all manner of movie soundtracks release the first single from their new album, ‘Rum & Coke’, the follow-up to last year’s ‘Speakers and Tweakers’. The single –Ashley Slater from Freak Power – recalls the perky, soulful, feelgood grooves of mid-eighties disco with just a dash of acid. Reggae legend Gregory Isaccs turns up on the flipside. It’s a bit frivolous and light but it might be the only real substitute we have for summer this year. ‘Rum & Coke’ is released on Sunday Best in June.

Record Label/One Little Indian
Format/Single
Street Value ****

Anthony Hagerty must surely know he’s arrived when you have ex-students like Chris Turpin ripping him off. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s almost the sincerest way of proving you have few ideas of your own. The ingredients are all there, but they have neither the soul nor sense of purpose to inspire them. The first three tracks of the EP make heroic and partially successfully attempts to reproduce the boozy revelry of a night on the lash in a way that’s not unlike having Jack White and PJ Harvey front the Scissor Sisters on a tour of Irish taverns. The religious invocations, the timorous then fist-to-fury hollering – pure Hagerty. Competent, occasionally beguiling but as derivative as a bag of dodgy futures and options from Bernard Madoff.

Record Label/Vulture
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Some stodgy synths and assorted sighs just about create a credible context for the glam Kings Cliffe trio to strut their slightly camp and slightly laborious take on further 80s retro. Obviously their dads told them about the Rave culture of the early 90s too.

Record Label/Cooking Vinyl
Format/Album
Street Value ***

Record Label/Gizeh Records
Format/Album
Street Value ***

Hello, Goodbye. Recorded back in February 2008 after an on-off separation that saw members of the band pursue other interests. Now they've disbanded for good. And what better way to celebrate their divorce than by releasing their eagerly awaited sophmore album - a follow up to 'New General Catalogue' released back in January 2005. Let's face it, the omens aren't good.

Record Label/CatCutter Records
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Take the trembling vibrato of a young (or even elderly) Feargal Sharkey, clue-in heaps of euphoric strings and the drama and intensity of a tornado whipping through Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and you have the wonderfully named ‘Mr Bones and the Dreamers’. Describing themselves as a ‘literal and symbolic sanctuary from the ills of the modern world’ Kieran Goddard and his crew of rhapsodic exiles offer up an open-mouth, hair-tugging taker on Epic Rock. Bullshit aside, this is really quite good. Timing seems a bit off going into the chorus, but given the faintly hysterical condition of the band, it’s probably inevitable. Shamelessly overwrought and overblown but all the more fantastic for it. A bit like putting The Dears in a bag with The Fureys.

Record Label/Flock
Format/Album
Street Value **

For those who don’t know, Angus Stone is the male-half of Australian brother-sister act, Angus and Julia Stone – loved by all manner of hirsute bands, including The Magic Numbers. An album that threatens no end of stormy weather but ends up blowing only the kindest of sugar-kisses. More absorbing than any dry suit. Sweet yet existential

Record Label/Columbia
Format/Single
Street Value ****

The second track to be taken from their forthcoming debut album – released April 13th. The album was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Dave Sardy (Oasis/Marilyn Manson).

Record Label/Eat Sleep Records
Format/Album
Street Value ****

Gomez mark a return to their freewheeling and experimental roots with the release of new album, ‘A New Tide’ on April 6th on Eat Sleep Records. So prepare whirling psychedelia of ‘Win Park Slope’ and ‘Bone Tired’; the country-fried rock of ‘Little Pieces’; and the eccentric, elasticated blues of ‘If You Ask Nicely’.

Record Label/Fat Cat
Format/Album
Street Value ***

The Rank Deluxe’s debut album ‘You Decide’ is finally released through Fat Cat on March 30th 2009. Due to the robust nature of band politics, several members of the band have since exploded. Tom Battle replaces Lewis Dyer as lead guitarist, co vocalist and co-controversy figure and the drummer had shed his skins.

Record Label/Black Records
Format/Album
Street Value *****

Spanking new album from Iain Archer (ex Snow Patrol guitarist/songwriter). Review to follow.

Record Label/Parlophone
Format/Album
Street Value ****

Over hyped underachiever or unrecovered genius: who knows? Recorded over a month of sessions in autumn 2008 at London's legendary Olympic Studios with producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Cranberries, Kaiser Chiefs), the album features Graham Coxon, Dot Allison and the kind of classic Morricone string and production signatures that put The Last Shadow Puppets firmly on the map. Patchy in places but a wooziful return to form.

