You can always rely on Danny Boyle's movies to have decent music and The Beach doesn't disappoint even if it's unlikely to connect as extensively as the Trainspotting soundtrack. Musical co-ordinator Pete Tong has pulled out all the stops to secure exclusive tracks from major artists, and no less than seven of the numbers here have never been released before, while those that have-including UNKLE's desolate Lonely Soul with Richard Ashcroft, Barry Adamson's paranoiac Vietnam dream sequence Richard, It's Business As Usual and Moby's beats lullaby "Porcelain" from Play-are of the highest class. The new material doesn't disappoint either. Leftfield open up the album with some whiplash drums, Underworld make their customary contribution playing down frantic beats in favour of the jogging mantra "8 Ball", All Saints enjoy their best-ever moment parading along the sunkissed "Pure Shores" with William Orbit, and Sugar Ray rerecord Brian Eno and John Cale's gossamer pop number Spinning Away. Elsewhere New Order provide their first new music since the release of Republic with "Brutal", a trademark number with production from Rollo who returns with Faithless on the bubbling, mesmeric standout "Woozy". Orbital close the package with their pumped up interpretation of the Angelo Badalamenti score complete with snippets of Leonardo DiCaprio's dialogue. Life's The Beach, then you die. -Mike Pattenden.

Wonderful Electric is a two disc set featuring the band live at Somerset House and Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. Also included are two documentaries, "Twisted Summer" and "Trip to Felt Mountain".

Basement Jaxx's debut is aptly titled. The production duo's music is a remedy to the dull, faceless house and techno that populates dance floors world-wide. The duo are unrepentantly pop savvy, bringing vocals and lyrics to their unique blend of electro, house, hip-hop, salsa and soul. It's a weird combo, but like the best of all pop songs, Basement Jaxx tracks stick like putty to the ears within a few listens. In fact, you may feel that you've already heard much of Remedy when you give it a spin on your CD player. With their boisterous samples, vocal hooks, and funked-out, catchy bass lines, the songs "Rendez-vu", "Yo-Yo," and "Red Alert" seem like familiar friends, rather than just the next big thing. -Tricia Romano.

Ambient music. Just leave the fridge on for an hour, put microphone close by, record and release in nicely packaged artwork. That's what the cynics would say. They've clearly never been anywhere near Sakura. While Japan's Susumu Yokota is better known for leftfield techno and weird-beard house, this venture into the world of chilled-out soundscaping is captivating enough to rank alongside any of Brian Eno's Music For. classics. Tapping into the spirit of Eno's 1970's experimentalism (think My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts), tracks like the Afro-tinged "Uchu Tanjyo" and "Hisen" capture the sound of global drifting beautifully. The pace throughout (apart from the jazzed-up "Naminote" and Moroder-ish "Hogoromo") is metronomic, but never soporific. [+]

In Silico might be the second album from Pendulum, but it's their first as a fully-fledged rock band. Of course, this Australian dance collective have paddled in these waters before: their debut album Hold Your Colour was a muscular collection of hard drum'n'bass and slamming breakbeats that, for all its synthetic construction, displayed firmly rock sensibilities. On In Silico, though, hard-riffing guitars are pulled right up in the mix, and the band's production core, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen, lead from the front, reaching for the microphone and making clattering loops the bedrock for a suite of anthemic rockers. Comparisons to the likes of Enter Shikari and The Prodigy are not too wide of the mark, capturing something of Pendulum's fairground waltzer adrenaline and polished, metallic aggression. Beyond straightforward rush, though, some interesting ingredients find their way into the brew: storming opener "Slowdown" imagines an unholy synthesis of DJ Hype and Muse in full progressive rock-out mode, while the elegiac "Propane Nightmares" commences with a Mariachi trumpet serenade. Dance connoisseurs will probably complain Pendulum's beats lack a certain finesse, but if you like your dance music a) fast and b) hard then In Silico has all bases covered. -Louis Pattison.

To follow up their bombastic 1995 album Exit Planet Dust, the Chemical Brothers fine-tuned their bombastic beats and produced a rock-solid pop album (pun intended). Dig Your Own Hole finds the common ground between rock & roll and techno, both in spirit and substance. Singles like "Block Rockin' Beats," "Elektrobank," and "Setting Sun" (featuring vocals by Oasis's Noel Gallagher) may lack the big hair and pomposity of rock music, but they make up for it in spades, with sampled and real guitars battling for space with sirens and distorted hip-hop drums. The album reeks of pure enthusiasm and energy, evoking a crowd-pleasing exuberance that makes Dig Your Own Hole a Back in Black for the late 1990s. Pure stadium techno. -Matthew Corwine.

