In April 1973, John Peel wrote that “For my money, Tangerine Dream are the best of the Kosmische Music bands. Whenever any of their extended works are played on the radio there is a heavy mail from listeners. Most of the letter-writers are for it, those that are against it are very against it indeed. A Tangerine Dream track, heard superficially, is little more than a repetitive drone.

The time of giving is here and what better presents than great slabs of lovely vinyl; sounds that bring joy to all. Our last theartsdesk on Vinyl of the year is packed with boxsets and reissues as well as a couple of seasonal bits. From a Shrek picture-disc to Kate Bush's entire back catalogue to Los Angeles’ latest alt-tronica, there are more music flavours here than even Santa can claim (having been to his crib, we can assure Santa’s vinyl collection is pretty limited, with the exception of a wall of Doom Metal).

After Be-Bop Deluxe finished recording their third album at Abbey Road, their label said they needed something to promote as a single. EMI told band-leader Bill Nelson they wanted a song with commercial appeal. The result was the single “Ships in the Night”, which duly charted during the last week of February 1976. On the back of the hit single, the art-rock outfit’s third album Sunburst Finish became their first to go Top 20. EMI got what it wanted.

(Warning: spoilers ahead) For a brief 15 minutes, this was the biggest story in America: three boys, identical in looks, discovering each other at the age of 19. Edward “Eddie” Galland, David Kellman and Robert “Bobby” Shafran were all adopted from the same agency, but had no idea they were triplets. They were on the front cover of every magazine, guests on every talk show, and even had a cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan.

Although John & Beverley Martyn and Mott The Hoople were both signed to Island, the connection went further than being with the same label. When Guy Stevens conceived the band he named Mott The Hoople, the producer saw them as uniting the essence of Bob Dylan with that of The Rolling Stones. On their eponymous first album, issued in 1969, Ian Hunter’s vocals are so like Dylan it edges into the preposterous. That same year John & Beverley Martyn made Stormbringer! in Woodstock.

Rock critic Greil Marcus observed that John Fogerty’s songs are “about as contrived as the weather”, and there can surely never have been such an easy and instinctive songwriter in rock’n’roll. After his glory years with Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fogerty endured a painful period of career-threatening lawsuits, but has successfully re-emerged as one of the grand icons of rock’s golden age.

If a Queen biopic called for drama, scandal and outrage, then Bohemian Rhapsody spent its fill in production. Several Freddies had been and gone, rumours swirling about meddling band members, and then director Bryan Singer’s assault accusations caught up with him. In a way, it’s impressive the film came out so coherent.

Matthew Holness clearly knows a thing or two about low-budget British horror from the early 1970s. In TV comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace he was as merciless as he was affectionate in ripping the genre apart. His debut feature as writer-director is an odd, woozy creation that pays just as overt homage, but Possum is in another tonal world altogether – one that’s brooding, clammy and unremittingly grim.

Former children’s entertainer Philip – disgraced, though we’re left to guess precisely how – makes a physical and psychological return to the charred, crooked remains of his boyhood home, carrying a big, brown leather bag. Try as he might, however, he cannot rid himself of the bag’s appalling contents, his most grisly and most personal creation: a spider-bodied, human-headed monstrosity of a puppet he names Possum. Philip unearths the book in which he detailed Possum’s dark mythology as a boy – and faces another dark ghost from his childhood, his repulsive uncle Maurice.

Holness gets exceptional performances from his two leads in what’s essentially an extended two-hander. Sean Harris is compulsively watchable as the wiry, nervy, deeply troubled puppeteer Philip, gifted with a stare so empty it’s ghastly, and with jerky, mechanical movements that make him seem much like a marionette himself. (How a figure so shambling, withdrawn and damaged could ever have been a children’s entertainer, however, is hard to imagine.) Arguably playing the role of Philip’s puppet master is Alun Armstrong (pictured below) as the wheedling, needling Maurice, spitting out opaque, Beckett-like lines with a snarling contempt, and always ready with the skin-crawling offer of a treat from his sweetie jar.

Despite his two compelling leads, however, Holness struggles to deliver on the film’s slow-burning and quite lengthy set-up. Indeed, despite its relatively brief 85-minute length, Possum feels more like a short film that’s been stretched than a fully fledged feature. Moreover, its cloying evocations of atmosphere and dread, and its suggestions of imminent jump-scares (few of which, thankfully, materialise), end up far stronger and more memorable than its brief but brutal pay-off.

But despite its unapologetic cap-doffs to the 1970s – its music from the Radiophonic Workshop, nods to the well-meaning terrors of public information films, stylised opening credits and stomach-churning palette of sickly greens and browns – what emerges in Possum is an examination of neglect and abuse that feels entirely of our own times. It’s a theme that’s only emphasised by the film’s own relentless, inescapable cycles of horror and dread, even if they finally make the movie rather repetitive.

Possum is far from flawless, but its suffocating journey into a shadowy maze of abuse and regret serves to infect the mind long after the movie’s over.

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Overleaf: watch the trailer for Possum