Even cheating death on the way home after a front tyre blow out on the A483 (seriously) and waiting six hours for the AA to turn up couldn't detract from the thrill of having attended Green Man 2012. I'll stick my neck out - the best yet.

Given that last year I wrote of my concerns that Britain's finest festival may finally be entering a period of decline, this was both a reassuring and an exhilarating thing to behold. If I point out at this stage that my top ten performances of the festival (below) doesn't include Friday's headline from…

I recall, back in the late eighties, going to a Cud gig with a friend who'd spent the previous six months immersing himself in folk and world music to the exclusion of almost everything else. After a fantastic performance that caught the band just at their peak, he said he'd rediscovered himself, and realised he was 'an indie kid at heart'. Although I can't claim the circumstances are exactly parallel, I left Glasgow Popfest with a similar feeling.

What the event - held between the 8th and 11th December in Heavenly on Glasgow's Hope Street - did was reaffirm just…

Seriously battling with 93MillionMilesFromTheSun for the best Parallax Sounds release yet, but 93MMFTS are Frazier and Syntaks are Ali. Stunning brute force against majestic guile. The woozy magnificence of this dream/nightmare electronica from the Danish duo resonates with flashes of something genuinely comparable with Boards Of Canada at their best - and these are words seldome said.

I first listened to it in the car while driving around the remnants of a medieval abbey but Nachtblende could probably make cruising around an industrial state feel estoterically beautiful. The album’s title hints at its cinematic vision and scope, but the richness…

The Myhand.thanx netlabel has been serving up slabs of excellence for a good while now, but Finnish duo Zoomonk produced an album of such zesty brilliance it defeated even the amazing ‘Memories of a Dog’ by Thomas W as the label’s finest moment yet. And, as with everything this remarkable label puts out, it's FREE!

Suicide-inspired no wave brashness collides with noisy krautrock injected dronery to produce a work that conspires to recapture the word ‘rock’ from its clichéd hovel. Sadly, we’ve not heard anything from one the world’s finest labels since July – anything we can look forward to…

15. Snowy Psychoplasmics – Dissolved (Daddy Tank)
Outrageously innovative, exploratory electronica – cinematic in scope and visionary in execution. Feeding time for the bits of the brain that we might think didn’t exist. A truly unique release from a label that spent the whole of 2011 producing unique releases.

14. Pedro Joko – Decibelles (Self-Released)
Sprightly French guitar pop. Unpretentious and easy to miss if you're not concentrating. Some make the mistake of dismissing this at face value as standard retro sub-punk fare - don’t be deceived.

13. Ode 2 A Carrot – Soom T & Disrupt (Jahtari)
Ganja-fuelled monologues…

Only two more days to vote in the festive fifty at www.dandelionradio.com/festive50.htm.

Moving into my top twenty albums of the year:

20. JD Meatyard - JD Meatyard (Probe Plus)
John Donaldson goes (roughly speaking) solo, takes his Levellers 5 and Calvin Party heritage with him and delivers a stunner that, had not only arrived a couple of days before I started writing this list, maywell have been higher.

19. Go Tell Fire To The Mountain – Wu Lyf (Lyf Recording)
Much-hyped and deservedly so, mining that rich Mancunian tradition of fuck-you individuality and sweetly arrogant stylings and adding a curious…

Only six days left to vote in the festive fifty at www.dandelionradio.com/festive50.htm. You know what you need to do.

Meanwhile:

25. Ghetto Ass Witch – Ritualz (Self-Released)
Mexicans defy their witch house heritage by giving themselves a name my keyboard can make sense of and putting out something good. The remix albums that followed were pretty damn fine as well.

24. Sensitive – Trevor Sensitive & The Locals (Self-Released)
Quirky, sub-Smithsesque parables on emotional conundrums that poke far into the recesses of convention beneath the slick indie pop veneer. They did a great session for my show during the year…

Only 11 days left to vote in the festive fifty at www.dandelionradio.com/festive50.htm.

As for my albums of the year, the countdown continues:

30. Paris Burning – Derajah & The Donkey Jaw Bone (Chapter Two - right)
Superior reggae served up with considerable warmth (check out ‘My Sista’, which I’ll be playing in my December show for an example). One of several very late releases to muscle their way into this list (out at the end of this month).

29. This Day Is A Good Enough Day – Prince Edward Island (Crocfingers)
Scottish indie pop with hooks for hands. Anyone afflicted…

A reminder that you can vote in the Festive Fifty - the only chart that really matters - up to the end of November at www.dandelionradio.com/festive50.htm, but in the meantime please check the latest instalment in my countdown of my favourite albums of the year:

35. Crust Of Utopia – The Infinite Three (Self-Released)
Growling guitars underpin a dark, intelligent masterpiece. Written about in loving detail elsewhere on this blog.

34. S-750 – The Tinopener’s Art (Self-Released)
German-based electronic magician with his best work yet. Includes collaborations with Julien Auroux, another favourite of my show.

33. Senseless Sense – Piatcions…

My top forty albums of the year, out of an original short-list of about 120, to be revealed during the course of November and December. A good smattering of self-released efforts. One record label features twice and another three times, but other than that it’s single appearances only, if indeed they appear at all…

40. Apocalypse – Bill Callahan (Drag City)

Best work since his Smog days. A steamy, atmospheric appraisal of an America in crisis.

39. Palace Of Toxology – Bashed Nursling (Enough)
Hungarian’s latest offering of brain-shredding electronic hammering. No one exposes the subtleties within electric noise better,…