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"

September and October see a deluge of new releases. Everybody and their aunt puts out an album as autumn hits, so theartsdesk on Vinyl appears this month (and next) in a slightly expanded edition. As ever, the fare on offer is as diverse as possible, from black metal to Afro-funk via film and TV soundtracks. All musical life is here, ripe and waiting.

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Nick Mulvey’s 2014 debut album First Mind may be one of the century’s best so far. Album number two, then, has the critical bar set high. On that opening record, the ex-Portico Quartet singer-songwriter majored in complex-yet-simple songs that wove intricate Latin/classical-flecked guitar work with electronic tones and a sense of wide-eyed openness. Wake Up Now initially seems to be travelling a similar path, but soon proves to be marinated in African feeling and have its scope set more cosmically. It is a lovely album and a match for its predecessor.

In a cynical age, where irony is king, Nick Mulvey is a man out of time. Perhaps he’s the harbinger of a more beautiful era around the corner. In 2017, after all, even the word “beauty” is regarded with wariness. Imbued with the spiritual philosophies of Ram Dass, a surviving key player from the last age of peace’n’love, Mulvey’s music has an unfettered grace. He applies this to the plight of refugees on “Myela” and “We Are Never Apart”. The latter is a twinkling, gorgeous strum that seems to be floating in orbit, while the former may be held up as evidence for those who find Mulvey’s work cloying. Its Afro-pop “I am your neighbour/You are my neighbour” chorus will certainly be too nursery rhyme trite for many.

Much of the album, however, is inarguable. The intriguing lyrics of songs such as “Transform Your Game”, which boasts chunkier percussion than Mulvey usually goes for, are matched by a subtle musicality that’s both featherlight and delicious. The gentle, jazzy, almost ecclesiastical “When the Body Is Gone” is a song that sticks up two fingers to existential angst, even death itself, while the epic sing-along “Mountain to Move” achieves anthem status. There are moments when Mulvey faintly recalls Peter Gabriel at his most ecstatic but, other than that, there are no comparisons. He’s a man alone, pushing at the forefront with unembarrassed joy and longing. I want to go with him.

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Overleaf: Watch the video for "Myela" by Nick Mulvey

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.

Rarely has an album’s artwork better reflected its content: blackness, or the void from which light occasionally emanates. This is a collection of instrumentals enhanced by vocals, rather than what might be called songs. The opening minimalist piece “Lightshaft” begins with a single plucked guitar note and its long vibrato-laden after-echo, like the sonic equivalent of a lone flickering candle.

Has Glasgow’s Tectonics weekend turned away from its wilder excess? Has it, in its fifth outing, even – well, grown up and got serious?

Flawlessly uniting atmosphere and melody is challenging. Especially so when creating music is approached unconventionally and with the desire to be individual. Having set her bar high, Juana Molina triumphs on all counts, again proving herself as a virtuoso artist who executes her vision with enviable assurance.

A strong candidate for reissue of the year, World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda is a rarity amongst archive collections as it does what is always hoped for but seldom accomplished. A new story is told, the music is unfamiliar but wonderful, and it has been put together conscientiously.

Perhaps most famous as the singer in seminal Nineties art-pop band Stereolab, Laetitia Sadier has worked hard in recent years to establish herself as a solo artist in her own right through a series of well-received avant-muzak albums, including this year’s Finding Me Finding You.

Eno pioneered ambient music way back in the 1970s, in collaborations with Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, and on his own label. His new album continues this adventure in search of stillness, at a time when we are more than ever shaped by muddled layers of high-speed narratives, fuelled by instant communication and hell-bent on denying the presence of the here and now.