Stopcryingyourheartout.com — Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Elbow and Mr Scruff are among the Manchester artists who have donated their music to a new charity album.Their songs appear on the two-disc Thirty One collection in aid of CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserabl... more info

Guardian Music — (Domino)If eyebrows were raised when guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones left the Coral in 2008, his debut album should send them into the stratosphere. A score inspired by Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveller is a long way from the Liverp... more info

Guardian Music — Beatles sleave featuring faces of music executives in place of the band's worth around £70,000, says music magazineA Beatles sleeve featuring the faces of music executives in place of the band has been declared the world's most valuable record cover... more info

XLR8R — For a 22-year-old, Briton Chris Ward, the lone soul behind Tropics, has absorbed his fair share of music made before he was even thought of. On Mouves, his second EP, a four-tracker for Planet Mu, Ward's brand of gauzy, post-rocky electronic pop... more info

Guardian Music — (LYF Recordings)After a year spent giving the industry and the curious the runaround with their high-profile air of mystery, there was always going to be an anticlimax when World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation were unmasked as denim-wearing Mancunia... more info

Guardian Music — Former Haçienda DJ Dave Haslam's True Faith strand at MIF serves as a great showcase for the best new Manchester bands. Here's his guide to the class of 2011Pictured, left to right:Young british artistsThey haven't been shouting as loudly about ... more info

Let's Get Cynical — It’s rare to go into a gig without some idea of what to expect from the headline band, especially in this internet age – but that’s exactly what I did tonight when I popped into The Duchess to see The … Continue reading → more info

Totally Fuzzy — Have you been sitting at that computer all day? You’re overdue for a break. The new Vetiver album, The Errant Charm, is a superb soundtrack for an afternoon idyll. Take a moment to load the record on your mp3 player. Hell, if you still have a Walk... more info

Guardian Music — Yesterday's must-have discs became today's embarrassments, so they had to go – violentlyIt was November 1977 and a mate and I took Tina Charles's 1975 disco hit I Love To Love into the garden, surrounded it with fireworks and laughed hysterically ... more info

Guardian Music — This 20-year-old Irish lad from the mean streets of Hackney seems destined to be a Plan B mini-meHometown: London.The lineup: Michael Stafford (vocals, guitar).The background: He looks like Wayne Rooney's less chunky younger brother, and he sings and... more info