Two years since the death of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, a tribute festival, The City Wakes, is currently taking place in Cambridge, the town where he was born and eventually retired to. A centrepiece of this event is a concert directed by general musical all-rounder Simon Gunton, featuring a band of 10-20 musicians giving colourful interpretations of Syd's songs. It plays for four nights in the atmospheric surroundings of St Paul's Church, and one night in the even grander Trinity Chapel. I went along to St Paul's last night to hear it, a few minutes' walk from my house, free from preconceptions.

As the light-projected oil bubbles squirmed prettily over the walls, strains of Pink Floyd's space-rock anthem "Astronomy Domine" began to seep through, before the band came on and launched into their straight-ahead version of the song. Throughout most of the concert, a yellow-shirted Gunton bounced around at the front, playing a role somewhere between a conductor and a dancer. I'm sure the band could have kept time without his antics, but his presence enhanced the show at key points, like the cymbal crashes at the climax of "Astronomy Domine". The band included at least three singers, drums, several percussionists, bass, guitar, trumpet, piano and the occasional oboe, harp and other splashes of colour. R+B singer Tor added an exciting touch to several of the songs, extemporising on the lyrics with virtuosic rapping.

Syd's songs were performed spiritedly and successfully. In the introduction to each song we wondered "what's this one going to be", and were usually surprised as the first words were sung. "Terrapin"'s already bluesy mood was made pleasingly heavier and dirtier. This song has one of my favourite Syd lyrics, "well oh baby my hair's on end about you". And "The Scarecrow" was presented, naturally, as a fluffy pastoral ballad with oboe and piano. With the interpretations of a couple of his more obscure and disturbing songs, we could speculate what Syd might have made of these fragmented ideas if he'd been in full health. "Maisie" built up a dark gothic atmosphere with a theatrical crescendo, and "Dominoes" was interpreted in downtempo jazz style as a slice of urban melancholy.

But one song which fell flat was "Jugband Blues", Syd's final recording with Pink Floyd. Here they got too carried away with the event's spirit of fun, and transformed it into a gormless sunny calypso. It was totally inappropriate for the one moment where Syd wrote with real lucidity about his own developing mental illness, and really shouldn't have been messed with.

The theatrical centrepiece of the show was Syd's exuberantly surreal "Octopus" / "Clowns and Jugglers", rendered as a grand circus march, with the band introduced as circus performers. Scraps of actual Pink Floyd pieces played over the PA kept the audience's attention while the musicians rearranged themselves offstage. The two Sydless Floyd tracks the band chose to play were "Brain Damage" (note the festival is in aid of mental health charities) and a rather beautiful rendition of "High Hopes", probably included because it alludes to Cambridge. They returned quickly to Syd's material, and a silly chorus of miaowing introduced a darkly gripping rock performance of "Lucifer Sam", one of the strongest tunes from "Piper". "Arnold Layne" worked surprisingly well as a propulsive dance track peppered with staring-eyed lunacy. Though I wasn't sure what they were doing with "See Emily Play". As the theme song of 1967 psychedelia, the band's elaborations seemed self-indulgent, and I'd have preferred a more straight-ahead approach.

Three bicycles were then placed on the stage (we're in Cambridge you know) for the whirling finale "Bike", which leapt frenetically between nursery rhyme inspiration and dazzling psychedelia. I'd never noticed this song has a ska rhythm - it wouldn't sound too strange sung by the Specials or Madness! Gunton's children's TV presenter-ish attempts to make the audience dance here and for the encore ("Astronomy Domine" again) fell a bit flat. But it was a fitting final tribute to a local hero whose period of great creativity was all too short.

Having said that, if you're in town then pop along to the exhibition of Syd's art - he'd been painting all his life, right up to his death two years ago. There's the odd bit of random splish-sploshery, but he was a pretty decent artist.

