August is often a quiet month on the release front but theartsdesk on Vinyl came across a host of music deserving of attention. Now that even Sony, one of the biggest record companies in the world, are starting to press their own vinyl again, it’s safe to say records aren’t disappearing quite yet. On the contrary, the range of material is staggering in its breadth. So this month we review everything from spectral folk to boshing techno to the soundtrack of Guardians of The Galaxy 2.

The term “hip hop” has become a catch-all that now includes a multitude of autotuned chart-pop rubbish which bears no relation to the genre’s origins, central tenets or recognised sonic imprint. Is Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” hip hop? Many would say so, due to it having the visual identifiers of hip hop. But it isn't really, is it? At the other end of the scale, there are artists who’ve wandered off into all manner of abstract electronica, with LA’s Low End Theory/Brainfeeder axis the most acknowledged hub for such activity. ZGTO fall into this latter category and, while some of their music slides off into pure experimentalism, A Piece of the Geto mostly stays more attuned to what hip hop is really about than, say, Chris Brown.

ZGTO are MC ZelooperZ, one of the more oddball talents involved with hip hop star Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade label/collective, and producer Shigeto, a name in underground electronic circles, both of them from Detroit. Their combined sound mixes muted, underwater-sounding, narcotised backing tracks with ZelooperZ’s drawling, croaky, nasal wordage, heavily flavoured with the whole Dirty South “purple drank” word-swallowing thing (i.e. mumbling due to being out of it on fizzy pop mixed with codeine-heavy cough syrup).

There are occasional choruses, as on “Whippin’”, but for the most part A Piece of the Geto is about a hypnotic, stoned mood, with the closing “Unfold” even riding a relentless twisting, mantric synth tone worthy of Finnish noiseniks Pansonic. “I’ve been smoking dope since they had the Afghan,” runs a lyric in “Band Man”, and there are regular asides that reference drug-dealing, but it’s certainly not about boasting or revelling in riches. Instead, there’s a smudgy, doomed ambience which, at times, as on the strangely tuneful “Off Dat” or the momentarily romantic “Unconditional Love”, achieves beauty.

ZGTO have created something original, up with the most vanguard abstraction released by Ninja Tune sub-label Big Dada and the like. Over an album’s length it would benefit from more variety and a few more structured songs but, in the meantime, it’s an intriguing debut.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Off Dat" by ZGTO

Lana Del Rey is hard to suss. Her cinematic plasticity is part of her appeal, yet it’s also what makes her difficult to love. One thing she cannot be accused of is laziness. For a star of her stature, she’s fairly pumping out music, with this sixteen-tracker her fourth album since her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die. Del Rey’s patented style is opiated mournfulness, a kitsch, Californian, 21^st Century spin on what Portishead were doing 20 years ago. This is no bad thing. She’s a more interesting proposition than many of her peers.

Lana Del Rey’s way with words is unique. Even when it’s unclear what she’s on about, it’s never less than interesting.  “Coachella – Woodstock on My Mind”, for instance, initially appears to be a paean to hippy innocence as compared to contemporary festivals, but then its lyrics wander who knows where. Her poetic tendencies often lead to cliché – “We dance on the H of the Hollywood sign ‘til we run out of breath”! – yet even the proclamation “With dripping peaches I’m camera ready almost all the time”, from “Beaches”, cannot unseat her. Indeed, a distinct part of her appeal is a sublimated, narcotized sensuality. When she swears it’s much more richly shocking than when, say, Rihanna does.

There’s too much music on Lust for Life. Less would have been more. Her endless trip hop Mogadon vibe has palled by the time the listener reaches the hour-and-ten-minute mark. Tangents are touched on along the way, adding interest: the orchestral electro grooves of “Summer Bummer” and “Groupie Love”, the latter a twangy David Lynch-friendly epic, and both featuring A$AP Rocky, have a novel, lazy hip hop allure, while the psychedelia-lite swirl of “Tomorrow Ever Came” features Sean Ono Lennon and prods, less successfully at jangling dream-pop (The Weeknd and Stevie Nicks also appear on tracks).

There’s something weirdly addictive about Lana del Rey’s somnambulistic rambling, but she needs to push further out of her comfort zone to really move onwards. In the meantime, Lust for Life is more of what came before, but likeable in small doses.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Lust for Life" by Lana Del Rey featuring The Weeknd

If there’s a downside to the resurgence of vinyl, it’s that all that’s left in most charity shops these days is James Galway and his cursed flute and Max Bygraves medley albums. Then again, there’s always new stuff coming in so it’s down to everybody to get in there quick, before the local record shops hoover up all the gems. And there it is. Many small towns now have local record shops again. That’s surely something to celebrate.

Tel Aviv producer Nadav Spiegel hadn't set out to make a full-length follow-up to last year's Can You Pass the Knife? mini-LP, but once he had a backbone of songs, events sort of got away from him. I Love You, Go Away is the result and its nine songs, spread over nearly 40 minutes, appear, in one way or another, to deal with loss – of love, identity and self.

