The Starries, The Years Are Hers (Bearos) 7"

Melodic hardcore distinguished mostly by the singer's near terminal throat frog on the A-side. Things perk up on the flip and we're back in the territory that made their debut split with Jameson such a gem. Water Flow careers through its length like a steamroller down a steep hill, crushing all in its wake and veering crazily across the road. The band just hang on for dear life and try to enjoy the ragged bendiness.
Web: http://www.bearos.freeserve.co.uk

I like the cut of Montana Pete's jib. I like their sonic frugality and the clean-cut clinical precision of guitar, bass and drums mixed to the Albini standard. More angular than a middle-aged bachelor with a set square collection, they chop and chang with the best of 'em and never overrun the 3-minute limit. Despite the title, there's nothing Devo about the A-side but then the B-side is called French Ladies and if that's a woman singing je mangerai mon beret.
PO Box 24356, London, SW17 9FE
Web: http://www.montanapete.co.uk

There was an Australian band, Ratcat, that were briefly popular over here about ten years ago. I saw them play a couple of times on the fraggle circuit and somewhere along the way picked up their Tingles 6-tracker from a second hand shop (God bless second hand shops.) Ratcat had a canny way of charming half a tune from half-tuned guitars, almost like J. Mascis was pulling the strings having somehow banished his inbuilt desire to fuck everything up with masses of distortion. Getting Away (From This World) was Husker Du at half speed and halfway to the moon and, unlike many records of that era (stand up Ned's Atomic Dustbin) Tingles still gets dusted off and given the occasional spin. So it was something of a delight to find that Goblin Universe's latest outing for Rocket Number Nine has the same sleight of hand and the same (un)tuneful knack. Hands, the pick of these four, takes the space theme on a spell, ditching Grant Hart and replacing him with Brian Wilson. It is Elephant Six at the gates of grunge.
Web: http://www.rocketnumbernine.cc.st

One of those records that has a certain masochistic, solipsistic appeal but which you will never ever put on the Sinatra and Friends compilations you do for your gran. The sound of machines being slowly crushed and animals being slowly tortured on a dark, cold night somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.
E-Mail: verdura@worldmailer.net

Sounds like an expensive beer served in mid-market pizza restaurants with the unwelcome side effect of gluing your lips together. Alternatively, sounds like Magoo have turned up to 11, have one foot on the monitors and the other foot on the gas. Also on this one-side promo, a pretty faithful cover of Beefheart's Big Eyed Beans From Venus which strictly speaking isn't necessary (could the original ever be topped?) but is certainly fun.
E-Mail: magoo@thesickroom.co.uk
Web: http://www.thesickroom.co.uk

"We are not a rock band but we rock the house." It's probably not much of a revelation to you but some people haven't yet realised that guitars are no longer required, or even desired, for a good time. S.I.Futures - our old friend and alias farmer Si Begg/ Cabbage Boy/ BuckFunk 3000 and so on - injects acid into Kraftwerks motorik vein, flips a couple of weirdo switches and, well, rocks the house. Remixes come courtesy of himself, naturally.

Snoop drops the NWA name into his typically underplayed flow during Lay Low. He shouldn't have bothered. Compared the second hand shop treat picked up the other day, Lay Low is very small beer indeed. Gangsta Gangsta rocks like Vesuvius on a busy day, a hailstorm of harsh rhyming and harsher, hardknock beatbox. Dr Dre produced both records and while I'm for progress as much as the next cynical rose-tinted spectacle wearer (I mean, where would we be without Betamax, the Sinclair C5 and Wap phones?) can we really say that 15 years on, Snoop's new one is anything other than a backward step? Where's the edge? Where's the vitality? Where's the sound of the street? What's this singing doing on here? What, most of all, what happened to the beats? Lay Low? Please do.

Stab, first up, is effectively the title track. It's the death rattle of a personal computer unable to cope with the digital deluge that connecting to the internet provokes these days. The hum and buzz of a purring modem gives way to the crippled lurching of an overloaded processor, the fractured gnashing of berserk printers and the low bass grind of a hard drive evacuating itself.
Web: http://www.wauvenfold.com

Pay No More Than £3.99. There's something reassuringly old school about the slogan emblazoned across the front of Havock Junction. There's something resolutely old school about the Sorted label in general, sticking with loss-making 7" singles, sticking with unfashionable Leicester and sticking with those now-defunct shouty bastards, Prolapse. Speaking of which, the angry dronesters bookend proceedings with two previously unreleased gems. Between them we have some 80s throwback indie pop, some weirdy electronica, some noise, the cream of the East Midlands cognoscenti and 16 bands that've appeared on Sorted's 7" menu over the last few years. You can of course pick your own selection, with your own italicised descriptions, but I favour The Chemistry Experiment's undersea world of muted electro (or Pram in the bath), The Freed Unit's intercepted alien communications (or SETI get a hit while Mantronik tunes up), another of Fish From Tahiti's loop and cut-up gags (or Public Service Announcements go disco), Dalmation Rex pulling a schizo R'n'B/ easy listening stunt (or Crazyhead with a fluctuating migraine) and Voon's Pilchard's of Death blues (or wannabee Goons with Shambolic ability and zany gene enhancements).
Web: http://www.sortedrecords.org.uk