The rebounding sounds that dominate Undying Color have a cumulative effect, and form a kind of aural mist within which the listener can get lost. Charming.

A piledriver of a set, but it pulls you into his world.

While it’s probably a good thing that the rest of record isn’t quite as intense as that [Waiting On My Horrible Warning], the 11 songs that follow remain a deliberately overbearing barrage of droning, snarling and unrelenting noise punk.

Brasher, younger-sounding than the band’s previous records, but with the hard-won wisdom that experrience brings.

The thing is, by Adams’ standards, too many of the songs sound slightly underwritten.

Ty Segall itself reveals--even more so than Emotional Mugger and Manipulator before it--a willingness to park the DIY or garage rock tag, however momentarily.

The mixing of the waters, swirling around Merritt’s pure, soaring vocals, produces a record that’s elegant and intelligent, only country in the same way that Emmylou’s own later work (think Wrecking Ball) could be said to be.

Words surface out of the swirling maelstrom, an occult ritual within the architecture, another tone adding to mood, but always subservient to the texture, which sweeps from the muscular to the persuasively melodic.

42 minutes of rewarding new music for those who still believe.

In short, this compact collection is all quite interesting, and the Rashad Becker mastering makes it sound appropriately big, but it’s essentially one for the black turtleneck crowd, and sports soberly black artwork in order to ram the point home.

Hook-laden choruses and seismic riffs don’t feature heavily in the Fufanu sound--and nor should they. Like The Rapture before them, their sound is one of influences absorbed subtly.

Hardwired is a slightly less gripping version of the same, as is Moth Into Flame. There’s some sweet doom in the form of Dream No More, an obvious Sabbath homage, and a nod to their late mentor Lemmy with Murder One. In between, we’re treated to a lot of mid-tempo plodding.

Strike A Match runs the risk of becoming a little too chaotic as Aggs and Rodgers throw everything in at once; their flair for reflective lyricism sadly becomes a little lost in the crowd.

Long-term fans will be delighted, the uninitiated might just find themselves falling for his grouchy charms.

We’re in science fiction territory here; the dystopian synths that glide over the track’s foundations are bleak, yet comforting in their filmic familiarity. The album has its share of pacy moments, too.

Some tracks fare better than others, and it would certainly be a stronger album without the insistent disco party beats of SSD or Elle Ne T’Aime Pas.

From the beatless flicker of opening track The Journey, through the 808 kick drum weave of Fall Into Water to the radioactive skeletons of Oracle and the bottomless Paradise, Hunn treats tracks like living sculptures, adding microscopic brush strokes and his trademark deep space strings.

Baldi certainly has a knack for crafting a chorus but once he finds the structure, he tends to hold on to it for a little too long, meaning that the charming hooks on Life Without Sound can often become idle repetition.

What’s also not documented here are The Doors’ performances of Light My Fire and The End, from a second set. Sadly, Peña’s second reel remains buried in a box somewhere, robbing us of fascinating early glimpses of two songs which would grow to gargantuan proportions in the years to come. It’s doubtless as much a frustration for the band as it will be for fans.

Much of what stems from his bands’ 15th standalone album never really gets past that “nothing of a track” phase. In fact, often the mood music Coyne and the gang have striven to make – as much about beats and textures as it is melody--is frustrating.

The overall feel is accomplished and often catchy, but it’s not as intriguingly esoteric as some material in this vein.

It’s a shame that they can’t quite reach that level consistently throughout the entire record, but those glimmers of greatness nevertheless establish The Wharves as charmingly talented songwriters worthy of investigation, especially if you have a penchant for the faded but still-beautiful glories of decades past.

Fans of ST’s metal era (basically everything from the late 80s on) will appreciate Lombardo’s solid presence, though there’s a feeling that the master is slightly under-utilised here, more of his Cuban influences would have freshened up the slightly over-familiar sound a bit.

Young is classically trained, but beholden to the values of punk rock and for this collection he has decided to throw technical competence out of the window by basing each song around the strumming of a single chord. These tunes can thus, in theory, be covered by anyone within hours of picking up a guitar.

As with Newman and Spigel’s previous output, most of it is far too restless to be dismissed as merely “ambient.”

Nine-minute meanders and sub-standard I Am The Walrus clones aside, Third World Pyramid furthers and spreads out the BJM sound.

Some of the sisters’ rippling Kate Bush worship is so high up in the ether (or vocal register) that the listener feels a little queasy when glancing down to the ground below, but this nausea is only short-lived and sporadic. Most of the album is in fact rather comfy and well thought-out, lightly jazzy in places and often soaked in reverb seemingly inherited from Dead Can Dance.

Papa M is back. His best album? No. A self-proclaimed “weird ass record” of diary sketches and fragments that beam with refound passion and optimism? Hell yeah.