The title of opener “New Heimat”, referencing the German word for the feeling of belonging to a place, suggests a new beginning of sorts. While the lines “Home is where the hatred is” and “No more fighting for the state/No more bleeding for some faith”, repeated over electronic percussion and a background of distorted guitar drones, offer an overtly political and grand worldview, follow-up “Violence” begins, and immediately we are pulled into much more personal territory. A deliberation on envy and the darker side of love and loss, it addresses self-esteem as much as its predecessor does self-concept. It’s a neatly conceived conceit and the lyric “I don’t know what you mean when you say it’s not about that” captures, with both wit and wisdom, the futility and circularity of self-referential relationship arguments. That it does so to a punk-funk/disco-not-disco soundtrack is all to the good.

“How to Cheat” is a tune that Underworld would be proud of: a repeated musical refrain over which vocal snippets paint a picture of an emotionally punch-drunk husk trying to find the strength to fight back. “Gibberish Love Song”, meanwhile, continues a recent and welcome resurgence of truly progressive house, the track’s distortion sounding like the result of Spiegel turning the emotional gain to full.

While the vocals are often laser-guided to an emotional centre, occasionally they seem a close cousin of former Can frontman Damo Suzuki's, chosen as much for their punctuating power and ryhthmic heft as their actual meaning.

This is mostly, though not exclusively, the case on the album’s B-side – a more intense beast and shot through with bold experimentation. At times it boasts Radiophonic Workshop levels of abstraction, exploring its terrain with a keen playfulness, while sharing the emotional depth of contemporary peers such as Man Power, particularly on the stunning instrumental “Let the Water Run”. Closing pairing “Bongos and Tambourines” and “Warmth (How Mean Is Mean)” are simply breathtaking, colouring sparse, kosmiche tones with dense, earthy colours to create a palette that is truly Spiegel’s own. 

Currently available on vinyl only, I Love You, Go Away, isn’t just a fine electronic album, it feels like a genuinely important piece of work from a producer who blends head and heart with rare warmth and intelligence. A clear contender for album of the year – once again.       

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Overleaf: Listen to Autarkic's "I Love You, Go Away"

Every Valley is Public Service Broadcasting’s second studio album since 2013’s Inform - Educate - Entertain, and like its predecessors, it’s a nostalgic trip to the not-too-recent past with an electronica-heavy backing and a bag full of samples culled from the spoken word library of the British Film Institute.

Those coming to Lifetime of Love expecting something – anything – approaching Moses Archuleta’s day job in Deerhunter will find those expectations confounded. With his Moon Diagrams solo project, Archuleta has presented us with a sonic sketchbook of ideas that range from ambient, hymnlike refrains to hypnotic house grooves and epic experimentalism.

Alison Moyet is one of Britain's best-loved singer-songwriters. Known for her deep, soulful voice and down-to-earth personality she has managed to combine commercial sensibility with artistic integrity for over 30 years. Today, 16 June, she releases her ninth solo album Other, recorded with long-time collaborator Guy Sigsworth.

Formed in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneered groundbreaking innovation in music making, using anything and everything to create new textures and tones to satisfy eager TV producers looking for otherwordly sounds to lead audiences through their programmes.

Clifford Price – Goldie – has long cut an imposing, and complicated, figure in the music industry. Part larger-than-life entertainer, part monster (as satirised in music industry grotesque Kill Your Friends), part irrepressible raver, part grandiose conceptualist. But there's another side to him too: the massive, Pat Metheny-idolising, jazz smoothie.

His breakthrough 1994 track “Inner City Life” was partly high-tech drum'n'bass ferocity, but it was completely merged with jazz-soul sophistication and of course the soaring voice of the sadly recently-deceased Dianne Charlegmane (who would work with Goldie on many projects through the years). And his preposterous, almost career-ending, 1998 quadruple album Saturnz Returns was packed with jazz noodling.

All that and more is here. He's still very clearly not shy of excess: of 16 tracks here, only one is under five minutes, and the centrepiece “Redemption” runs to nearly 19. The whole thing is full of virtuoso playing from The Heritage Orchestra as well as plenty of electronic studio technique, and there are six featured vocalists. In the publicity for the record, Goldie compares himself to Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Incredibly, though, it is a fully-functioning, highly listenable album – and that is because “smooth jazz Goldie” is running the show here. Much like how his one-time collaborators 4 Hero evolved from rave and drum'n'bass into sophisticated soul merchants, this is as much a neo-soul record as a drum'n'bass one. There are tracks, like “This is not a Love Song” (not a PiL cover!), which barely have electronics at all – and even the sprawling “Redemption”, which runs from drum'n'bass to deep houseand back, is a coherent, lush listening experience because it follows its own unfolding jazz logic. By letting one side of his contradictory personality lead, against the odds, Goldie has made a rather gorgeous record.

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@JoeMuggs

Overleaf: watch the video for "I Adore You"