On first pass, Beautica comes across as an exotic hybrid of 1991 school-of-Slowdive shoegazing and the fidgety music pre-Stereolab outfit McCarthy had perfected around 1989. But there’s something else; a lilting characteristic to the vocal melodies suggesting an inherent melancholy. Yet although the album’s makers were not bouncing with joy, the hymnal sense of reflection running throughout Bizarre’s Beautica is, contrastingly, uplifting.

The equipment pictured above is the Powertran 1024, one of the first digital sequencers to hit the market. According to the May 1981 issue of Electronics Today International magazine, which unveiled it to the public, the British-invented “1024 composer is a machine which will repeatedly cause a synthesiser to play a pre-determined series of notes either as short sequence or a large compositions of 1024 notes: i.e. several minutes long.” The article was headlined “Treat your synth to this sequencer/composer.”

Erasmo Carlos got his break in August 1965 when the TV show Jovem Guarda (The Young Guard) began its run. Filmed before a live audience in São Paulo and broadcast nationally, it was pop as never seen before in Brazil.

In the last week of September 1973, Guy Darrell peaked at number 12 on the British single’s chart with the catchy blue-eyed soul pounder “I’ve Been Hurt” and performed on Top of the Pops. His was a grassroots-driven success. “I’ve Been Hurt” was popular on the northern soul scene and initial sales were to fans hearing the song in clubs as it packed dance floors rather than on the radio.

At September 2010’s MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga took the stage in a dress made of stitched-together cuts of meat. The outfit, she said, was a political statement worn to draw attention to the aspect of the US military's don't ask, don't tell policy preventing anyone who "demonstrate[s] a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from joining the forces. The first female singer to wear a meat dress on stage, though, had less of a profile.

In 1942, Roy Acuff set up Acuff-Rose Music in partnership with Nashville-based songwriter and talent scout Fred Rose. The new publishing company was dedicated to treating songwriters decently. They would not be cheated out of their copyrights. There would be clear and honest accounting. The contracts offered would have better percentages than rival publishers. There would be no shady deals. Acuff-Rose cocked a snook at the country music establishment and, in time, had writers as important as The Everly Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Roy Orbison on its books.

Sixty-eight tracks into the intriguing Action Time Vision, orthodoxy suddenly gives way to individualism. The two-and-bit discs so far have mostly showcased what passes for notions of punk rock: block-chord guitars, guttersnipe vocals, Ramones-speed rhythms and Clash-style terrace-chant choruses. Suddenly, The Fall’s lurching “Psycho Mafia” suggests the early punk era was not about trying to be same as every other band. Individualism was possible.

New Year’s Eve has its rituals and, in the Russian-speaking world, watching the 1976 film The Irony of Fate is core to ringing out the old and ringing in the new. A television staple, it has the seasonal status of It’s a Wonderful Life, The Little Shop on the Corner and White Christmas. First seen in Russian homes as a three-hour, two-part small-screen production on the first day of 1976, it was subsequently edited and shown in cinemas.

French Pictures in London was a bolt from the blue. Issued in June, four decades after being recorded, it was a previously unknown, unreleased album better than most mid-Seventies rock offerings. It was also better than about 99 percent of albums retrospectively hailed as classics. However, it had escaped attention and its maker was barely heard of.

Attempts to steer a straightforward path through the music of Sun Ra have always been hampered by the volume of records issued, their limited availability and trying to work out whether they represent something he had a hand in releasing. Just because an album is in the shops does not necessarily mean it was part of the artist’s own vision of who they are or were.