Along with Eluvium, Stars of the Lid (Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie) have produced the best consistently good warm ambient music of the current generation. Their music is based on manipulating a multitude of soft organic sounds in equally many ways. Brian Eno's much-cited recommendation for the ambient genre suggested it should be as ignorable as it is interesting, and they balance these qualities as delicately as anyone I've heard. With their music proceeding at a patiently slow pace, with melodies only existing as little repeated fragments, Stars of the Lid are easy to enjoy semi-consciously. But it's only minimal on the surface, and listening closely exposes their admirably subtle sense of timing, and allows you to luxuriate in their lovingly-shaped string, guitar, piano and other samples. They avoid synthesizers, instead using electronics to shape "real" acoustic instrument sounds. This is a key ingredient in their success at remaining serious sound artists rather than vacuous chill-out or space-music proponents.

Stars of the Lid must be one of the very few bands for whom the clichéd interview question "where did your name come from?" is actually helpful in appreciating their music. The lid is the eyelid, and the stars feature on the screen you see with closed eyes. But the same can't always be said of their song titles, e.g. the last track of this!

Apart from the three albums featured below, also recommended are Adam Wiltzie's The Dead Texan multimedia project (a good accessible introduction to their sound) and Brian McBride's dreamy solo album.

Stars of the Lid - Gravitational Pull Vs. The Desire For an Aquatic Life (1996)

Stars of the Lid's second album asserted their status as current masters of minimal ambient texture. Here they create beds of slowly-shifting drones from guitars and strings processed into oblivion. The result is absorbing, while subtle enough to allow itself to drift in and out of perception. ...Read more

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (2001)

Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride's most definitive work is this ambitious double album of warm ambient music. While the title and genre suggests functional sleep-inducement, putting this album on in the background misses the delights of its careful and subtle construction. With real-instrument samples smoothed beyond recognition, they explore the possibilities of sound textures, slow pacing and timing....Read more

Download: Stars of the Lid - Requiem for Dying Mothers, Part 1

Stars of the Lid - Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline (2007)

With this equally monumental follow-up to their revered "Tired Sounds" album I think I've worked out how Stars of the Lid distinguish themselves from other ambient artists. They're catchy. No, really. OK, you don't go "You remember that bit where a sample of 4 cellos is crossfaded with white noise for 4.6 seconds?", but you recognise it every time. Each of the album's eighteen pieces does something different, and memorable in its own way...Read more

Download: Stars of the Lid - Apreludes (in C sharp major)

In an slightly delayed attempt to keep this blog in touch with current happenings, I note that the Mercury Prize, or whatever it's called these days, happened last week. I've always approved of this award. Yes, it firmly occupies the middlebrow, Guardian-reader territory of music criticism, but by and large it's highlighted quality instead of big-label money and pop loudmouthery. And it gets people talking about what matters - good music. Like any award, don't take it too seriously. The winner is arbitrary and doesn't mean much - for every M People or Gomez there's been a Portishead and a Pulp, and you can take the shortlist as a reasonable cross-section of the good stuff that appeared in a particular year. It gets some stick for its token inclusion of jazz, folk and classical nominees, but this is probably a necessary evil. While apples can't be compared to oranges, it's worth knowing the best apples and the best oranges, and people sometimes need to be nudged towards diversity.

I've huge respect for this year's winners Elbow. For once the judges (perhaps being predictably unpredictable) have chosen seasoned songcrafters over trendy scenesters. I wrote briefly about the winning album here, and, though it doesn't deeply affect me, I do admire it. Below are reviews of the other albums from the shortlist I own - I'm fairly certain my pick would have been Radiohead (the Martin Scorsese of the Mercury prize). I also have and enjoy the Portico Quartet album. Understated, tuneful jazz. They play an unusual instrument called a hang which is like a little steel drum - they use it like similar combos might use a vibraphone. I would write more, but I have a mental block about reviewing jazz, and it would have taken this entry behond the de-facto three-review limit.

Very casual impressions of the rest of the shortlist? I do like the jazzier moments of Adele's 19 but her poppier songs are too wallpapery. Laura Marling does nice singer-songwritery stuff, pleasant but hard to grasp anything to really draw me in on first listen, maybe it needs time. Similarly with Estelle, decent hip-hop, but I'd rather M. I. A.'s Kala was on the list. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss? Has its moments, but a bit on the trad-country side for me. More immediately interesting is the colourfully-arranged Geordie folk of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset. Two more slots are taken by intriguing singer/producer collaborations. Neon Neon's Stainless Style is a concept album in a lovingly authentic 80s style, with the guy from Super Furry Animals - sounds great though I've had a fair amount of this style already this year from M83. The Last Shadow Puppets feature the chap from Arctic Monkeys doing Scott Walker style orchestral pop - I can certainly live with that.

