First to put their necks on the line are God Is In The TV, one of my favourite online zines, with whom Maps has crossed paths on a number of occasions - most recently for their excellent G-Spot 2 festival at The Pleasure Unit.

They've taken the brave step of going the whole hog for their first release, God Is In The CD (y'see what they've done there?), with a professionally printed and mastered compilation, complete with glossy sleeve. And despite difficulties with manufacturers that led to a delayed release date, it was worth it - the production is great, and the album would look perfectly at home on the shelves of your local music emporium.

However, an unfortunate effect of the delayed release is that several of the bands featured within have since split up, including Maps faves Rhesus, The Swear and The International Karate Plus and between them the now defunct bands produce many of this collection's highlights. Rhesus' anthemic live favourite 'Performance' looses none of its emotional clout in the transition to plastic, while The Swear's 'Disco Bitch' is an enjoyably Kenickie-esque romp, complete with stop/start guitars and shouty backing vocals. On the basis of their contribution 'Long Walks on the Beach', Nakeru will also be sadly missed. It's a sprawling, epic journey through the angst and insecurity of the personal ads pages, and provides a beautiful centre-piece to this album. Completing the obituaries section of this review, Salvo produce a guttural, aggressive finalé with the compulsive 'Customs', by far the heaviest track on the album.

And what of those bands still in circulation? GIITTV was once described in a review as being 'more pretentious than a weekend spent truffle picking with Brett Anderson' (a fact proudly displayed on the accompanying press release), and there is certainly a Suede-ish air to the melodramatic vocal stylings of Gifthorse, while Donde Stars pull off a Pablo Honey-era Radiohead impression that would put the cast of Dead Ringers to shame, and The Psychotic Reaction's quirky lyricisms and jangly guitar add to the feelings of nostalgia.

Proceedings take a dramatic turn for the better with Korova's excellent 'Bad Poetry', blending metallic guitars and driving beats with strings arranged to perfection so that they complement, rather than consume the other instruments. It's a trick that The Sailplanes would do well to learn, as unnecessary electronic squiggles threaten to over-run their contribution 'Sideways On'. Thankfully their frantic textures and Sonic Youth flavoured guitars burst through just in time to pull us from the fire, and the whole thing careers forward at an exhilarating pace before yanking the carpet from beneath our feet with an unexpectedly sparse, low tempo outro. Meanwhile, The Gemma Ray Ritual provide an unexpected gospel tinged country stomper in the form of 'Terrible Times'. It really should sound completely out of place amongst the indie bands that make up the majority of the cd, but somehow its raw vocal power makes it fit.

However, my unquestionable highlight of the album comes in the rather more low-key track that follows this deep south bombast. Akira are a band that I've always held great hopes for, and in the electronic textures and pure, emotive vocals of 'Atom', they have surpassed even my highest expectations of what they could achieve. This is a beautiful, astonishing song - at once simple and direct, complex and experimental.

All told, it's an impressive collection, and even better it's all for charity (all profits will be donated to MacMillan Cancer Support) - head over to www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk for your copy now.

The people behind the I Think You'll Find That's Fireworks zine and their Dance At My Feet label have gone for a rather more DIY approach for their effort 'Skyburstexplosion', with handcrafted packaging and home-burned CD-Rs, limited to 100 copies, which will probably have long sold out by the time you read this.

The resulting album is much more of a hit & miss affair than God Is In The CD (despite The Sailplanes & Captain Polaroid making an appearance on both albums). The highlights here come in the form of Untitled Musical Project conjuring the demons of the much missed Mclusky with their brilliantly furious 'Take Your Funk and Funk Off', and the perfect guitar pop of New Cross DIY heroes The Total Drop.

They would almost surely have been joined on their pedestal by And What Will Be Left Of Them?'s shouty lo-fi pop charms, had they not opted for a live recording so tinny and stifled that it sounds like listening to a gig with ear muffs on. Elsewhere, Meg's Weezer-ish college rock and Sam Isaac's acoustic songsmithery show promise, but much of the rest is either non-descript, half-formed or so fuzzily recorded that it's hard to tell whether it's any good or not.

'Skyburstexplosion' is a bitty affair, but well worth the £2 price tag for UMP and The Total Drop alone.

Last up, South London's Angular Recording Corporation are relative veterans of the compilation word, with 'Future Love Songs' being their third venture into the world of multi-bandism. There's plenty of expectation to live up to, with previous editions having given the likes of Bloc Party, The Long Blondes and Art Brut a helping hand in the direction of stardom, but the cause is helped by the return of several of the labels most celebrated progeny, including the aforementioned Long Blondes, along with These New Puritans and current media darlings Klaxons. All three deliver the goods - Klaxon's 'Gravity's Rainbow', as you probably know by now, is propelled by an impossibly groovy bassline with stabs of yelped vocals; TNP's 'I Want To Be Tracy Emin' (a horrifying fantasy if ever I heard one) is deliciously scuzzy, while

The Long Blondes deliver high sheen guitar pop with infectious shouty chorus in the form of 'Lust in the Movies'.

However, what I'm really interested in is which will be the next band from the seemingly unstoppable Angular production line to be catapulted to success? I'd love more than anything for it to be Twisted Charm, whose elastic bassed 'Happy Alone' eclipses anything that their more illustrious contemporaries have to offer. However, a more likely candidate is To My Boy, already snapped up by XL Records (home to Thom Yorke, The White Stripes & Peaches), and spreading their infectiously jerky electropoppunkfunk craziness across the UK and making us all dance like epileptics.

But it's not all about searching for future stars, there are some welcomingly familiar faces here too - Theoretical Girl's 'The Hypocrite' is all spidery guitars and spellbindingly intertwined vocals, The Violets' dark new wave stomp is as sharp as broken glass, and The Low Edges spit bible belt country hellfire all over 'Leave the House'.

It's yet another captivating insight into what's happening in London and beyond from a label that really do deserve a lot more credit than they've been given, and is released on November 27th, priced £5. You'd be insane not to invest in it.

Review by Paul Madden