At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity. It opens with a cut called “Infection”. Looked at now, it’s bizarrely prescient.

In pop music, less is often more and it doesn't come much shorter-and-sweeter than Quickies, the new collection from New York songwriter Stephin Merritt. The tracks range in length from a brisk 13 seconds to a whisker over two and a half minutes, all chock-full of wry humour.

“Collector of the Light” is based around what sounds like a treated bass guitar. As the neck is moved up and down, multiple notes are plucked at once. The instrument’s sound is subaquatic, wobbly. Over this, a distant, echoey voice sings of being the “collector of light”, restoring dreams and “silver points of wonder”. Atmospherically and structurally, a parallel is the 1968 13th Floor Elevators’ single “May the Circle Remain Unbroken”.

Word has been out for a while that EDM megastar Diplo has decided to throw a curve ball with his musical career, don a cowboy hat and release a country and western album. If that is truly the case, then there must be another disc in the pipeline because the somewhat awkwardly titled Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley – Chapter 1: Snake Oil certainly isn’t anything which displays any meaningful kinship with the likes of Willie Nelson or Hank Williams.

The 1975’s career is about navigating ambition, and finding ways to be an interesting, worthwhile big band after the music industry and rock music got small. This fourth album rambles and sprawls through 22 tracks, a double-album in no hurry to settle down.

Footsie might not have the profile of a Skepta or Wiley, or even his Newham Generals partner and recent IKEA advert soundtracker D Double E. But anyone halfway schooled in grime will know that both as MC and producer he's a key player from grime's original generation, and still a pillar of the scene. Amazingly, though, despite the fact he's released a couple of mixtapes and four compilations of his instrumentals, he's never made an official solo album until now. So given that, since his beginnings in N.A.S.T.Y.

Onto our seventh Lockdown selection and things are only getting busier out there, with more to see, hear and get involved in. Below are five of the best for this week. Dive in!

BBC Radio One Big Weekend 2020

In 2000, when Badly Drawn Boy released his debut album, The Hour of Belwiderbeast, it felt like an embarrassment of riches. Along with the string of singles he’d previously put out, ranging from the lo-fi to the luminous, Damon Gough’s creative tap was in full flow. His 2002 follow-up, the soundtrack for hit film About a Boy, was similarly sublime. 

Guy Clark, Steve Earle’s mentor and champion and the singer-songwriter to whom he paid homage on his 2019 album, once said that “songs aren’t finished until you play them for people”. By which he surely meant live, creating that vibe for which the best system, or headphones, is no substitute.

Outside his home country Madagascar, Damily was first heard via a couple of tracks on the 2004 French compilation album Tsapiky, Panorama D'une Jeune Musique De Tulear, an overview of the tsapiky dance music of the south-west of the island. He’d moved to France in 2003. His first internationally issued full-length album, Ravinahitsy, followed in 2007. Since then, there’s been three more albums: the last of which was 2018’s Valimbilo.