What do I think was missing? Portishead for a start. Though most of the past year's best albums wouldn't qualify through not being British - M83, The National, Panda Bear, The Field...

Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

Sometimes I get asked "what sort of music do you like then?" I usually pull a face and mumble some vague cliché about having diverse taste or liking "anything that's good". But I'm seriously considering preparing a stock answer which casually mentions Radiohead. Because I can think of no better example of a contemporary band who practically everyone has heard of, and embody so many of the things I like in music. ...Read more

Burial - Untrue (2007)

I'm a city-dweller at heart. I do moan about noise, pollution and overcrowding, but it takes great music to really make me appreciate the beauty of those peculiar human colonies. In-ear headphones on a tube train might isolate me in a world of my own, but music such as London producer Burial's first two albums still makes me feel like I belong among the lights and bustle. ...Read more

British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music? (2008)

The Mercury judges' pick of the best straight-ahead indie rock from the past year was the third album by British Sea Power, who burst onto the scene a few years ago with the exciting "Decline of British Sea Power". Here they've puffed up their sound, with mixed success. ...Read more

As a sometime obsessive Pink Floyd fan, and sometime keyboard player, I have to write something here in memory of Richard Wright, who sadly died yesterday. As the quiet, modest musician, he was the member of Pink Floyd I had the most affection for, excepting perhaps Syd Barrett. The George Harrison figure, perhaps (no prizes for matching up the rest of them!) Most other obituaries will be highlighting his most famous composition "The Great Gig in the Sky", quite understandably. Apart from their "song about death" suddenly having gained extra significance, it was a fantastic piece of grandiose symphonic rock, Clare Torry's wordless vocal solo an oddly effective substitute for the more usual guitar.

But I also want to point out some of his lesser-known achievements. Rick conceived and played what I think was the most significant single note in all of Floyd's 30 year canon. "Echoes" was the piece that showed that after losing Syd, they had finally grown into something more than a decent space-rock band. It starts with a single piano note fed through a Leslie amp, and repeated like a sonar transmitter. The chilly, inner-space atmosphere set by this "ping" pervades the whole of an epic rock masterpiece that they've barely, if at all, bettered. Having had the sound as my text message alert tone for several years hasn't dampened its power!

My next four favourite Pink Floyd notes are Dave Gilmour's electrifying phrase that lights up "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", but they wouldn't have been nearly as effective without Rick's enveloping synthesiser backdrop to emerge from. As Dave said yesterday in tribute, Rick was an overlooked but essential part of the band's sound. Compare the opening of 1975's "Have a Cigar" to the opening of "The Division Bell"'s first song "What Do You Want from Me", 20 years later, and hear how his choppy, bluesy organ blends so distinctively with Dave Gilmour's liquid Stratocaster.

In the Syd years, Rick's electronic organ fireworks fuelled their gloopy psychedelia, and his musical input continued to drive their spacy explorations. His contribution to the notorious side of solo projects on Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma" was "Sisyphus". It's an amusingly bish-bash-bosh piece of late sixties experimentalism, but certain passages showed his ambitions to be a serious jazz-cum-classical piano virtuoso. Comparing this with Keith Jarrett's renowned improvised solo concerts from a few years later, I wonder what might have happened if Rick's career had taken a different turn.

Later in the 1970s he was sidelined and eventually kicked out of Pink Floyd, the force of Roger Waters' personality perhaps conflicting with Rick's own preference for an easy life over grand ambitions. Rick's little-known solo album "Wet Dream" is a fluffy but listenable document of the period, as he escaped home turmoils by bumming around Greek islands in a yacht. His wistful, deadpan musings are conveyed with firmly 70s middle-of-the-road style music and affectionate jazzy flourishes.

