A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away called the late 1990s, there was a scene known as “big beat”. It consisted of club culture sorts making music closer in flavour to rock, and easier to drink beer to than house and techno.

What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry’s slippery 1977 psychological thriller Eclipse certainly fits the bill, having languished unseen in the BFI vaults for nigh on half a century.

Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare released this century. With his last album, 2022’s New Mythology, his ayahuasca-fuelled search for spiritual meaning went full-blown mystic. Where has it led him? To Jesus.

A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title.

Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical archetypes – specifically Italian disco and Eurovision-styled balladry – there is little solidity which can be grasped. The wispy clouds in the album’s cover image are emblematic.

DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating between 1946 and 1992. Among its vast output were four lavish science fiction adventures, released between 1960 and 1976 and shown here in gleaming new transfers. Each one, to varying degrees, depicts the future through a rose-coloured lens, the world evolving into a utopian socialist paradise where disputes are settled peacefully.

This album Firedove (Sony Classical), surely, has to be seen as part of a bigger story: that of organist, choir director and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, who, still in her twenties – just – has become an essential part of the (often cautious and conservative) classical music fabric of this country at a pace which defies belief. She works punishingly hard and has thoroughly earned her pivotal position both as performer and as advocate.

Morcheeba reach their 30^th anniversary this year. The 1990s band, a unit once synonymous with phrases such as “trip hop” and “chill-out”, are up to album number 11. Their multi-million-selling oeuvre is based around a hazy combination of low-slung hip hop beats, stoned electronic atmospherics, spacey, slightly John Barry wah-wah guitar, and the luxurious voice of frontwoman Skye Edwards.

Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United (2018) struck hard and fast in a field already well-populated by the fusion of traditional Arab sounds and modern electronics. It was a marriage made in heaven. His second album Global Control/Invisible Invasion (2020) explored links with South Indian sounds, but in the latest, he returns to his roots and the result is a frenetic and very danceable mix of ancient and modern.

How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working class in favour of the privileged, a bunch of snarky ex-Cambridge University students who make smug guitar pop, a Brideshead Revisited version of The Kooks.