'Mwng' or 'Mane' (as in horses) is a purely Welsh language album and is a theoretically disorientating and complex, but triumphantly audacious, experience.

In drawing on rock, hip hop, electro, drum 'n' bass and early electronic artists, Van Helden mirrors the developments dance acts have been making in the UK and Europe, rather than US artists.

In the main they have done away with their more stodgy, pretentious material and distilled their sound into a stripped down rawness, and they sound all the better for it.

This time it's the cover of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' that grabs the headlines. The surprisingly credible version limbers into life with Britney chatting away to her pals on the phone.

It's dark but without employing the dull monotone formulas that have dragged drum and bass down.

At its best 'Wishville' recalls the finest hours of Psychedelic Furs and Mancunian goth heroes The Chameleons and at its worst, the pomp stadium rock of Simple Minds.

Throughout the album, Primal Scream set a furious pace that only narrowly stops itself before the last note is spat out. In the preceding 65 minutes, what you get is as monumental a sonic statement of the times as 'Screamadelica' was over ten years ago, the first great album of the millennium and probably the best record of the year.

Bloodflowers' stands as a glorious, if contradcitory, body of work. It won't win new converts but lapsed Cure fans will find it a thrilling and rewarding hour.

The startling musical variety amplifies the fact that no matter how aloof, how diffident, how cartoon Beck might be, he's so extravagantly talented that he's already lapped everyone else on that strength alone.

It might not be the dance album of the year - but it's certainly pushing musical boundaries and deserves to be in your record collection.