Rock

Ed O'Brien
Blue Morpho
Transgressive TRANS955CD; LP: TRANS955X

In terms of side projects Radiohead guitarist O'Brien has kept a pretty low profile, but his second solo album is full of quality and invention and is up there with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood's splinter group, Smile. O'Brien's playing in Radiohead can be purely textural, but on 'Incantations' his picking and chord changes sound immediately familiar, and he adds vocal chorales and electronic and acoustic percussion. By contrast, on the ten-minute 'Obrigado', he delivers a heady mix of trip-hop grooves, kaleidoscopic sonics and eccentric guitar soloing. The title track is swathed in strings, evoking the arrangements on Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, with a similar sense of disquiet lurking behind the beauty. MB

Sound Quality: 90%

Gary Lucas
The Edge Of Heaven Volume 2
Self-released; no cat. no.

Gary Lucas' CV includes working with Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley, and his eclectic solo career has seen him dubbed 'The guitarist of 1000 ideas'. One of the most esoteric of these is his interpretation of the mid-20th century Chinese pop he fell in love with while living in Taipei, Taiwan, in the 1970s. This unique mix of Chinese and Western music yielded romantic and capricious ballads with gorgeous melodies, sung here by Feifei Yang, who also plays the erhu. Lucas frames the songs with scintillating electric and acoustic guitar, and Jason Candler adds reeds and percussion. You might need mid-century Chinese pop far more than you realise. MB

Sound Quality: 85%

Les Big Byrd
Ruin Everything
Chimp Limbs CL022CD; LP: CL022LP

Few musical homages are as explicit as Les Big Byrd's 'Hökvind', a paean to Hawkwind, complete with cosmic synths and extravagant wah-wah lead guitar. Thereafter, the Stockholm psychonauts ally animated vocals to propulsive, mantric riffs – the instrumental title track only lasts four minutes, but feels like it could orbit your brain for eternity. The stately, processional 'Time Is A Killer' is a reflection on mortality and 'Big Flood' is a mini epic that references the apocalyptic Norse myth of Ragnarök. It chronicles a chain of events that begins at 'Newport '65', amusingly inviting comparisons with Bob Dylan's prophetic 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'. MB

Sound Quality: 80%

David Torn
Now I Imagine A Place Not The Same
Kou Records/Ideologic Organ KOU005LP (LP)

The music here isn't quite what one might expect from a guitarist who's worked with Madonna and David Bowie, but Torn made his name via extended technique, and creating soundscapes with electronics. These spontaneous solo compositions are literally exploratory as he takes an idea for a lengthy walk in each. On 'Inconclusive' he plays some lovely serpentine lines on fretless guitar punctuated with harmonics, then starts to distress them with shifts up the neck, note-bending and strange chords. There are lyrical interludes of sweet picking and electronic vapour trails, but we're never far from some loopy lead guitar or an invigorating blast of noise. MB

Sound Quality: 80%