While hanging out with calypso stars Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader on the Trinidadian set of 1957’s Fire Down Below, Mitchum hit on the idea of a cash-in album for Capitol execs eager to tap into the next big thing. Harry Belafonte aside, the craze didn’t quite sweep, but old sourpuss’ unlikely stab is commendable for its gusto, rum-cocktail swing and gentle innuendo (see “Tic Tic Tic”). Sinatra it ain’t, but it sure beats Richard Harris.

The original Acoustic album sold over 100,000 and its follow-up, Acoustic 2, did similarly healthy business. The same formula is followed for the third instalment in this series: a mixture of old and new with the definition of “acoustic” bent to accommodate amplified music wherever the mood is suitable. This time out, the range is wide. The Velvet Underground and Nico’s “Sunday Morning” appears, along with Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me”. Elsewhere, Jeff Buckley, Mercury Rev, Ryan Adams, Oasis, Starsailor, Beth Orton and Dido are among the 40 artists taking part. Buyers of the earlier volumes in the series will certainly want this.

This compilation is for connoisseurs. The Gang are best known in Britain for their amiable post-disco ’80s hits topped by James “JT” Taylor’s vocals. The best of these (“Get Down On It”, wedding/barmitzvah staple “Celebration”) appear here; the worst (“Joanna”, “Cherish”) thankfully don’t. The two discs have been themed separately: CD 1 (“Wild”), focusing on their ’70s funk heyday, is uncompromising; check the overlapping voices on “Hollywood Swinging” or the freeform sax throughout. On CD 2 (“Peaceful”) we get blissful, meditative soundscapes such as the much-sampled “Summer Madness”. On tracks like “Wild And Peaceful”, the ethereality places them closer to the Cocteau Twins than James Brown.

FOR ALL AND NONE

DEGENERATES

ALL LTM

Led by former TV presenter Dick Witts, The Passage were never properly accommodated within the vaguely portentous context of Factory Records. Lyrically, they were bluntly polemical (“Troops Out” from Pindrop, for example). More explicitly than Joy Division, they caught the strange mood-cocktail of hedonism and mortal fear of the early ’80s (“We’re dancing through dark times”) while their elaborate, Moog-driven, segmented musical backdrops reflected Witts’ classical background. That they deliberately went out of their way to make listeners feel uncomfortable didn’t help their commercial prospects, which petered out shortly after 1982’s Degenerates.

The generosity of spirit that runs through Curtis Mayfield’s solo work helped fuel a parallel career as soul auteur. With the similarly gospel-bred, independent-minded Sam Cooke as role model, Mayfield formed Curtom as a publishing company in 1963. Despite financial problems as a label, Curtom’s broad church embraced The Impressions-era close harmonies of The Five Stairsteps And Cubie and The Fascinations, the 1979 material girl manifesto of Linda Clifford’s “Don’t Give It Up” and latter-day offerings from former associates Fred Wesley and Mavis Staples. Curtis’ own offerings stand out, but the purity of his vision seldom fails to shine.

TIME AND A WORD

THE YES ALBUM

FRAGILE

ALL ELEKTRA/RHINO

Formed from five independently-minded virtuosos, Yes’ eclectic mix of hard rock, classical arrangements and jazz-fusion experimentalism brought little success with their eponymous debut album (1969, re-released here with six bonus tracks, four previously unissued), despite a penchant for daring cover versions (including The Byrds’ “I See You”).

Time And A Word (here with four bonus tracks including singles and alternate versions) from 1970 continued to expand the basic rock format with increasingly symphonic arrangements, SF concepts and cosmically conscious lyrics, but critical and commercial success only came with the arrival of guitarist Steve Howe.

Equally at home with Appalachian country music as with extended, soaring rock solos, Howe’s diverse approach helped to define the Yes sound so that when 1971’s The Yes Album (three bonus tracks) was released, mainstream success had become a distinct possibility.

The final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place with the arrival of Rick Wakeman to produce the classic line-up of Anderson (vocals), Bruford (drums), Howe (guitar), Squire (bass) and Wakeman (keyboards). Ensconced in a gatefold sleeve with Roger Dean’s first artwork for the band and an embryonic Yes logo, Fragile (1972, two extra tracks?including their epic reworking of Paul Simon’s “America” from the New Age Of Atlantic sampler of the same year) made them a household name on both sides of the pond, largely due to its extended, multi-suite single “Roundabout”, which came on like a belated British answer to The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”.