After Roger's departure, Pink Floyd's love of live grandiosity and atmosphere-setting was never again matched by their songwriting ability. But a welcome part of their resurrection was Rick's reinstatement as a full band member for 1994's "The Division Bell". He wrote and sang the brooding "Wearing the Inside Out" on that album, and not long after, Rick made another little-known solo album, "Broken China". Continuing the theme of that song, it was inspired by his experiences of his wife's clinical depression. It's a tasteful and ultimately positive treatment of a serious subject, with ambient instrumentals, polished in a familiar Floyd style, sequenced with some fairly decent songs. The highlight is Rick's gripping duet with Sinead O'Connor, "Reaching for the Rail".

R.I.P.

Following on from my last post where I scratched my head at the existence of "female vocalists" as a genre, I'll casually perpetuate this way of thinking by taking my pick of the best female singers I've recently discovered. All debut albums from the last couple of years. Coincidentally these three all record under one-person band pseudonyms, none of which are really gendered.

Bat For Lashes - Fur And Gold (2006)

Occasionally I hear an album that's crammed with my particular musical fetishes. This debut by Natasha Khan and company, which got a lot of acclaim last year, ticks many of my boxes. Sensual and colourful female voice, interesting instruments, strong tunes with a particular sort of "edgy" harmony... it would feel annoyingly formulaic if it wasn't so good! It's a really solid set of tunes that get under the skin, all suffused with a spidery, gothic atmosphere. She embraces exotica in a similar way to Björk. Not only through the sounds, such as glittering harpsichords, dulcimers and offbeat handclap rhythms, but the imagery of the songs, from redwood forests through to caves and oceans. Though the actual tone of her voice is closer to Sinéad O'Connor. The first few songs are basically at the same medium pace, so it's welcome when it ventures into more experimental territory in the second half. The creepy "Bat's Mouth" and the decadent "Seal Jubilee" have a lavishly surreal atmosphere of a kind I've heard rarely since Kate Bush's "Sensual World". The most dramatic treat is saved for the end, "I Saw a Light", which swings between restrained anticipation and cathartic climax, as she a observes the aftermath of a car tragedy from a distance.
(9/10)

Download: Bat For Lashes - Horse And I

My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse (2006)

Shara Worden adapts her serious classical voice wonderfully to a sort of Kate Bush-inspired theatrical art-pop style on her debut album. The songs generally go like so: a verse with the barest of soft rock backings, then some strings swell up and her voice is let loose in its higher register for a big-emotion chorus, like "it was beautiful! and terrible!" "I feel like a golden star... exploding!" "come and fly away.. with me!". But it's a pattern that works, since the tunes are well written and she carries them with a Real Voice - several octaves of true power but never gratuitously flashy. She does a fine line in creepy animal tales on "The Robin's Jar" and, with some almost Led Zeppelin-like grinding rock, on "Magic Rabbit". Though "Freak Out" "freaks out" with slightly too self-conscious piano plonks and yelping. Several times she achieves the sultry langour of Goldfrapp's "Felt Mountain". Quite tasty stuff.
(8/10)

Download: My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star

St. Vincent - Marry Me (2007)

St. Vincent is the stage name of singer/songwriter/guitarist/pianist Annie Clark. The popping-eyed cover photo and ironically-inviting title of her debut beckon us into her world of sideways-looking, slightly jaded but still bright and jazzy pop. It grabs the attention with some very busy, colourful rock-cabaret arrangements, and a quirky backing chorus that keep chipping in. On the strong opener "Now Now" she chastises her mistreaters while punning on her name, to an endearing choppy rhythm. "Jesus Saves, I Spend" sets some peculiar imagery to a breezy barbershop-style backing. It does veer towards rather too smooshy a cabaret-lounge style on occasion but avoids it with regular bursts of energy, like the light-footed jazz of "Human Racing". The clear highlight is "Your Lips Are Red", which reels off repetitive body-parts wordplay to some shockingly inventive music, booming bassline and choppy guitars that it's not too much of a stretch to call prog-rock.
(7/10)

Download: St. Vincent - Marry Me