Record Label/Ninja Tune
Format/Single
Street Value ***

We are talking 80s retro, but not 80s retro in a poppy and chart-friendly MGMT or Empire of the Sun way, but rather the kind of thing that would have had Warp and a bus-load of Sheffield nite-lifers positively gizzing at the mouth had it been cast in the city of steel in its bonkers 80s heyday. ‘Tunnels’ wet swampy bass and warm fuzzy keys ooze like Barbarella’s love-stuff over stuttering beats and some hot, steamy uprisings. Good for pressing trousers if another immediate use fails to spring to mind. Touch of acid-indigestion elsewhere on the EP, but that’s okay, as it’s more than ably resolved by some fruity, skittish vocals and heaps of android love. Punkish and frisky.

Record Label/Hell Yeah Recordings
Format/Single
Street Value **

Some throbbing techno beats and lashings of acid strobe effects mark the entrance of respected Italian duo, Blatta & Inesha. Like a couple of vagrants shuttling between one station and another, the pair have been sleeping on the underground for several years, only venturing into the sunlight for a couple of resident nights in their native Sicily. Championed by the likes of Ann Nightingale and the anonymous drones at Fabric. Best played loud very late at night in some remote warehouse or other.

Record Label/Ninja Tune
Format/Single
Street Value ***

She might bang on to the likes of The Guardian about how 'ard it's been living on the fringes of society after a brutally middle-class Jamaican upbringing but hard-luck stories aside this has to be one of the best debut singles from a complex talent in a long time. Dripping with smart and sexy poetry and showcasing one of the finest oboe riffs on record, 'The Key' packs an emotional punch in an increasingly crude and superficial world. And so creamy smooth with it.

Record Label/Cooking Vinyl
Format/Album
Street Value ***

The Broken Family Band has announced release their 107th album, 'Please And Thank You' on Monday 20th April, preceded by a single Salivating on Monday 6th April. Mixed by veteran producer George Shilling, Please and Thank You is, according to singer and lyricist Steve Adams, an album loosely centred around the uncontroversial yet indeterminate idea of “being nice to people”.

Record Label/Ninja Tune
Format/Album
Street Value ***

Crazy experiemntal dude, Daedelus and his crazy Ophelia wife sort renew their marriage vows in the most unexpected and magical of ways. A bit like bossa legend Astrud Gilberto strung out on acid and stroking a cat. It really don't get more mellow than this.

Record Label/One Little Indian
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Lead off track from a new album on which ex Delgado Paul Savage features (whose past work includes Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai, The Twilight Sad and Malcolm Middleton amongst others). The single comes ahead of solid new album, 'Touchdown' which gets its release in April.

Record Label/Nettwerk Productions
Format/Album
Street Value *****

Third single to be taken from the current album, 'Velocifero'. The band have just confirmed an Eastern European tour with Depeche Mode in May, which will be preceded by a South American headlining tour and a co-headlining US tour with The Faint. They also appear to be penning songs for daft old mouthy pop bint, Christina Aguilera. They only love you when your seventeen, when you're twenty-one, you're no fun.

Record Label/Parlophone
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Bat For Lashes releases the single ‘Daniel’ on 1 March, the first to be taken from the forthcoming album Two Suns. Having already graced the covers of Dazed & Confused and Plan B in the UK and Fader in the US, 2009 is set to be the year of the Bat and marks a triumphant return for the Mercury and Brit nominated artist.

Record Label/Big Dada
Format/12" Ltd Edition - digital download
Street Value ***

Not sure which is the more seductive: the sleazy, ruffling beats, the anxious, stabbing keys, the groaning, horny vocal, or the controversy the song quite clearly intends to whip up. Clue in a touch of Studio 54, throw in some ice and a dash of DFA and you have a fun and chunky slice of dirty-disco. Makes under-age sex seem positively risk-free by comparison. Here come the girls. The little girls ...

Record Label/Ninja Tune
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Every so often you need a big throbbing synthy bass thing to wake you up and this satisfies that kink quite squarely. Tough as gristle, loud as semtex and thought-provoking as a gruelling hard-shag by a Greek Philosopher of your choice. Some folks might remember them for their 2005 remix of Coldcut’s ‘Everything Is Under Control’ and for a series of touch-ups that include The Cooper Temple Clause, Dr Octagon and Roots Manuva. The hammer of the gods title track comes backed with shitloads of edits and dub mixes. Available as a 12" limited edition and download single.

