Shoegaze was only a moment really, a scene that flared briefly as the Eighties drew to a close. The music press – the “inkies” - used the term to describe bands, usually flop-fringed with lazy posture, whose heads would hang as they played gigs, ostensibly because they were looking at effects pedals and wotnot, but really because they and their music were shy. Following the example of My Bloody Valentine, they’d found a way to hide their pop songs amid distortion, deep down in it.

So the ambient revival continues apace, getting deeper and wider with each passing year. From the interstices between the classical concert hall, abstract art installations, the backroom of more insalubrious little raves and festivals, the small hours on oddball online radio stations, and the spaces into which people get lost as they defocus and absorb themselves into their headphone soundtracks on commutes seems to seep more and more sound that is textural above all.

Streya: New works for solo violin and violin with electronics Olivia De Prato (violin) (New Focus Recordings)

Earlier this year, in May, Brighton hosted the Vinyl World Congress where Paul Pacifico, head of the Association of Independent Music, told the assembled that, “People pay for vinyl not because they have to but because they want to - they want a physical representation of their emotional connection with an artist." There was a general agreement that vinyl collectors and fans account for the majority of sales, but also that things are still stable and/or rising.

Their ninth album should please Morcheeba fans. Take the song “Find Another Way”, for example. It rolls in like a haunted breeze, an acoustic/twangy combination preceding front-woman Skye Edwards, one of the sweetest-sounding vocalists in pop, and she still has it.

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.

This Saturday marks Record Shop Day, when Midas-touch music execs turn car-boot staples into gold simply by re-releasing them and charging 30 quid for the pleasure. Normally, the pressing-plant backlog that these needless, gaudy trinkets cause means that new music, typically that put out by innovative artists on small independent labels, gets moved to the back of the queue so that the big fat kids can get their dinner first.

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are not really that at all. With a name designed to sound like a stiffly formal unit they are, in fact, an entity based around Bill Wells, a Scottish institution, albeit an alternative one. He’s been around the block many times since the Eighties when he first started making waves with his very personally curated and individual perspective on jazz. Since those days, he’s worked with all sorts, ranging from Isobel Campbell to Aidan Moffat to Future Pilot AKA. His fourth National Jazz Trio of Scotland outing is a likeable, laid back odd-pop curiosity.

Vol. IV is intended to be the first in a series of albums featuring one singer each. The voice fronting this one belongs to Kate Sugden whose sweet, unaffected tones match the disarmingly simple arrangements. The sound accompanying her borders on easy listening but undermined by a twinkling, plinky-plonky ambient aspect. Sometimes this is foregrounded, as on “Move”, a light and poised meditation on depression, or the revolving bass patterns of “Summer’s Edge”, redolent of modern classical sounds. On other occasions, Wells and his crew create a fuller sound.

The songs that blossom into grander affairs include the brief but catchy “Tinnitus Lullaby”, a strangely effective Spartan sea shanty about the medical condition of the title, the filmic organ-fuelled opener “Quick to Judge (Don’t Be So)”, and most strident of all, “A Quiet Life”, which explodes midway through into a New Orleans brass stomp, before retreating, by degrees, to cool funk and free jazz squawking. The latter is the album’s most fascinating piece, although possibly not its most accessible.

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland are unlikely to become a mainstream phenomenon but the furrow they’re currently ploughing is, in its own unique way, poppy and welcoming.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Tinnitus Lullaby" by National Jazz Trio of Scotland