“How psychedelic is your pop? This is the demanding question posed to many groups today, struggling for acceptance. It's no longer any good to say: ‘Well, mate, we can play Wilson Pickett, James Brown and all that gear,’ to anybody contemplating booking a band. One has to explain whether one is likely to set fire to the auditorium, or batter the audience’s senses with flame, light and fiendish noises.”

It’s always encouraging to a have a musical rallying call in times of political strife. A song for a better future to encourage those on the right side of history not just to march but to dance as well.

Fresh from winning this year’s Scottish Album of the Year Award – for the third time no less! – Young Fathers gave a spectacular performance on Tuesday night on their home turf, at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. Sure, it seems odd that a competition that’s only been running ten years has been won three times by a band who’ve released four albums.

Just over 30 years ago, avant-pop icons Stereolab released their debut album Peng! establishing the early hallmarks of the English-French band’s sound; 1960s pop harmonies, chorus-laden guitar riffs and a borderless world of analog electrics.

There is a great deal of sense in transposing electronic music to a symphony orchestra. However beautifully crafted, imaginatively constructed, and creatively programmed, the sounds that come out of synthesisers and other digital tools lack the knife-edge fallibility of music that is produced with the hand or the human breath. 

Los Angeles is a collaboration from ex-Cure man Lol Tolhurst, former Banshee, Creature and Slits’ drummer, Budgie and producer Jacknife Lee, as well as an army of musical mates from Bobby Gillespie and The Edge to LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Starcrawler’s Arrow de Wilde. So, it could easily have descended into a supergroup exercise of backslapping and excessive self-regard by a load of rock stars who haven’t been in the limelight for a while.

For Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman, the decision to pursue electronic music was made in 1968 during a visit to Poland. He had recently started using graphical notation for the scores of his compositions and was having problems getting conductors and orchestras to follow what he wanted.

Atmospherically and musically, the debut album from Lebanon’s Mayssa Jallad swiftly makes its case. It opens with a drifting, elegiac voice singing a wandering melody over a sound-bed including what sounds like a koto and a droning cello. The language employed is Arabic. On the next track, the meditative spell is punctured by the crack of distant gunfire.

Who knew! James Blunt has sold 20 million records worldwide. Who to, I wonder? Back to Bedlam, his 2004 debut, was the biggest-selling album of the first decade of the 21st century. Call that progress? When pop was pap – think the Carpenters or Bread – it was at least melodic and well-produced, leaving in its saccharine wake a handful of truly memorable songs that still evoke a pang of nostalgia and happy memories of sixth-form parties. But this kind of stuff is just… meh.

With a name like The Kills, it’s not surprising to hear that the band’s long-awaited sixth album, God Games, is suitably tuned for spooky season.