Two snapshots of Jamaica’s music, each catching styles associated with specific periods. The two CDs of Catch-A-Fire - Treasure Isle Ska (1963-1965) collects 47 tracks originally issued by Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid’s Duke Reid, Dutchess and Treasure Isle labels. Top Ranking DJ Session Volumes 1 & 2 is titled after two vintage compilations – the double CD compiles 44 tracks recorded by Joe Gibbs over 1977 to 1979.

Album opener “Atapos” was released as a single earlier in September, its sharply angular beats created by Björk and Indonesian duo Gabber Modus Operandi, one of whom has since had his contributions removed following #MeToo allegations. The song’s message is about growth towards connection. “To insist on absolute justice at all times / blocks connection” she sings, intoning “hope is a muscle” towards the end.

Make no mistake about it, Slipknot are massive. 23 years after their recording debut, they’ve had 8.5 billion streams, their sixth album, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, hit the top of the charts in 12 countries, including the US and the UK, and their spectacular shows are a global phenomenon. In fact, it’s live that this writer really embraces Slipknot but their last album demonstrated they still had the chutzpah to knock a longplayer out of the park. The new one almost hits the same peaks.

It’s a minor tragedy that Yeah Yeah Yeahs arrived just in time to be bundled in with a spurious “new rock revolution,” because they were so much more than rock. The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Libertines all may have had decent enough songs, but all were ultimately extremely trad rock, sonically living in mythical pasts.

Presumably before setting out on their current tour the Big Moon smashed a few mirrors, walked under some ladders and crossed the paths of numerous black cats. Not only is this jaunt over two years in the making, endlessly postponed for the usual coronavirus reasons, but the foursome also lost most of their equipment in Spain just prior to hitting the road.

Lambchop’s 1997 breakthrough album took its title from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Borrowing The Bible is a more purposefully brazen gambit, as Kurt Wagner tries to locate Americans’ spiritual hearts, in a shaken, besmirched and brutalised nation. It’s a record of reflection, reconciliation and quiet rebellion.

The British music weeklies were clear about where the Sound-On-Sound LP and its singles fitted into the current musical topography when they were issued in 1979. Comparisons offered up included Magazine, Talking Heads and XTC. And, more curiously, The Tubes. Whatever the assessments, the band behind these releases was new wave.

Lauded by Elton John (who called their 2020 debut EP Love and Hate in a Different Time “probably one of the most seminal records I've heard in the last 10 years”), a show-stealing performance on Later… With Jools Holland in 2021, fêted at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. The inexorable rise of LA-based trio Gabriels – Jacob Lusk, Ryan Hope and Ari Balouzian – continues with the release of this mesmerising, superbly crafted debut album.

South-African cellist Abel Selaocoe is about to begin his third major concert in London in under a year. As the support artist for kora player Ballake Sissoko and cellist Vincent Segal at the Roundhouse in January, he received a lengthy ovation for his 30 minute set, having demonstrated an uncanny ability to play the audience as dexterously as he plays his cello.

Beth Orton has never rushed her music. Her first four albums came one every three years, then since 2002 it’s averaged at a five year gap each time. So it’s no wonder also that there can be stylistic schisms from one to the next.