RECORDS

CLASSICAL

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Angels and Visitations. Helsinki Philharmonic/ Segerstam (Ondine, CD). Rautavaara (a tough name, but you'll get used to it) is the latest stop on the road to easy-listening enlightenment, which has of course already passed through Gorecki, Tavener and Gregorian chant.

His sound is spacious and meditative, grandly transcendental and richly scored, but with a solemness of purpose that never quite escapes the shadow of Sibelius or lets you forget that Rautavaara (born in 1928) belongs to that next generation of Finnish composers for whom Sibelius was a problematic act to follow: inspirational but inescapable. "Angels and Visitations" is a 1970s score for large orchestra, darkly impressive, with a sense of the angelic presence as something more formidable and equivocal than Victorian androgynes with wings.

It comes coupled with the recent "Isle of Bliss", a piece that pitches cheesey cinematic glamour against radiantly exultant strength. And finally, there's a Violin Concerto of sparer textures, beautifully played by the soloist, Elmar Oliveria, and captured right upfront in the recording. Michael White

POP

Bis: The New Transistor Heroes (Wiiija, CD/ LP/tape). This album arrives a year too late. When the unsigned Glasgwegian munchkins burst on to Top of the Pops with "Kandy Pop", their shouting, squealing disco-punk seemed a timely contribution to the pop dialectic, and damn good fun, besides.

Amid all the hype that followed, however, their next singles stalled. People were already sick of them. Their angular, drum-machined Bratpop was getting repetitive, and reminiscent of Blur, while the sound of 20- year-olds pretending to be 12-year-olds soon set the teeth on edge. You already have "the right to eat sweets", Manda Rin, you don't need to demand it.

But Transistor Heroes is more melodic and cleverly produced than you'd expect. The chip-on-shoulder lyrics sometimes hit the mark, and the whole enterprise fizzes with irresistible energy. Most importantly, Bis are different. When they manage to forget Parklife and The Great Escape, they occupy a category of their own. So, this is nearly a great record, if only it weren't nearly always grating. Nicholas Barber

Tarnation: Mirador (4AD, CD/LP). At some point during Paula Frazer's journey from the village in Georgia where she grew up, to her current home in San Francisco, Country and Western got mixed up in her head with the wispy, arty indie music that is 4AD's stock in trade. The result is Tarnation. Mirador's 14 cinematic tracks could have arisen from a collaboration between Ennio Morricone and the Cocteau Twins. The chilling loneliness of "Christine" may sometimes make way for the La's-style poppiness of "Little Black Egg", but the main impression given by the echoing guitar twangs, haunted-house violins, cantering percussion and Frazer's ghostly open-throated chanting is that these warped songs would suit a dream sequence in a Spaghetti Western. And not a ten-gallon hat in sight. NB

JAZZ

Respectable Groove: Tell-Tale Ducks (FMR, CD). A quartet of harpsichord, recorder, double bass and percussion playing Brazilian sambas and Irish folk tunes sounds unlikely, and it is. But this entrancing oddity is worth seeking out. Harpsichordist David Gordon - normally a jazz pianist - improvises at ridiculously fast speeds, and Evelyn Nallen coaxes a range and depth of expression from her recorder that should be enough to contradict every press-ganged schoolkid's experience of the instrument. Somehow, it works. Phil Johnson

Charlie Hunter Quartet: Natty Dread (Blue Note CD). Once the guitarist in the West Coast's Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, a musician as familiar with the works of the Dead Kennedys as Art Blakey, Hunter in his solo career so far has shown himself determined to avoid the obvious. This set of tunes, written by or associated with Bob Marley and the Wailers, is another sharp move, and a triumph of intelligence, taste and sheer twanging power from Hunter's customised eight-string guitar. The version of "No Woman No Cry" is particularly affecting, and it proves that whatever people say, the art of the standard is far from dead. PJ

ROCK

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Barafundle (Fontana, CD/LP/tape). Anyone who hadn't actually ever listened to this remarkable record could be forgiven for thinking it was just a figment of some deranged old hippie's imagination.

What with lutes, violins, choirs of crusty mediaeval retainers, and not one but two songs featuring that most properly neglected of all rock and roll instruments - the Jew's harp - this fourth album by Cardigan Bay's leading purveyors of pastoral mayhem should sound like something the Incredible String Band dreamt up after a late-night cheese binge. That it actually comes as close as any British recording ever made to the courtly and magical spirit of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds is a cause for rejoicing. Ben Thompson

Palace Music: Lost Blues And Other Songs (Domino, CD/tape). "Shoreward goes his heart to his bonny hind/ Who he imagines to be plumply asleep." This is just one of the numerous arresting couplets that bring this career- spanning assemblage of singles and live rarities from maverick Kentucky minstrel Will Oldham as close to essential listening as such diffuse collections can be. Oldham plays guitar like an infant prodigy, writes like an angel, and sings like an angry starling, and if his unique brand of Southern Gothic is still a closed book to you, now's the time to reach for the shelf. BT

COMEDY

Bill Hicks: Arizona Bay/ Rant In E Minor (Both Rykodisc, CD only). If ever a record demanded the temporary suspension of Eric Sykes's iron law of comedy albums ("Don't buy them"), it's the second and more focused of these two posthumous releases.

In the three years since his tragic death from cancer at the age of 32, Hicks's reputation as a heroic iconoclast has become rather set in stone. The joy of this previously unheard material - released alongside welcome reissues of the righteous Texan's first two albums, Dangerous and Relentless - is to hear how funny he was.

As Hicks brings his uniquely scabrous brand of moral authority to bear on targets both deserving (Pro-Life murderers) and undeserving (the Easter Bunny), he somehow contrives to be both profoundly misanthropic and extremely humanist in the same breath. BT