So, the press info for this album contains the words ‘Berlin techno’. I fucking hate techno. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I’ve had some stonking nights out listening to drum ‘n’ bass at 130 decibels and I love DJ Shadow’s hip hop-infused sonic manipulation as much as the next total music geek. But Berlin techno? Erk, it has me reaching for the off switch faster than you can say ‘ich bin ein Dummkopf’. But Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element, on the other hand, have struck upon a marvellous idea. And that is to bypass all that ‘oonst oonst’ crap, take whatever is still relevant about electronica and fuse it with a love of all things Jesu. You’d think that it would be all pulsey, scattershot beats and clangy, minimal guitar, with perhaps layers of obscure samples and effects undercutting the whole deal. And you’d be right.

Surprisingly, things start out quite timidly on opener ‘Godzilla vs. Kathleen Hanna’, but by the time we reach ‘I Love You Every Time You Smile’, we are definitely copping a Shellac-are-our-guitar-heroes kinda vibe, along with a very post rock ethic (right down to the nuisance-length song titles). Things take a turn for the misanthropic with ‘Call This Number If You Hear Noises’, and it’s perhaps my favorite of the album, so far. At this point I’m wondering who this type of music would appeal to and I’m not having a lot of success. It’s a formula that shouldn’t really work on paper, and seems like even more of a nightmare to pull off convincingly. Then along comes a track like ‘Girl Thief’. More overtly sample-fuelled while retaining its fair share of the album’s chaos, it also drips with Fugazi-style intent. Some songs are more pointless, though, such as ‘Sputnik Was The Start Of All This Peculiar Weather’, which feels like panic stations at a nuclear power plant and has me instinctively running to my shelter.

More often than not, Box Three, Spool Five resembles Mr Broadricks’ dark, sinister alter ego (the one with the heart of pure evil) - Godflesh. Granted, it does kind of fizzle out towards the end: I think the slow build/sudden freneticism of ‘A Word About Panic Attacks’ is the last high point. And there are also a few lost ideas in there, scratching around trying to find a way out, but with music as claustrophobic as this, it’s hardly surprising. As I’ve been alluding, this is very leftfield stuff and on the whole about as accessible as Fort Knox. But if you can unlock the album’s complexity and wilfully obtuse prerogative, it is, to stick with the analogy, pure gold.

Ladies and Gentleman, we have a winner. Without a doubt, the finest record to come out of Oxford this year must be Witches’ ‘Heart of Stone’, a record that is alternately and simultaneously beautiful, mysterious, violent, plaintive and wondrous. Four or five tracks could be Radio 1 hits, but the peculiar excellence is the consistency of the vision and near-perfection of the execution.

The band was put together by ex-eeebleee frontman Dave Griffiths, but the musicians he has found create a sound-world far from that band’s anxious electronica. The emphasis now is on traditional instruments, and indeed Witches are regular magpies when it comes to instrumentation, with glockenspiel, harpsichord and trumpet making important contributions to many songs. Production values are high and the producers have been careful to limit the exposure of the more outlandish instruments: these are emphatically genuine songs and not vehicles for experiments in sound.

An example of this control comes in the opening ‘Lost Without’. The first couple of minutes are given over to an attractively wasted guitar-based ballad which then builds steadily into an ecstatic trumpet solo. By holding back the trumpet, the band keeps the interest growing, rather than blowing all their ideas at the start. ‘Josef’s lament’ is a little more uptempo, with a tense electric guitar part which could have come from the Polly Harvey classic ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’. Again trumpeter Benek Chylinski shines, with a striking trumpet riff which Ennio Morricone would have been proud to call his own punctuating Griffith’s hushed singing. Richard Thomas’s percussive harpsichord adds further chills to one of the most potent songs I’ve heard in ages.

‘Putting you back in the ground’ has an almost nursery-rhyme universality and Griffiths’ vocals are superbly bleak and cracked. His is not a voice that everyone will love, but for rendering stories of loss and remembrance I can hardly think of better. His lyrics are not sophisticated: all of that quality has been poured into the music. That said, the supernatural themes of the album are an important unifying feature; they are clearly not of the Halloween, pantomime-devil type beloved of metal monsters everywhere.Griffiths’ ghosts are Ibsen’s ghosts: aggressive elements from the past that invade the present life and try all too successfully to bring it to a halt.

