The packed crowd at the Jazz Café was fired up by a sizzling samba soul band led by Kita Steuer on bass and vocals, singing along to a production line of hits, complete with dynamic brass section and superior percussion. All songs by a singular Brazilian artist, Tim Maia, who died 20 years ago and whose music was being celebrated.

Dreamweapon’s second album, SOL, is a spaced-out trip of oceanic psychedelia that calls on the listener to pay full attention and sink into their potent motoric vibes. Free of any hippy-dippy fluffiness, Dreamweapon may be experts in laying down the drone but they are also locked firmly into the groove.

For Britain, 1965 began with The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” at the top of the single’s chart. In December, the year bowed out with their double A-side “Day Tripper” / “We can Work it Out” in the same position. But 1965 was not just about The Beatles.

Texan trio Khruangbin are a rare concoction, psychedelic rockers, for sure, but seamed with all manner of global influences, notably Thai pop but also running the gamut from Latin sounds to Middle Eastern scaling. Hitting the UK in support of their second album, Con Todo El Mundo, they initially presented an aloof front, which was compromised briefly by a minor technical glitch.

This didn’t distract from the band’s striking retro-future aesthetic, especially bassist-singer Laura Lee, who wore a chic white leotard and red thigh-high boots like a supersonic empress from a kitsch old sci-fi film. The matching long black fringes of the two guitarists were also notably distinctive. The band’s overall look is glossy, yet not impersonal; guitarist Mark Speer wore a grey suit with white cowboy boots, undoubtedly a homage to his and the band’s Texan roots. A spirited crowd member shouted, “I love your shoes, man!”

It was interesting how, despite being a mostly instrumental band, the audience still sang along to the riffs. Khruangbin’s music manages to be very catchy without ever over-egging things. Songs such as “August Twelve” seemed to lull the audience into a low hum of accompaniment, the syncopation making the melodies even more charming and unique. “White Gloves”, their most popular track, and one of the few with lyrics, was serene and beautiful. I was struck by the playfulness of the band’s stage presence, adding a sense of flair with occasional teasing hip movements, or summoning each other across the stage with music.

“Evan Finds the Third Room”, from the new album, offered an unusual atmosphere, as the band play with lyrical form to create a captivating call-and-response between the two “not-vocalist” vocalists, bringing a gospel influence to light. There was a spoken word section which was particularly striking and funky. Laura Lee seemed a cold presence at first, but eventually her cold sheen dwindled, and she was smiling with the crowd. Apparently their first gig was in Bristol three years ago, when they released their first album, The Universe Smiles Upon You. Mark Speer toasted the crowd with a beer and agreed, “and it certainly does, Bristol”.

Khruangbin are born from all sorts of strange underground influences and offer a refreshing, unlaboured step out of the ordinary. Their effortless yet glossy stage presence seems likely to mean good things for the band’s future. They have already seen a dramatic rise in popularity over the past few months. Lurking beyond any definitive genre, they’re a tight instrumental unit, with memorable melodies, and the occasional glimmer of fearless and forward-thinking funk that, by the end of the night, left this capacity crowd sated.

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Overleaf: watch 54 minute Khruangbin Boiler Room live set

Vinyl matters. It matters to theartsdesk on Vinyl, clearly, as the name may hint. And it matters to many of you. But why? Why does it matter? We all have our own reasons for playing records, some practical, some sound-related, some personal, some ritualistic, some nostalgic, and many more that are harder to define.

How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which distract from the core essence of the song?

The critic Simon Reynolds characterised Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia as the sound of “vitrified everglades in J.G. Ballard’s The Illuminated Man, where some kind of entropy has slowed down time, so that living creatures are literally petrified, encrusted and crystal.”

Eindhoven art punks Radar Men from the Moon have been around since 2010 with a sound that has knitted together space rock, strange electronics and shoegaze flavours with a psychedelic view point.

The official reissue of The Beatles’ Christmas records is a major event. Since Live at the BBC was issued in 1994, archive Beatles’ releases have fallen into two categories.

The Monterey Pop Festival in California in mid-June 1967 was a key event in the history of festival culture. There had been music festivals before in the US – Newport Folk springs to mind – but Monterey marked the point where the whimsical trend for “renaissance fairs” combined with the rising first blaze of rock music, born of psychedelia, all marinated thoroughly in LSD-flavoured happenings and love-ins. And, of course, it was filmed by DA Pennebaker, making it a visual blueprint, ripe for imitation, influencing countless generations into the idea of festivals as miniature countercultural utopias.

The film, only 79 minutes long, remains fantastic. This writer was blown away by it in his teens and 20s but, decades later, it’s lost none of its potency, perhaps even gained some as its defiantly non-cynical attitude seems so refreshing in these meta times. The first thing that strikes is how fantastically everyone is dressed, how sharp, how individual, making me want to weep at the rise of sportswear which has destroyed sartorial suss the planet round. But mainly, despite a bit of crowd action, it doesn't have Woodstock's propensity for tangential asides. It’s a lean musical entity.

And what music! Grace Slick out-singing all the men in Jefferson Airplane; Simon & Garfunkel silhouetted beautifully against a red backdrop; Janis Joplin channelling Etta James to invent Robert Plant and every heavy metal vocalist of the Seventies and Eighties; Otis Redding backed by Booker T & the MGs, just so tight, so sexy, the ultimate soul man; The Who going bonkers (“This is where it all ends!”); Hendrix setting his guitar and his career alight; and finally Ravi Shankar in a long, wonderful, frenetic back’n’forth with his tabla-player Alla Rakha, just mesmerising.

However, what most will be buying this three-disc set for is the extras. As well as a 16-bit 4K digital restoration of the original film, there are the complete filmed sets of Hendrix and Redding, and two hours of performance footage that wasn’t used in the film, running the gamut from the sharply choreographed, suited pop of The Association to falsetto oddball Tiny Tim, to The Byrds, frostily falling out with David Crosby onstage, their music suffering as a consequence.

There are also various interviews, old and new (Pennebaker, impresario Lou Adler, the Mamas and the Papas’ John Phillips, Sixties PR legend Derek Taylor, David Crosby, Mama Cass), as well as audio commentaries (Pennebaker, Adler, writers Charles Shaar Murray and Peter Guralnick), photos and Richard Leacock’s subversive short film about the police, Chiefs, which was the support feature when Monterey Pop was originally released to cinema. There’s also a booklet of essays featuring Barney Hoskyns, Michael Chaiken and others.

Much of this material has been available in the States since 2004, but this set really is the complete deal, a plethora of treats for fans of the original film and, for anyone else, an untainted window into Californian music culture, just as the Summer of Love was starting to bubble. It’s one of the all-time great music films, simple as that.

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Overleaf: watch Ravi Shanker and table-player Alla Rakha play an astounding, nigh-on-20 minute version of "Dhun" at the Monterey Pop Festival