Recorded swiftly in patchwork fashion, Fragile avoided the over-meticulous arrangements of previous efforts, allowing Bill Bruford’s frenetic jazz drumming to skitter behind Jon Anderson’s choirboy voice, guitars and keyboards operating perilously close to collapse.

Punk’s arrival in the late ’70s sounded the death knell for most prog acts, but Yes continued making albums well into the late ’90s. Meanwhile, the extended electronic fantasies of bands like Underworld owe more to Yes’ legacy than they might care to admit.

So unprepossessing are The High Llamas, ticking over as consistently as a faithful old grandfather clock, that it’s easy to take them for granted. Competing for your attention, the swagger and thrust of The Strokes wins every time over a bunch of mild-mannered blokes in jeans, one of whom is playing, this late on, a banjo.

Yet, attend long enough to The High Llamas, get beyond the modestly industrious, Heath Robinson-style workings of their musical contraptions and you’ll find yourself infatuated by their troubled Utopian pop. There’s a whole world here that beats hollow the seemingly happening but deadeningly generic new garage rock. Sure, they’re indebted?to Steely Dan on “Checking In, Checking Out”, to Brian Wilson, to fellow travellers Stereolab. Yet there’s a uniqueness to The High Llamas’ aesthetic, a melancholy warmth in their instrumental brush strokes (rippling vibes, clouds of brass), an organic easy-going nature that can effortlessly accommodate bucolic, folksy licks and futuristic bleeps and burbles without clash or contrivance. Carefully plotted and meandering, lush and angular, predictable and unpredictable, the Llamas offer an avant-garde MOR that’s disquietingly reassuring.

Disc One of this collection picks from their ’90s albums and is utterly sublime, especially “Bach Ze”, as sad and sunny as a Hockney painting. Disc Two contains various B-sides and outtakes (notably the exquisite “It Might As Well Be Dumbo”) and makes for a gentler amble through the fresh fields and space stations of Llamaland?less demanding but never dull. A vital purchase for both diehards and novices.

Wire attracted an immediate punk audience with their 1977 debut album, whom they then began to confound, tease and alienate as their unabashed arthouse tendencies came to the fore.

“Mzui” was a series of sculptures (subsequently trashed by oikish Wire fans) made from objects that were discovered around London’s Waterloo, coupled with microphones set up to record ‘found sounds’ that emanated from the gallery. This is a simulation of that experiment, featuring two pieces, the first a farrago of ‘urban, interior’ scrapes and groans, the second, more successful piece an extended, serrated but gracefully turned ambient drone.

As everyone knows, glam rock in the UK was begat by Bowie, Bolan and Ferry, then ruined by bandwagon-jumping brickies in mascara. Well, yes and no?some of this rubbish was great fun, as compilers Bob Stanley and Phil King hereby recognise. And while the correct response is probably to chuckle at its tackiness, some of us, behind closed doors, will be punching the air and stomping along with surreal enthusiasm. While The Sweet and Mud cleaned up, forgotten losers like Iron Virgin, The Plod and Bearded Lady (those names!) understood the glittery genius of Chinn and Chapman and took such staccato simplicity to the max. Ricky Wilde and Simon Turner were young and foolish; Brett Smiley was surely the dad of that bloke from Suede. Magic: I’m off to burn down school with my cosmic raygun.

From inauspicious beginnings as a weekend getaway ghetto for indie guitar music, the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival has grown increasingly international and progressive in its musical scope. Curated by Warp electro sculptors Autechre, last month’s fourth annual gathering showcased the most diverse line-up yet, reflected in this two-disc anthology of rare and unreleased tracks, which functions as a fine left-field compilation regardless of its festival connections.

Dissonant techno-tronics inevitably dominate, with Autechre’s own punctuation-pummelling excursion into needle-sharp, space-insect disco ranked alongside luminescent monotone symphonies, hard acid wig-outs and cruelly atonal sonic torture from bedsit terrorists Hecker, Stasis, Pita and more. But a propulsive funk fireball courtesy of Public Enemy and a brace of gorgeous lo-fi instrumentals help to humanise their astringent future-shock surroundings.

