Gyratory System came out of nowhere in 2008, ostensibly rising from the ashes of One More Grain, but sounding totally unlike them, or anything else for that matter. Mixing elements of electronica, rave and krautrock with marching drums and military horns - otherworldly unplaceable sounds mingling with what could be trumpets, the Royal Phiharmonic or a maybe a pneumatic drill. Their debut album, The Sound Board Breathes, was created using 'The Process' - a mix of abstraction and order, building up symphonic structures around programmed algorithms, and instead of losing themselves in the egoistic act of creation, they instead created something joyful and majestical. About to release their second album, New Harmony, Gyratory System are still in fine form, further refining their eccentric but extraordinary vision.

Lead single and title track, New Harmony, is unmistakably the work of Gyratory System, simply because you couldn't imagine anyone else have the strength of vision and the depth of skill required to carry it out.

CYMBALS' gloriously simplistic track 'Single Printed Names', off their soon to be released debut album, belies their complexity of forms, somewhere amongst the the adolescent anguished wit of the vocals and the hyperactive guitar lines, the house-piano and rolling drum beats, CYMBALS have created a epic five minute slice of indie rock that nonchalantly breezes past you with the collar of its polo shirt flipped up, as if to say 'whilst you were nostalgically blogging about 2-step and hypnogogic lo-fi, pretending you never listened to The Smiths or Orange Juice, we were quite happily doing our thing'. And CYMBALS' thing is really, very very good.

Single Printed Name by CYMBALS

Six minutes of gorgeous symphonic electronic build up followed by one the most fantastic drops this side of 7am at a Berlin techno party, what a way for Gang Gang Dance to announce their return. After St. Dymphna broke the New York experimentalists on our shores in 2008, their fifth album, Eye Contact, to be released later this year, looks set to further enhance their position as avant-garde pop chiefs. With it's arpeggiated synths and steel drums, and Liz Bougatsos' geographically unplaceable unworldly voice, 'Glass Jar' finds GGD almost encroaching on the territory explored by Scandinavian duo The Knife, yet GGD are closer to prisms of bursting light than the impenetrable Arctic Circle darkness that The Knife seemed to inhabit. Possibly the best record I've heard so far in 2011.