A pastoral calm beset by aural hallucinations The Walled Garden is a weird and hidden treasure

The energy they radiate is empowerment not grievance, a sense of strength in community. These aren’t protest songs, more songs of identification and celebration, of shared joy and pain.

Crisp and clear but charged with ‘in the moment’ energy, in a certain light it could be their best record.

Fantastic Man is nine chunks of relentless pounding drums, serrated guitar and agitated yelling. It is bracing and delightful.

The title Primal Forms suggests something irreducible, even basic, but this is music as a primordial ooze, fundamental elements stirred into a bubbling soup of possibilities.

The loose song structures are contorted by hyper charged playing, love songs played at full force and high volume to achieve an emotional frenzy.

With the stroke of a Covid-19 pen, Birmingham’s brilliant but lockdowned Supersonic festival became the virtual, Sofasonic. Jared Dix was sitting comfortably and gives us the full DFS. . .

Their knack for effortless melody is undimmed and resistance to its charms proves foolish.

What have we learnt here then? This is a pretty solid remix record… If you’ve had enough baking and jigsaw puzzles, it’s not a bad diversion.

Fresh and alive with ideas Walk It Dry finds Sly & The Family Drone really coming into their own and making their best, most ambitious statement yet.

The Bobby Lees are a very young band from Woodstock NY and they play the garage punk blues with real fire and wild animal energy like they can hardly stop themselves.

A powerhouse African drumming record offset by sci-fi atmospheres and industrial tone blasts.

Gentle but still epic, ‘Stygian Bough – Volume 1’ is not crushing so much as it is meditative. It looks to a path beyond loss, a journey to light and acceptance.

It has been most thoughtfully compiled and programmed so that its strange cargo of rejects contrast and complement one another as part of a remarkable whole. Rare is the compilation that pulls this off so effectively.

An effective blast of muscular, chaotic hardcore dragged through the noise rock mud.

Intended as an odds ‘n’ sods release for fans and completists, 10:20 nonetheless offers a strange and persuasive career overview, entry via the side door into the stunning catalogue of one of our most unique and brilliant bands.

A leisurely paced set of fuzzy modular synth jams, All Things Being Equal sees Pete Kember in greater command of his personal analogue orchestra than ever before.

It’s a fine and entertaining book, capturing something of Lunch’s powerful impact and a wider sense of a New York underground long gone.

A claustrophobic, urban march. Like pacing the city’s filthy grid while lost in your own thoughts.

The bands have enough but not too much in common, they’d definitely make a good live triple bill. If I were still a young and reckless kid I’d be all over this.

Flight of Ideas is a colourful, hyperkinetic rush of sound and ideas, another heart racing jolt to the synapses.