Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Vula Viel Do Not Be Afraid (Vula Viel)

Of the 20-plus names gathered on the superbly packaged Kankyō Ongaku, it’s likely that only Yellow Magic Orchestra and their members Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto are familiar to most non-Japanese listeners. Initially, it seems a big ask to hope buyers will fork out for compilation tracking potentially uncharted musical territory but the full title stresses that what’s heard isn’t so perplexing.

Jimmy Hendix’s Greenwich Village studios are the venue for LCD Soundsystem’s third live album, which features the most recent touring line-up playing a set heavy with songs from 2017’s American Dream album along with a smattering of covers. 

A compilation on which Philip Glass and Terry Riley rub shoulders with Controlled Bleeding and Smegma is going to be interesting. Throw in Data-Bank-A, Dog as Master, NON and Suicide, and it becomes clear what’s striven for is an all-encompassing overview of something particular rather than a miscellany of random names included as attention-grabbers.

There is an inevitable change that comes with moving from the realms of self-produced bedroom blubstep to slickly-produced West Cali smoothness that will cause chaotic realms of loss of self, fans and at some level, originality. But let’s not forget – this is surely what Blake has always been aiming for.

Russian trio Gnoomes have created small waves over the last couple of years with their woozy psychedelia. One of its defining factors is the way the band have utilised Soviet-era synthesizers. During the Cold War it wasn’t only weaponry and the space race that defined the endless competitiveness between the United States and the USSR; the technologies of sound were also an area of rivalry.

Why You So Crazy is a woozy, disorientating and spaced-out affair with a similar understated production to the Dandy Warhols last album, 2016’s Distortland. Long gone is the brash, anthemic guitar glam-pop of the turn of the century. In those days, the Dandys gobbled horse-size pills, wouldn’t touch you if you were the last junky on Earth, and just wanted to be Bohemian like you. They were hipsters, before that became a term of abuse, with songs littered with tongue-in-cheek humour and Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s snarky barbs.

Monzen Nakacho is an old and distinguished part of Tokyo that’s renowned for its nightlife. It’s also the moniker that Worthing musician Gary Short has given himself for his 21^st century keyboard wizard persona.

The cliché of hard times making for good culture is a distinctly dodgy, even dangerous, one.

Kosua was released only last month, but its journey began two years ago when George Thompson, aka Black Merlin, released Hipnotik Tradisi, a beautiful and captivating document of his travels through Indonesia, seamlessly blending field recordings, found sounds and studio experimentalism.