FIRE

WATER

GOLDEN SECTION

A-WAVE

With a career that draws lines between ’70s prog and ’90s deep house and techno, Steve Hillage and his partner Miquette Giraudy have been at the forefront of psychedelic electronica for over 30 years. Recording as System 7, their 1993 debut UK album 777 predated Underworld’s attempts to create intelligent tech house, reaching No 19 in the album charts and spawning the Top 40 hit, “7.7 Expansion”.

Fire (1994) featured collaborations with Laurent Garnier, Youth, The Drum Club and Derrick May, and its sibling album, Water, remixed the same tracks into one album-length ambient flow.

Never a duo to rest on their laurels, Golden Section (1997) saw System 7 embrace breakbeat and drum’n’bass, with Talvin Singh and Don Cherry along for the trip.

Less of a traditional genre than a specific blend of mountain music, square dance, blues and gospel created with the arrival of guitarist Lester Flatt and banjoist Earl Scruggs in Bill Monroe’s band in 1946, bluegrass dominated commercial country music in the late ’40s. Back in the spotlight again in the wake of the success of the Coen brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, this 54-track double CD of bluegrass’ greatest names includes the centrepiece from the film’s multi-million-selling soundtrack, the Stanley Brothers’ “I’m A Man Of Constant Sorrow”.

Built around vocal arrangers Tom and John Bahler, The Love Generation were a late-’60s six-piece singing group in the mould of The Fifth Dimension whose main work consisted of session playing for the likes of Elvis, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Bobby Sherman, The Monkees, Jimmy Webb and The Partridge Family. They cut three LPs of their own between ’67 and ’68, and had some low-position singles on the US charts during this time. This best-of contains nothing outstanding and is clearly something of a labour of love.

The Gentle Soul

THE GENTLE SOUL

BOTH SUNDAZED

The Cyrkle’s last outing was the soundtrack for a soft-porn spy movie. Made in 1967, it took another couple of years to get released, and by then must have sounded woefully dated, since what you get here is an uneasy blend of mid-’60s sounds:so-so beat group pop, bossa nova and surf instrumentals. Odd, but not quite odd enough.

The Gentle Soul, however, are a find. The folk-rock duo of Rick Stanley and Pamela Polland operated in LA in the late ’60s, and recorded just one LP and a clutch of singles (all collected here) in ’68. Their exquisite harmonies echo The Byrds and The Mamas & The Papas, the songs are a mix of folksy blues and baroque psychedelia, and the backing musicians include Van Dyke Parks and Ry Cood

ALARM CLOCK

BOTH EVANGELINE

Havens never quite made it to the top flight of American singer-songwriters, principally because his interpretation of other people’s material was always stronger than his own. These albums from 1970-71 came in the wake of his stunning Woodstock appearance, and prove the point.

Stonehenge contains seven of his own songs but, despite some lovely arrangements, only “Minstrel From Gaul” matches his magnificent version of Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The same is true of Alarm Clock, on which a magical “Here Comes The Sun” overshadows his own eight compositions.

Long mythologised as one of the rarest English folk albums, Dransfield’s first solo LP appeared in 1972 on Polydor and disappeared soon after. It’s hard to understand why: after all, the Yorkshire carpenter and violinist had played with the likes of Sandy Denny and Shirley Collins, been asked to join Steeleye Span, and was in the thick of the folk revival. What’s more, it’s a lovely record, mixing traditional jigs with Dransfield’s manly, tender songs. Covers of American tunes by Michael Hurley and David Ackles prove, too, that Dransfield wasn’t averse to looking beyond indigenous tradition, unlike some of his contemporaries. Oh, and Playschool pin-up Toni Arthur took the sleeve shots.

The dictates of radio meant Cream were forced to curb their penchant to curb their penchant for long blues jams in favour of more tightly structured arrangements in the BBC sessions they recorded between 1966 and 1968. Even “Crossroads” comes in at less than two minutes and sounds the better for it. Complete with evocative contemporary radio intros (“and here’s where things get good and groovy”), their own compositions such as “Strange Brew” and “Tales Of Brave Ulysses” stand the test of time better than the blues covers. Oddly, there’s no “White Room” or “Badge”. But it’s still an essential companion to 1997’s box set, Those Were The Days.