Ace rapper/producer shows off his soundscapes

Gainsbourg's grand amour offers Oriental stylings

Third album from dancehall king

Kings Of Convenience man goes electronic on solo debut

Tortoise off-shoot, featuring Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen

Reed shows off "heavy bear" side on two-CD tribute to 19th-century poet

Black metal from Norway

It's over a decade since former actor Will Oldham took his first faltering steps in a forgotten backwater of American music. When Oldham began recording with his brother Paul in 1992 he was recovering from a nervous breakdown, staking out an area that provided a refuge for his skewed, haunted but unusually perceptive sensibility.

Proto-US hardcore from Jello Biafra and gang

Edgar Froese's Berlin electronica franchise got into gear with this 1972 double, Tangerine Dream's third album, the reissue of which highlights their decisive move away from Baader-Meinhof guitars and into gothic liturgies of mellotron and synthesized abstraction. Not that this neuters the band's still-extant freakout tendency, which grumbles up tectonically to shake the cloud-hung soundscape of cosmic foreboding. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, listen to "Birth Of Liquid Plejades"... This is how you do it, okay?