Record Label/One Little Indian
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Apparently, Asobi Seksu is colloquial Japanese for 'playful sex'. So should you wander into a record store in either Tokyo or Osaka looking for New York's Asobi Seksu please be mindful of how you make your request to the girl or boy behind the counter as you may get a trifle more than the enormously sparkling ‘Familiar Light’. Flooding the speaker like some kind of sonic tsunami brought on by a multitude of angels flapping their wings, the band’s new single sees the band tiptoe and thrash their way through the traditional vagaries of overwhelming love. Reminds me of tumultuous French bands like M83 whipped around in candyfloss and lacquered in honey. If you get my drift.

Record Label/Big Dada
Format/Single
Street Value **

Happy-stabby rhythms, some squelchy synths and heaps of fruity old sckool simplicity. Dirty stuff from the toothsome Texans. Features two-remixes from Dalston-based Xrabit. The trio's debut album is due for release in March 2009.

Record Label/Demolition Records
Format/Single
Street Value **

Oh boy. The world’s first ever time-activated digital download (released one second into the New Year at a precise 00:00:01). Blink and you may have missed it, and the fact that the greater part of the world’s population was either drunk, standing outside the backdoor waiting to come in or waiting for the chimes of Big Ben to subside so old Joolsy could fumble his way over the next introduction on his now sadly missable ‘Hootenany’, suggests we did miss it. Which probably accounts for the charts not being activated in quite the same way by the release. The daughter of Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris intends to covet the crown of ‘searing’ rock thorns currently worn by the likes of Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne. Everybody has their 00.00.01 minutes in the spotlight, so why not Lauren?

Record Label/Small Giants
Format/Single
Street Value ***

The band have been together less than a year, which is less than what’s customarily needed to form an opinion, regardless of all the plaudits bestowed upon it by the press-sheet. What we do know is that they are from Copenhagen, are led by Lars Iversen and Mette Lindberg, feature in ads for the new iPod Touch and craft the kind of genre-bending electro pop more commonly associated with kooky indie groups like The Ting Tings and sly party-organisers like Tim Deluxe. Bendy and peculiar.

Record Label/Hell Yeah Recordings
Format/Single
Street Value **

Prodigious ambient noodling isn't always my thing, especially when it's put together in such a bland and unadventurous way as this. Hell Yeah recordings might be Italy's hottest new label, but much of the sounds on here have long since cooled across the rest of Europe. 'Marble' fairs a little better but its still essentially characterised by softcore techo keys and cheerlessly hypnotic repetition, even if the finger-snaps and rippling stabs are fairly pleasing. 8-bit romance. 2-bit techno.

Record Label/Domino Records
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Throbbing away like a persistent headache or the proverbial thorn in one’s side, the former 4AD artist’s new single is a thrashing celebration of couldn’t-give-a-fuck vocals, swooning guitars and slippery organ fondling. The single is taken from the LP, ‘Dropping the Writ’ released earlier this year. The release coincides with a string of dates in Ireland and the UK. Classy and upbeat miserablism.

Record Label/Cooking Vinyl
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Maybe it’s because I imagine myself living in a Raymond Chandler novel, but I’m a sucker for plaintive muted trumpet lines. Nitin Sawhney’s Distant Dreams is trendy bar jazz but with gorgeously nuanced string arrangements and pensive lyrics and threads some tastefully understated trumpet around Roxanne Tataei’s Corinne Bailey Rae-esque vocals. Never mind marks out of ten, my CD got scratched and I was gutted. Nuff said.

Record Label/Sony
Format/Single
Street Value ***

'No Angel' is still the UK's biggest selling debut album by a British female artist. 'Life For Rent' was number one in 26 countries and in the UK top 2 for 10 weeks. She has 4 Brit awards. She has racked up nearly 10 million digital sales. She won an Ivor Novello award with 'White Flag'. It's believed that one in 6 homes own a Dido CD.

So how come this is so very very crap?

Record Label/Big Dada
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Third single taken from the bard's 'Slime and Reason' LP. Produced by indie-funkster, Metromony and including a sky-reaching, snappy-clappy gospel church vibe. The radio-edit is mixed by Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, Kano, Kate Nash) but the real gem is the flipside's snazzy, fizzy and joyfully squelchy Hot Chip remix.

Record Label/Dented
Format/Single
Street Value **

M9 does his best to accept personal responsibility by blaming every conceivable injustice on someone else. Isn't the plight of unmarried mothers a natural consequence of these prats being too pissed to consider birth control? Worse still, because they simply couldn't be arsed? Struggles of teenage life and dropping in and out of school soundtracked by loping, heavy beats and melancholy piano. Have it occurred to any of these people to quit screwing around and take advantage of the state education that's offered? Anthem for apologists everywhere.

