For the past decade, Victoria Park in east London has been host to the Field Day and Lovebox festivals, both homegrown and both still growing in size and influence. Last year’s headliners included rare appearances from Aphex Twin (Field Day) and Frank Ocean (Lovebox), bringing huge crowds to this vast and beautiful Victorian lung.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s four albums all centre around off-kilter pop and flirtations with distortion; their latest LP, Sex & Food, carries this tradition forwards in a more laid-back manner. Their current European tour in support of the album seems to have lined up nicely with the schedules of American acts Deerhunter, Black Lips and Sam Evian (as well as much-hyped British act Boy Azooga), with all five artists descending on the Albert Hall in Manchester for the six-hour Strange Waves III.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer in 2014-15, are among his best.

Everything on this record changes shape. One moment in “RayCats” Far Eastern instrumentation is being glitched beyond recognition, then suddenly it sounds like something from a relaxation tape. “Same” shimmers and twists between 20th century avant-classical, Depeche Mode at their stadium peak and pure electronic sound.

When bands move to the US, some find themselves drawn into the commercial machine; when Scottish band Chvrches crossed the Atlantic, they were targeting direct assimilation from the start. Recorded with mega-producer Greg Kurstin, the band are aiming to be more direct than ever; perhaps a wise move considering they’ve always leaned heavily on the pop side of electro.

Loner’s opening track “More of the Same” lyrically tracks being at a party where “everyone’s well dressed with a perfect body and they all have alternative haircuts and straight white teeth.” It triggers a flashback to schooldays when it was, indeed, the same thing. “Cry!” looks a life in the limelight, “Money” is about doing everything for money and “Bikini” is about becoming a celebrity. The price of entry? Putting on a bikini and dancing.

Caroline Rose’s third album is a smart, sardonic 11-track  romp through how she sees aspects of the modern condition. A sadness-tinged cynicism is never far. In its stand-out song “Jeannie Becomes a Mom”, the protagonist dreams of buying a big house, having her hair done and finding a father-figure/keeper hybrid. Such aspirations are out of reach.

The thematic sharpness is not enough. For all its boldness and up-tempo, sassy delivery Loner comes across as a deliberate intellectual exercise rather than an album driven by impulse. When she sings “I got a credit card and I use it all the time, I got that goochi goochi [sic] gooey oozy icky oozy style” on “Soul No. 5”, Rose pushes proceedings a little too close to condescension for comfort.

Previously, Rose drew from country and rockabilly. Now, she’s adopted a new wave/electropop amalgam which mashes-up the very early Beck, The Go! Team and Britney Spears. Taken individually, songs work  a treat. “Talk” is atmospheric and yearning, while album closer “Animal” sets the fun-poking aside and consequently feels like the most personal song with its delineation of an overheated love affair. Overall though, Loner – released in the UK three months after it the shops in America – is the aural equivalent of eating too many sweets in one sitting.

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Overleaf: watch the video for “Bikini” from Caroline Rose’s Loner

There have been reports that as many as 50% of vinyl-buyers don’t actually listen to it. They keep records as a token of affection for the artist in question. This seems curious but, then again, most young people don’t own turntables and the idea is anathema to the way they consume music. However, while there’s a healthy market in reissues and older artists, the most cutting edge music imaginable is appearing on plastic. Check out our Vinyl of the Month! All musical life is reviewed below.

Pinkshinyultrablast might be a long way from their hometown of St Petersburg, but in recent years they’ve built themselves up in England as one of the more bizarre and original bands in today’s psych/shoegaze revival, and on the day their third album Miserable Miracles is released, they hit the north for a night of fuzz and electronic trickery.

Jon Hopkins navigates the territory between avant-garde electronic and beat-driven dance music with brilliance. There’s plenty here to make you want to get up and move, but as much to persuade you lie down and let the symphony of textures and timbres open you ears and take you on an inner adventure.

Blossoms are the latest inheritors of the massive-in-Manchester mantle that has, so often in the past, translated into massive-almost-everywhere ubiquity. That their eponymous 2016 debut album was a chart-topper shows they’re on the way, although they’ve not yet mustered a single that’s thrown them to the next level. The surprise when they first appeared was that, although they look indie and have fans such as Ian Brown of The Stone Roses, their sound was a blend of polished yacht-rock and electro-pop, more The Killers than New Order. With Cool Like You, the rock aspect is almost gone. This is a synth-pop album, and in places a juicy one.

As the album starts, “There’s A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)” brings to mind Future Islands’ emotionally calibrated quirkiness, albeit without Samuel T Herring’s unique vocal stylings. Instead, and throughout, Tom Ogden’s voice is an ebullient, quivering fusion of Brandon Flowers, Paul Heaton (once of The Beautiful South) and, of course, his own native Stockport writ large. It’s a lead instrument that sets these songs apart: we’re not used to hearing this sort of voice with such synth-pop sounds.

There are catchy stompers, gig-slaying hi-NRG Euro-disco such as “Unfaithful” which absolutely bangs along in the manner of Moby’s Void Pacific Choir albums, or “Lying Again” which builds and shimmers in a way that makes the listener want to power-grab the sky. The synths on both are redolent of Pet Shop Boys at their most gigantic and stadium-friendly.

Elsewhere they chuck in a few slowies, “Stranger Still” and the Yazoo-alike “Love Talk”, and there’s almost a modern prog feel to the rhythmic changes and heaviness of “Giving Up the Ghost” (think Porcupine Tree at their most accessible). Overall, though, this is electro-pop, owing a debt to the past but with its eyes very much on slaying crowds during 2018’s summer festival season.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "I Can't Stand It" by Blossoms