A tasty third album from the baebes who brought us Salva Nos in 1997 and Worldes Blysse the following year. Undrentide mixes old poetry with new sounds, relinquishing all aspirations of appealing to historical purists. Indisputable outsiders on the Period Music scene, the Mediaeval Babes keep proving that artists and audiences connect differently these days. The "Baebes" tour their revivalist compositions to S/M clubs and graveyards as well as to Cathedrals, and in its trendy packaging, what is really just another girl choir (though well hyped and well produced), their concept looks set to hit the spot with new audiences. Originators Kathryn Blake and Dorothy Carter lead the way, and with unassailable 90s-chick self-assuredness protest the right to do their take on the Anonymi. With John Cale on board as producer, "moderntide" saxes and synth pads effortlessly philander dulcimers and recorders. The result is a kind of soft paced neo paganism, unobtrusive and atmospheric, tastefully arranged. The singing is pleasant and well instructed, with impressive purity, but not with quite enough guts to carry off the power of seduction inherent in the carefully chosen texts. However, these young maidens maintain a charming informality throughout, as if the recording was made sitting round the Maypole. You do want some of this. [+]

It's seldom that a band's sixth album is their best, but Exterminator is nothing less than a radical new dawn. Only a few years before, Primal Scream seemed spent-a smack-addled joke, numbing the pain with the idle comfort of rock & roll cliché. Exterminator is the Scream's baptism of fire-an album with a righteous social conscience, it rages against apathy and injustice with all the funk-fuelled indignation of Sly & The Family Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On. Musically, too, Exterminator is shackled together with a coherence that's eluded them since 1991. From the tense industrial trance of "Swastika Eyes", to the scurvy-thin hip-hop of "Pills" and the exultant Krautrock of "Shoot Speed Kill Light", one minute the 'Scream are diseased and desperate, the next they're basking in glorious, righteous euphoria. Thank the guests, certainly-the Chemical Brothers, New Order's Bernard Sumner, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields-but when you hear Bobby Gillespie screaming "from here to where?", on the hyper-distorted pedal-to-the-metal drag-race of "Accelerator", you'll know he's the one with the road map to a terrific rock & roll future. -Louis Pattison.

Normally, an artist such as Bjork with a mass audience across the globe steadily eases off as the back-catalogue starts to grow. However, Medulla, the fifth proper studio album from Bjork is without a doubt the most challenging collection of music she has ever released. For the most part, the album is made up of layers uponlayers of processed vocal parts arranged in either harmony or dissonance such as "Vokuro" and "Oll Birtan", respectively. Some, such as "Show Me Forgiveness" are simple acapella, the aforementioned sounding like a vocal cut from Debut minus the music. Another echo of Bjork days gone by is "Desired Constellation", a slow trancy pulse underpinning her distinct vocals. "Where is the Line", "Who Is It" and "Triumph of a Heart" are a bit grimier with a semi-urban twist, the latter a fantastically funky beatbox number with an outstanding introduction, the closest moment to a pop song appearing on Medulla. Although traditional instruments and breaks have been removed from this album, Medulla is no great departure for Bjork but in a sense it is radically different from any of her previous work. Some will love it, some hate it, and some just wont be sure what to think. -David Trueman.

Springing from the trip-hop revolution, Lamb have proved themselves to be masters of their genre. With Between Darkness and Wonder, they consolidate earlier advances rather than invade new territories. Recorded in a farmhouse just outside Bath, their fourth album has singer Lou Robinson and techno-wizard Andy Barlow in fine form. Though the opening "Darkness" is a mess of burbles, scratches and disjointed synths, they quickly find their feet with the quiet clatter and beautifully blended vocals of "Stronger" and the smooth bass and swirling effects of "Sugar 5". Following the instrumental "Angelica", they introduce a deft folky guitar for the excellent and eventually storming augury of "Till the Clouds Clear", and this remains in place for the intimate, innocent "Wonder" and mildly rocking "Sun". Throughout, Barlow creates a series of blissful, sometimes turbulent backdrops for Robinson's sweet voice, cast somewhere between Beth Gibbons and Victoria Williams. In turn, she explores the minutiae of problematic relationships while remaining ever positive. The album suffers somewhat from the addition of three extra remixes, MJ Cole's take on "Gabriel" being inappropriately festive and clunky, while Nellee Hooper's version of the same track is tasteful but, naturally, reminiscent of Bjork. Between Darkness and Wonder could easily stand without them. -Dominic Wills.