All Tomorrow's Parties 1.1: curated by Sonic Youth

The best idea for a festival in the world goes to the US – which means you can’t smoke in the venues and a Californian college campus (“Please note: no overnight accommodation”) is substituted for Scottish chalets. But at least the central idea remains: one band curates the festival, selecting all of their own favourite artists to appear. The one set for next March (rescheduled from last October, after 11/9), previewed on this album, is Sonic Youth’s baby: and thus the infant is characterised by a very furrow-browed, collegiate-American kind of overseriousness.

In addition to several deeply unessential studies in crashing din (Satan’s Tornade, Kevin Drumm), you’ve got Stephen Malkmus (it wouldn’t be an American alternative festival without him) and Bardo Pond (Lift To Experience do this kind of intense, swirling squall so much more convincingly). Sonic Youth’s own contribution (‘Fauxhemians’, do you mind) is over-long, uninspired and directionless, the sound of heads nodding to what was once an avant-garde noise.

It’s left to visitors from planets where “rock” is not yet “post” to supply some true futurism: Stereolab’s ‘Old Lungs’ is predictably brilliant, as are Papa M’s ‘How Can I Tell You I Love You?’ and Cat Power’s itchy, languid take on Robert Johnson’s ‘Come On In My Kitchen’. But the glittering diamond of the collection is ‘Pidgeon’ from New York’s Cannibal Ox, a bleak and beautiful rap masterpiece and true work of art.