On paper Django Django seem a perfect band. The four-piece, half Scottish, quarter English, quarter Northern Irish, boast an indie songwriting sensibility, but filtered through a natural pop suss, an engaging sense of psychedelia, a desire to rave it up, and a ripe capacity for harmonisation. Their third album is fat with melody and interest, right from its ballistic opening title track, yet in the end, why is it eminently likeable rather than loveable?

See, I keep trying to have a love affair with Django Django’s music. Their last album, Born Under Saturn (2015), sounds luscious but in the end the only tune I kept returning to is the peerless “First Light”. Their new one, their third, is gorgeous too, imaginatively constructed and may yet grow into something that makes me regret the angle I write from here (the constant bane of anyone assessing new music), but at present it seems admirable, not adorable.

Never mind such negative quibbles, though, and instead revel in what Marble Skies has to offer; the quirky Talking Heads-ish pop of closing slowie “Fountains”, the four-to-the-floor alt-electro-pop bouncers “In Your Beat” and “Real Gone”, the Afro-skittering, tune-rich “Surface to Air”, featuring guest vocalist Rebecca Taylor, the drum tattoo-led “Further”, which sounds like the Beach Boys having a techno-tribal moment.

Indeed, Brian Wilson’s oeuvre is rarely too far away, notably on the piano-led “Sundials” which, crudely assessed, once it gets going, is Wilson jumping in the sack with The Go! Team, albeit not in with the latter band’s penchant for deliberate cacophony. Django Django keep their palette full, Polyfilla-ing every sonic crack, maximising use of the multitrack, never slack in keeping things compelling. So there’s plenty to enjoy here. Yet somehow I was expecting more. What more was I expecting? Bloody music journalists, eh.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for Django Django "In Your Beat"

The third album from Thomas White under his Fiction Aisle moniker is a match for its delicious, under-heard predecessors. White remains best known for his output with The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes but the prolific Fiction Aisle (three albums since 2016) deserve to gain wider purchase. This time round the mood is more tentatively upbeat than previously, and White’s Pink Floyd-ish tendencies are on the back burner, but, at its core, cosmic easy listening is still the game.

The Fiction Aisle aspire to John Barry’s cinematic orchestrated scope, but tinted with hints of Morrissey’s vocal tics, and a broader electronic palette scoping about underneath. “Memory” even has a touch of late Nineties/early Millennial chill-out about it. However, it’s White’s characterful lyrical pith that sets The Fiction Aisle apart, giving his catchy songwriting extra reach and heft.

The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory

Previous outings have broached depression in an occasionally desperate or hedonistic manner but “Ten Years” hints at a newfound peace, or at least looking the issue in the eye (“It’s up to me to find any positivity – do I have the strength?”), while indie-ish opener “Gone Today”, despite its summery vibes, may be about existing in the moment rather than letting the past and future nag at the mind.

Another stand-out track is “Sweetness & Light”, a very straightforward, unembarrassed modern love song that’s also contagious. As the album goes on, White relaxes into it, spreading out, letting the sonic stylings grow ever more blissed, notably on the multi-tracked vocals of “Black River”, which bring to mind sunshine in 1970s LA, and the lusciousness of “Some Things Never Die”, until he eventually ends up drifting off on the final ten-minute “Will I Get Where I’m Going Before I’m Ready?”, with its extended instrumental passages heading into balminess.

Jupiter, Florida is as sunny as its title suggests, but cut through with a realist’s lyrical perspective, albeit a realist with a tendency to dream. Once again, The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory with a class that’s a cut above the usual.

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Overleaf: watch the video for "Gone Today" by The Fiction Aisle

Eindhoven art punks Radar Men from the Moon have been around since 2010 with a sound that has knitted together space rock, strange electronics and shoegaze flavours with a psychedelic view point.

There are albums that reveal themselves to you, their hidden depths become apparent over time as familiarity helps one to acclimatize to the terrain. David Crosby’s Sky Trails was one such release and has stayed with me since its release.

There are albums that burn with incandescent light from the get-go, albums that leave you smiling with glee as they bring warmth to your world and add light to your day. Indeed, in this category were two that, in any other year, would have been shoe-ins for my album of the year slot. The sparse, electronic experiments of Autarkic’s I Love You, Go Away contained beautiful, haunted emotion, while Red Axes’ Beach Goths contained just about everything else: from surf guitar and house beats, to spaghetti Western hoops rolling with extended drum loops, it had the lot. 

Then there are albums that smack you around the head and face and leave you dazed, but richer for the experience – like a benevolent mugger who can’t quite get the hang of the job spec. Here we find Jin Cromanyon, hanging out on a vinyl only release on a small label, Macadam Mambo, that has quietly been releasing some extraordinary stuff this year.

Written, arranged and produced by Hidetaka Horie, 逆襲のスポンジ is a masterpiece full of frenetic energy and pop bounce, and as unashamedly ‘up’ as a children’s birthday party. It sounds like a J-Pop musical of Depeche Mode’s early years, but filtered through the fizzing imagination and very singular vision of a young man with a penchant for Chicago house and Italo disco. In short, it’s startlingly original, like nothing I’ve heard before and yet the songs resonate with such force, they may as well be Platonic forms.

