At 15 seconds in, it becomes obvious Ruins means business. A brief snatch of acoustic guitar lays the table for a hard-edged, groove-driven slab of melodic guitar psych immediately bringing to mind the heavier moments of Sun Dial’s classic 1990 album Other Way Out. Dungen (and their flute) are in there too. As are Kak’s “Trieulogy” and a hefty dose of vintage Swedish progg.

It was 2008 when The Early Years went into the studio to begin work on the follow-up to their impressive self-titled debut. Having pretty much set out the blueprint for many, if not all, of the kraut-esque bands who followed in their wake, there was disagreement on where to go next: further down the same path or sideways onto softer, more experimental ground? Songs or structures? Klaus Dinger or Michael Rother?

There's an eeriness about this record that comes of it being so very perfectly anachronistic. TOY have formerly mined various parts of experimental rock history, notably Krautrock, and on their collaboration with Natasha “Bat For Lashes” Khan, some wild psychedelic rock from all corners of the planet. And certainly you can hear the chug of 1970s Dusseldorf sublimated into the grooves here on their third album – but the overwhelming sense is that this record exists somewhere around 1988 or 1989, back when indie truly meant indie.

In 1969, the Australian band Tamam Shud improvised as a film  was projected onto the wall of a recording studio. The results were heard on the Evolution album. Playing original music live to accompany a film screening isn’t commonplace these days but eyebrows are no longer raised when it happens. Pere Ubu have played along with Carnival of Souls and It Came From Outer Space. Mogwai have done the same for the documentary Atomic.

In 1969, a tranche of American musicians looked back to the country’s past for inspiration. Bob Dylan followed John Wesley Harding with Nashville Skyline. The Band’s eponymous second album hit the shops. The Flying Burrito Brothers debuted with The Gilded Palace of Sin. The rootsy was a default. But choosing to draw on country and Appalachian traditions did not have to mean playing it straight. On the amazing Farewell Aldebaren, Judy Henske and Jerry Yester used banjo and hammered dulcimer.

In 1966, David Warner assumed the title role in Karel Reisz’s satire Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment. The film’s Morgan Delt was a fantasist with a communist family background married to the posh Leonie, played by Vanessa Redgrave. When she seeks a divorce, he campaigns to win her back but ends up in an asylum where she reveals she is pregnant with his child. As a depiction of class clashes, thwarted aspirations and unmediated behaviour, it was a very Sixties confection.

The weight of expectation can be a terrible thing to bear. When Since I Left You, The Avalanches’ patchwork party debut, was released in 2000, there was no sense of how long it had taken to make, just a collective intake of breath at the dense layers and intricate detail. Plundering anything and everything in their bid to create this delightful decoupage, it was the sheer scale of the band’s collective imagination that thrilled. How could any follow-up possibly compare?

Pictured above is the label of an exceptionally important Pink Floyd record issued last November. Only a thousand people bought a copy. That was the amount that hit shops. Pink Floyd 1965: Their First Recordings was a double seven-inch set with a historic importance inversely proportionate to its availability. It was the first ever outing for the earliest recordings by the band and, as such, the earliest compositions for them by its prime songwriter Syd Barrett.

"Sunshine came softly through my window today..." How fortuitous that veteran Scottish tunestrel Donovan should have picked London's glorious first day of summer to stage his "Beat Cafe" event at the Palladium. The plan was to rove across his back catalogue to celebrate his 70th birthday (which actually falls on Tuesday) as well as his half-century in the music business.

The figures are approximate, but the Yardbirds’ first studio album has been issued on CD at least 12 separate times. With The Move, their debut album and its follow-up Shazam have each had a comparatively paltry eight outings on CD. As for vinyl editions, setting aside the UK originals in mono and stereo and contemporaneous worldwide pressings, similar quantities of reissues of the three albums have hit shops from the mid-Seventies onwards.