Record Label/Superdark Music
Format/Single
Street Value **

The eighties revival continues. The brew is by now a fairly standard one: a handful of jerky, robotic beats, bass EQ’d up to the nines, anxious sub-Terry Hall vocal and shitloads of white-grease paint. The eighties was embarrassing enough the first time around, what makes people think the noughties can do them any better? Includes Moscow and Drums of Death remixes. Previous supporters of the band include Xfm’s John Kennedy. Tom Sweeney of the DFA is also a fan. Same old new wave.

Record Label/Don't Know, Don't Care
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Somewhere along the line Alice Cooper and Bon Jovi had a regrettable one night stand and this was the result. A highly preposterous riff and racket production that manages to lift every grotesque cliche in the book and amp it up to 11. Shocking that there's still people out there with mullets to match. You heard of shock and awe tactics? Well here's the shocking and the awful.

Record Label/Mint Recordings
Format/Single
Street Value **

Something like this has the potential to be as bemusing as a Disney ride through dioramas of various dystopian nightmares while a choir sings ‘It’s a Small World After All’ but Nigel Hoyes (formerly of Gay Day and writer to Lee Ryan) has added to his bizarre musical CV with a song that wraps its black streak up with some lovely indie pop (think Lightning Seeds and OMD). It’s charming and unnerving and what could so easily have become ‘Springtime for Hitler’ manages instead to become a mini pop version of Dr. Strangelove.

Record Label/Dad Records
Format/Album
Street Value **

Mad time signatures and nerdy, twitchy vocals aside, ‘Nothing Is Gonna Spoil My Day Today’ – the debut album from London trio, Olympus Mons – isn’t a complete waste of time, it’s just that all that fidgety, Dexedrine-driven ‘hectic’ stuff got boring as soon as Hot Hot Heat unwrapped the bandages to reveal a hulking great monster of blandness. The jaunty, Libertines/Pretty Things-esque, ‘Late Again’ works well enough but at a whopping 16 tracks it has all the appeal of being slapped around the chops by an eager pre-schooler determined to tell you about their summer holiday without ever stopping for breath. They have over 200 gigs in the bag and have shared the stage with bands such as Babyshambles, The delays and The Maccabees. All fired-up and nowhere to go.

Record Label/Attractive Records
Format/Single
Street Value **

The newly founded Attractive label is a labour of love for designer Steve Lippert. Its first release, ‘Discreet Affair’ EP by the Phone, is a stabbing slice of minimalist synth redolent of John Foxx-era Ultravox and early Depeche Mode. From mournful vocals name checking European cities to stick-thin electric snares, everything you want back from the early 80’s is here. To paraphrase Dave Gahan - Just pick up the receiver, they’ll make you a believer.

Record Label/Holloway Hit factory
Format/Single
Street Value **

Shy and softly spoken 'untypical' rapper, drops out of Central Saint Martin for the second time in his life and releases new single, 'I Love You All' - an electronic, singalong 'war-song' rejigged and reconstituted with real, authentic gun-fire. In fact, with the exception of actually fearing for his life and making routine life-or-death decisions for his comrades, it's almost as fun as being there. Not bad.

Record Label/Hell Yeah Recordings
Format/Single
Street Value ***

Worth buying for the simple joy of having the name repeated again and again and again: Pirate Robot Midget - an Italian French electro outfit based in Amsterdam and responsible for one of the seediest, sweaty, club banging releases so far this year. It bangs, it buzzes, it sizzles and it stomps. Features Rapper, Grand Agent on vocals and a handful of dutiful remixes from Dyno and Riva Starr.

Record Label/Hungry Hill/Spinney
Format/EP
Street Value ***

The lead-up track, 'Just So You Know' is a delightful reworking of a song on Reynold's solid, convincing debut, 'British Ballads' this time featuring oldy Godmother of 'freak folk' and TMobile star, Vashti Bunyan on vocals. Producer and remix hat is worn by Anthony Whiting (M.I.A, Eugene McGuinness, The Mules). Elsewhere Charlotte Greig pops up on 'Like The Sun Feeds From Flowers'. Two additional tracks, 'Now It begins' and 'Girls With Glasses' are available with the ITunes release.

Record Label/DL Records
Format/Single
Street Value ***

At 19 MC and writer Tinie Tempah has toured alongside Sway and Dizzee Rascal, shared his thoughts and views on Knife Crime on several news networks (including Sky and the BBC), scored a couple of playlists (Kiss and BBC1Extra) and racked up three A Levels. He's also going to feature on Wiley's second album, 'Play Time Is Over'. But this is what he's up to now: a beefy slice of r&b with some tasty techno buzzsaw action.