ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Peace, love and a fine riposte to easy understanding

Low's new, Jeff Tweedy-produced album seems rather slimmer, sound-wise, than previous releases, with the instrumental palette pared back on most tracks to little more than sparse acoustic guitar and piano parts sketched over funereally slow, subterranean bass drum pulses.

Besides being the most inventive of double bassists, the late Stefano Scodanibbio was a sound-sculptor of unmatched imagination, as demonstrated in this radical programme of string quartet arrangements of Bach, Spanish guitar music and Mexican popular songs, performed with quicksilver grace by Quartetto Prometeo.

Though no masterpiece, Suede's Bloodsports is a decent piece of work that stays true to the band's aesthetic while boosting its sound to arena size.

Partly built from fragments of an “acoustic diary” jotted down during Karl Bartos's Kraftwerk years, Off the Record contains few surprises, with several tracks pleasantly echoing his time as co-composer of some of the group's most glorious pieces.

Album of the Week: Timberlake's back in the groove with some top tunes

Written when he was just 20, Olivier Messiaen's Préludes are a series of piano pieces whose enigmatic, introspective, sometimes quixotic manner reflected the influence of Debussy and Satie, as well as the towering impact of Chopin.

Sensitively accompanied by Jonathan Cohen's ensemble Arcangelo, soprano Anna Prohaska here offers a selection of baroque arias based on the supernatural – a mythopoeic world of nymphs, fairies, gods and sorcerors.

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck augments his usual reedy Americana stylings with some unexpected developments on Muchacho, most notably the undulating synthesiser arpeggios that bookend the album on “Sun, Arise!” and “Sun's Arising”: combined with his multitracked falsetto vocal harmonies, they sound like Fleet Foxes might if they were a krautrock band.

The Bard of Barking's first album in five years opens unpromisingly with the glum “January Song” and “No One Knows Nothing Anymore”.