There are many more highlights: the gorgeous ‘Sleep like the Witch that You Are’ sounds like The Band playing The Pixies while the title track offers a lovely melody and even some measured optimism. But to be honest, despite the doom-laden lyrics running through the album, the whole record is a statement of optimism: that even in 2007 pop music can still surprise, inspire and delight.

Fresh from travelling the globe as part of the reformed Jesus & Mary Chain, local guitarist Mark Crozer and former-Ride drummer Loz Colbert have formed their own band together, appropriately named International Jetsetters, and that’s not the only thing they’ve taken from their time spent with the brothers Reid. The two tracks here, `Inside Yourself’ and `Inside Out’ hark, wonderfully, back to that late-80s halcyon period of shimmering shoe-gazing noise and searing narcotic drone-pop, pretty, honey-dipped 60s melodies drenched in oceanic swells of guitar noise, Mark’s vocals stealing some of Jim Reid’s heads-down drawl even as they head cloud-wards.

`Inside Yourself’ hits a hypnotic groove from the off, Spacemen 3’s smack-addled psychedelic dream raining down punches while floating light as feathers over coruscating dreamscapes. `Inside Out’, meanwhile, glides along sunrays and over the rainbow where it finds a treasure pot of pure pop gold. It’s a glorious trip.

Oh dear, I did so much want to like this record. Aylesbury’s Shaker Heights have a whole lot going for them: some superb country-influenced rock songs, the capability to perform storming live sets, and several years experience that should have honed their tunes ready for definitive recording. So why is the album so unsatisfactory?

Part of the answer is familiarity breeding contempt: I first heard ‘Pigment in the Rally’, their signature tune, several years ago and loved it (the review of their first demo is elsewhere on this site), but the new recording doesn’t improve on the original. Vincent Coole’s singing, which I was never that keen on, appears to have deteriorated in recent years and is nigh-on unlistenable on this track and others. The rhythm section hasn’t tightened up much either and the drumming in particular is finicky and insecure. Add to this an over-echoey, muddy recording quality and you have a deeply disappointing experience.

None of the older songs come out of the process that well. ‘Waiting on Me’ should be solid pub-rock fare but because of the nervousness of the drumming it isn’t even that and Coole’s singing is pissed-bloke-at-Karaoke level. ‘Guillotine’ is another song which hasn’t kicked on from the demo, but at least it highlights Coole’s lovely, twanging Telecaster playing.

However, things pick up a good deal when one considers the new songs. ‘All About White Out’ may not make much sense lyric-wise, but it’s an enjoyable singalong, and its punky, scrappy feel sits better with Coole’s unrefined singing style. ‘Magna Doors’ is a would-be epic, piano-based ballad that has some excellent ideas badly executed. For example, Emily Coole’s piano intro is reasonably well-played but she sounds like she’s playing on some duff tin-pot synth piano, and this represents in my mind the band’s mixed-up priorities. They have spent a good deal on packaging and cover art (including a full-monty lyric sheet), but that money would have been better spent renting a studio with a decent piano in it and getting something really good down on tape. As it stands, that cost-cutting renders the whole tune demo-level. Vincent’s normally excellent lead-playing also goes awry on this song, with some inept out-of-key blues-guitarwork over the middle section. As Allan Green would say, ‘Dear oh Dear, what was he thinking?’

Less ambitious, but more successful is ‘We Are Old, Baby’, which has a strong, druggy chorus and a cheerful acoustic vibe. The backup vocals are a welcome addition, providing solidity at the band’s weakest point, but I’m not sure about the curious flute interjections that seem beyond melody and key. This may be a good thing.

Right, so one of my favourite Oxford bands have released something heart-breakingly underwhelming. I am royally brassed off. But I’ve seen what they can do on stage and I believe in the songwriting and the musicianship. Maybe they should get a singer. Whatever, folks. Get it right next time.