Father only ever made one record. In this way they have had the perfect career. So many bands toil away for years, churning out album after album, only ever managing about five good songs. Father condense that career into one record. You at once own everything they've ever done and all their greatest songs.

'Dancing Major' is the first track and is their best. Guitar and banjo strum heavenly. It's like the strings are all quite tight because it sounds like an orchestra of rubber bands. It reminds me of when I would make a primitive guitar by stretching elastic bands over an empty tissue box.

'Canal' restores your faith in music. Sometimes I think that music is over, that there's nothing left anyone can do. This gives you hope that there are still good songs to be written.

'Guess my weight' is more strummed banjo with intoned vocals like some kind of buddhist chant. 'Now I've changed my minder' is strum pop thrash, the banjo takes some heavy abuse, imagine George Formby fronting Black Flag. 'Christmas Now' is more tuneful strumming plus a melancholic vocal.

And with their last note Father disappear forever.

Fall-esque thudding rhythm and the one note riff just connects with something deep inside your brain.

The b-side has two tracks if you ignore noise interlude. The first is nervy, scrabbly, noisy, off-kilter blasts. It's all very busy, like uptight boys to reserved to thrash out. Nice melodic xylophone break.

The next feels like a post-pub jam. The strum flourish holds it together whilst the hand-toms and one fingered keyboard stabs augment. Nice after the stress of the previous track. Then there is the most tuneless guitar solo ever, but it's deliberate and kind of cool.

Shambling, out of tune strum, synth overload. Someone clatters old boxes and some pots and pans.

Wallet of Wasps has more of a tune, but in the Shadow Ring universe this is a distinct and relative thing. Here it equals acoustic guitar motif, muffled kettle drum and muted gong.

The music is intentionally awkward. None of this would work were it not for the deadpan vocals. They have a somber gravitas and there is some ancient about them. You feel as if the band are privy to some lost medieval truth which they seem reticent to share.

The main track Suzi Quatro is total sludge riffery of overloading, detuned guitars, oozing out the speakers and enveloping you in a treacley blob of painful feedback. It hurts to listen. Andru Clare's naif vocals mewl over the top like a blind, deaf, mutant orphan. On the b-side I'm Being Good attempt pop in their own particularly skewed manner. Songs are shorter and not as heavy, of the three tracks on this side Posturing of deer is the best.

A rather strange entry in I’m Being Good’s canon. No drums, no guitars just Andru Clare on what sounds like a very cheap keyboard. The highlight of this release is without doubt the cover of Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia where the melody is turned into a demented, delirious, buzzing accompanied by Clare’s high-pitched, faux-naif vocals. Unfortunately, such inspiration is in short supply on the rest of this release leaving it as interesting curio for IBG completists.

Flying Saucer Attack are thanked on the sleeve of this release. Apt, as FSA are the best reference point for this LP, as Light use the same FX drenched guitar strums.

Light could be a solo act as the sound is minimal, yet the layers of echo, reverb and gentle distortion make a more expansive sound. Whereas FSA bathed acoustic songs in fuzz, Light don't seem to have any songs as such. Instead focussing on tone and slowly shifting chords achieving a drift like effect. It's as if you're listening to them without listening.

This is not a record of shattering originality, yet for any fan of the Bristol post-rock scene it is instantly intoxicating.

Cause Of Death was a huge musical advancement on Obituary's debut Slowly We Rot. Musically it was more sophisticated with cleverly paced songs shifting from heavy, doom crawls, to rapid thrash-outs. Obituary also attempted to create a cohesive album by overlaying atmospheric soundscapes over the end and start of songs.

However, the high point of the album is James Murphy's outstanding lead work. Murphy sets the tone on Infected, the album's opening track, which begins with an incredible solo. His playing throughout is riven with emotion, feeling and thought. It gives the album a depth missing from many other death metal LPs.

The production does date the record, with the bass sounding rather flat. However, that is the only criticism of a key record by one of the genre's key bands.

Trumans Water's indisputable masterpiece takes the band's patented angular riffs and counter-intuitive time changes to their ultimate extreme.

Shorn of all clutter, their songs are continuous series of crescendos and climaxes, as tension inducing riffs are followed by screaming thrash out.

The record seems infused with chaos as guitars career through songs, untethered from each other concerned only with squeezing in another riff or hook.

Such is the relentless savagery, it takes an impressive stamina to listen to the whole album's 77 minutes in one sitting. However, Trumans Water have never sounded so focused, either before or since.

Sonic Nurse is Sonic Youth sounding like Sonic Youth. Off kilter poppy guitar hooks, jam session grooves, feedback wash, with Kim doing her strangulated punk kitten voice. Think Murray Street, mixed up with bits of A Thousand Leaves, Goo and Dirty.

As the ‘youth’ have got middle-aged, their songs have increasingly become mid-paced. You no longer get that urgent riffing you got on Sister or Daydream Nation. Listening to this album is like an aimless stroll on a summer’s day with a warm breeze gently swirling your clothes.

Not their best. Not their worst. It’s somewhere in between.

Skittery drum'n'bass beats jitter nervily over a John Barry-style string sample. A snatch of a hip-hop vocal is looped creating a hypnotic effect. The strings have a dramatic sweep, but the drums sound like someone's playing empty yoghurt pots.

On the other side there are more John Barry strings - a Thunderball sample? - and no beats this time. A few notes of soft guitar/harp/something, and a breath of oboe adds menace to the skeletal arrangement.