I’ve alluded a few times in recent weeks to the excellence of the forthcoming “Spiderland” boxset, and especially to the Lance Bangs documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which it contains. “Breadcrumb Trail” tells the odd, low-key, long-obfuscated tale of Slint, revealing much without entirely dismantling the band’s mystique, and focusing on the band’s drummer Britt Walford.

Being a bit of a broken record here: a proliferation of Hurray For The Riff Raff albums this week, since I’m writing a review of the fantastic “Small Town Heroes” at the moment. Plenty of new stuff as well, though, at least some of it recommended, with strong reference to Toumani Diabaté and his son Sidiki’s kora duets, and to the tantalising extract from a Fennesz album that’s being explicitly pitched as the follow-up to “Endless Summer”…

Another song this week from what’s rapidly shaping up to be one of my favourite 2014 albums, Hurray For The Riff-Raff’s “Small Town Heroes”. Have a look, too, at the trailer for Lance Bangs’ Slint documentary, “Breadcrumb Trail”, which is the music film I’ve enjoyed most since the Source Family doc.

For a while this week, it looked like I might be able to post a playlist entirely consisting of new entries, at least until I got dragged back into playing the Ryley Walker. But hey, look at all this, not least the clip of Shirley Collins’ first live performance in 30 years, which just showed up.

What sounded like the roof coming off the house sometime in the early hours of last Sunday morning during what you can only hope was the last of the winter’s great storms woke me with a start, stirring me from a hugely disturbing dream in which I was on Mastermind answering questions in my specialist round on The Vicar of Dibley, Seasons 1-3 (1994-2007).

Another one of the annoying redacted albums uncovered this week, in the shape of Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks, on the first few listens possibly superior to the last Animal Collective set. I wish you could hear more of Angel Deradoorian on it, though: her “Mind Raft” EP from a few years back is maybe my favourite release from the extended Dirty Projectors collective.

This week’s excuse for briskness is I have a longish review of Real Estate to write for the mag, but some good news in here: not least the appearance of a mighty stash of Fela Kuti albums on Bandcamp and some predictably weird mixtapes, compiled by John Fahey, fetching up on Soundcloud.

Strong haul of rad gumbo here, as we’ve taken to saying. Never thought I’d want to hear another Hold Steady album after the last one, but “Teeth Dreams” pretty much reaffirmed the faith. And if you’re that way inclined, I can recommend the new Men album, too; their best, I think.

A week of revelations here, I suppose, since a bunch of albums that I’ve had to strategically redact from recent lists, until they’re formally announced, can now be identified and previewed. Please note, then, the appearance of new albums by Damon Albarn, Elbow and Real Estate among the 20-odd things below. The Real Estate is especially fantastic – more like Felt and The Feelies than ever, maybe – and I’ll try and write something more extensive about it in the next week or so.

Quickly today, as there’s an issue to be flung together, but a plug in passing for our latest Ultimate Music Guide, on sale today and dedicated to Lou Reed. More on that later.