William Onyeabor: World Psychedelic Classics 5 – Who is William Onyeabor?

It’s a condition of certain music journalists – myself very much included – that we can be blindsided by originality to the detriment of much else. Thus I might rate a chunk of electronic weirdness that blows my mind on the first couple of listens over a more derivative piece of song-writing. Later on I sometimes find that the sonic weirdness wears thin, sucked dry of its original sparkle, while the more derivative music slowly reveals itself as something rather brilliant.

Suede, lest we forget, exploded into a moribund music scene dominated by the fag-end of grunge in 1992. Initially cast as the John the Baptists of Britpop, they lost Bernard Butler, their wunderkind guitarist, early on, became as known for druggy indulgence as for albums that were incrementally dropping in quality, and spilt up in 2003. Vocalist Brett Anderson claimed he needed “to do whatever it takes to get my demon back”.

One of the joys of the Southbank Centre’s year-long The Rest Is Noise series has been the opportunity to hear some unusual period pieces among the more standard repertoire. In the case of 200 Motels it is a concert premiere for a genre-bending work which was pulled from its 1971 Albert Hall slot due to complaints about its obscene content.

Norway is currently attracting an uncommon degree of attention due to the absurd “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis, the comedy duo Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker. The country’s mainstream music hasn’t been this newsworthy since a-ha conquered the world in 1985. After 150 million YouTube hits for “The Fox”, the figure is still rising.

Various Artists: Oh Yes We Can Love – A History of Glam Rock

Grand claims and superlatives were not lacking in this examination of The Who's fabled rock opera. "This is a quintessentially important creation," said Des McAnuff, the man who staged Tommy on Broadway and in London's West End. "This might just be the first pop masterpiece," wrote pop critic (and Pete Townshend's pinball-playing buddy) Nik Cohn in his review in 1969.

When the term “world music” became a category in record stores, it’s doubtful that triple harps, cerdd dant and canu plygain would have been thought to belong under the umbrella. And yet here they were on display at WOMEX. The annual world music expo has put down roots in Cardiff this year, and to bid welcome to the delegates Cerys Matthews hosted a celebration of traditional Welsh music under the title Gwlad y Gân/Land of Song. Bar the odd burst of Under Milk Wood and a version of "Men of Harlech", very little of it was, for obvious reasons, in English.

Still only a year out of college, the diversely gifted trumpeter, composer and bandleader Laura Jurd has risen rapidly to prominence, enterprisingly bypassing the ritual of hanging around to be noticed by creating her own scene and ensembles. One of these, the Chaos Collective, this week curated a small festival in which another, the Chaos Orchestra, last night performed a range of new work. Most hotly anticipated were the arrangements of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, celebrating the centenary of its first performance.   

It had to finish with “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease”, the commentary on a building block of British life which marks the passing of time more acutely than anything explicitly counting the minutes which precede leaving the field, whether in sport or life. Roy Harper originally released this elegy in 1975, when he was in his 30s. As last night’s encore, it was even more poignant. Harper is now 72. There were moments when he explicitly said he might not see an audience again. He was in fine form: alive, joking, scatty and, at times, on fire.