1) The English Heritage Discount – 1917 was cold (Vestige Records, 1989)

Darren “Knife” McDarreth’s is probably now best known for his seminal eclectic 1998 album “Drainage” but in his former band’s 1989 opus he sounds like the end of Thatcherite apartheid, the dawning of a new era, and a feedback static loop from hell. With Dee Da Collins guesting on theramin it’s the vestigial sound of Jupiter before it falls apart.

Best track: 1919 – warmer

2) Oh My Cretacious Jackson - Oh My Cretacious Jackson? (Truth Sounds, 1992)

Paradoxical pop-dance trio Oh My Cretacious Jackson are best known nowadays for their one-hit-wonder from the soundtrack to Super Mario Brothers, Return To The Crazy Space, but the album it featured on sank without trace. A shame, because this almost self-titled album features some of the greatest sounds you’ll hear this side of heaven, and probably irreversibly changed the nature of reality for the better.

Best track: I’m In The Bath (Who Is In The Bath?)

3) Cancel My Netflix Subscription – Most if not all (Gravy, 2012)

With the late-naughties indie boom a thing of the past it fell down to the pleasingly contemporary Cancel My Netflix Subscription (now known as Cancel My Amazon Prime Subscription) to create angular yet miserably dance rock indie ballads. Sounding like a cross between your last favourite album and your next favourite album, Most if not all shows that if indie is dead, then it’s soul has been transferred and it’s living on in the bodies of the members of Cancel

Best Track: Whence

4) 7 Gaz! – 7 Gaz 9 (Verboten, 1972)

If you ask anyone who was alive in 1972 – (which you can – many are still alive) then they will tell you amongst the West Berlin hipsters 1972 was the year of 7 Gaz 9, the East Germany’s “Krautrock” pioneers 4th album. An influence on all that followed and came before it, 7 Gaz 9 sounds like a melted glass sofa infused with a golden handshake, but in German. It still sounds like the future.

Best Track: Auf Mein Trabant

5) The Windows 95 – Grouse (Helen, 1999)

After the demise of Stormie Xerxes’ cult band Splicer, few thought that he would regroup within 6 weeks and create this, his 90-minute masterpiece Grouse. Simultaneously prog and punk, old and new, up and down, The Windows 95 proved to be as short-lived as the lawsuit brought it to it’s knees and all the albums were pulped. Thom Yorke and Alan Moore are among the few people who still own a copy which has passed into legend through scarcity, even though it is on Spotify.

Best track: track 6