At present, there’s no CD or digital release, but lobbying the record label seems like a good way to right this particular oversight. Whatever, I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot more from Mr Horie very soon.

Two More Essential Albums from 2017

Lucky Soul – Hard Lines

Abschaum – Moon Tango

Gig of the Year

Jane Weaver at Ramsgate Music Hall

Track of the Year

Vibration Black Finger – "Get Up and Do It"

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@jahshabby

Overleaf: Listen to Jin Cromanyon's "Zombie Pop"

From his days as a session musician in mid-Seventies Tokyo through global mega fame in Yellow Magic Orchestra and on, Ryuichi Sakamoto has always had a Stakhanovite work ethic. And that's still the case, even at the age of 65, and despite the fact he was not long ago given the all-clear from throat cancer.

In the seven years since N.E.R.D last had an album out, Pharrell Williams’ profile, which was already massive, has achieved some sort of pop supernova. “Happy”, “Get Lucky” and the less loveable “Blurred Lines” have made him a megastar. He now returns with Chad Hugo, his childhood pal and production partner in one of hip hop’s defining production units, The Neptunes, and their reclusive associate Shay Haley. N.E.R.D’s original remit, when they began a decade-and-a-half ago, was to make their own R&B-marinated version of rock, but their fifth album sees raw electronic funk to the fore

A truckload of special guests adds to the sense of occasion. Rihanna kicks things off with opener and first single “Lemon”, a propulsive electro-percussive banger which sets the tone, but the best collaboration is with Kendrick Lamar and M.I.A. on the album’s most exciting track, “Kites”, an Afro-chanting, whooping, bass-built thing, both stark and busy. Elsewhere Gucci Mane and Wale boost the Outkast-style groove of “Voila”, which has a fantastically bizarre steel band mid-section, while, by contrast, Andre 3000 of Outkast drops in on the robotised hammerings of “Rollinem 7’s”.

Even Ed Sheeran doesn’t disgrace himself, with his cameo on closer “Lifting You” only aiding a likeable digital dancehall bubbler that celebrates nightworld hedonism. However, N.E.R.D don’t need guests to thrill, as they prove on the sampledelic electro-rave pulse of “Secret Life of Tigers” and the Prince-flavoured epic “Don’t Don’t Do It”, as well as much else. Lyrically it’s all a bit opaque. Perhaps, for instance, they are opining obliquely on the state of the US on “1000”. But, equally, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter because No_One Ever Really Dies is primarily a sonic, felt experience.

N.E.R.D have moved on from even hints of organic funkiness, such as “Hot-n-Fun” from their last album, replacing it with crunchy, poppy, clubland experimentalism, deeply indebted to hip hop, placing them beside Gorillaz, with a touch of Gnarls Barkley’s more outré output. It’s no bad place to be and the new album is a feisty, exciting creature, full of wriggle and body-movement.

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Overleaf: watch the video for "Lemon" by N.E.R.D featuring Rihanna

Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to.

“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements.

Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner, has been releasing music for over two decades. There was a point in the mid-Nineties when he was a media “thing” due to the way he sampled sounds plucked from the airwaves. Shockingly, this included phone calls because cordless home phones are as accessible as any other radio signals. He has long operated on the art-intellectual spectrum, bridging electronic, industrial and avant-classical, collaborating with everyone from Wire to Michael Nyman.

So to Fibolae, titled for a word that came to him in a dream, and his first album in eight years. Giving background to this release on his website, Rimbaud says “I lost my entire family and left the comfort of a familiar city, London, to live in a former textile factory to re-invent my life.” The album opens, then, with “Inhale”, a melee of ansaphone messages from his late family, as well as John Balance of Coil and others, all passed. This leads into a furious drum barrage which, in turn, settles to a mournful synth’n’strings arrangement, rage giving way to grief. It sums up the atmosphere. Furious tracks such as the enjoyably ballistic, seven-minute closer “Savage Is Savage”, the album’s juiciest cut, rely on dense percussion to express passion, but always backed by carefully chosen melodic tones.

Much of the album, however, is about mood rather than attack, and that mood is gloomy, albeit tuneful and often ear-engaging. “Nothing Happens Because of a Single Thing”, for instance, has a drum & bass feel to it, but is more like a film soundtrack than a dance number, while “Spirit Cluster” skitters and glitches but is laden with sad strings, coming on like a goth Moby.

Scanner, at his best, is playful, mischievous and accessible, as well as thought-provoking. Fibolae is a personal album, perhaps not the best entry point to the work of this once-prolific artist (this writer would recommend 1997’s accessible, oddly poppy and spooked Delivery). It is, however, an emotional outpouring that’s darkly worthwhile for those disposed towards a suite of crunchy, electronic melancholy.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Spirit Cluster"

STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Singcircle has been performing the work for over 40 years, and its director, Gregory Rose, clearly has an innate sense of its pace, structure and aura.