This week on Stylus

Nick Southall questions the need for Bloc Party's Silent Alarm Remixed, but is smitten by the Four Tet reimagining of 'So Here We Are' - "He amplifies what the tune is about, and he does so by toning it down a little, making the microcosmic details more important. It’s not a tune about love, specifically, but rather (according to Kele in interviews) a tune about the euphoria of an initial drug-rush, and this slightly shifted focus, emphasising the kind of unimportant details that drugs actually accentuate, works marvellously, especially when you realise he hasn’t sacrificed the song’s scintillating and key shift in pace in the latter third. It’s gorgeous, and quite possibly better than the 'proper' version".

Andrew Unterberger sits through the entirety of the MTV Video Music Awards - "Usher gets a Diddy-like entrance, and starts blathering about the history of LA dance. Enter a bunch of LA dancers, at least one of which is a little girl and at least of which is a clown. 'CRUNK CLOWN, BREAK IT ON DOWN!' This is surely going to go down as one of the most surreal VMAs in history. The audience applauds very slowly and hesitantly".

Derek Miller takes a look at the soundtrack to 'Donnie Darko' - "Where most of the film’s music is simply used as timely wallpaper, Kelly isn’t beyond the shrewd use of pop music to subvert what he sees as unwelcome social trends. At the school’s talent show, after a gauche operatic performance by one student, Duran Duran’s 'Notorious' is used diagetically to soundtrack Darko’s younger sister’s dance-squad showcase. As the troupe 'Sparkle Motion', five over-made-up young girls juke, still skinny of age, provocatively to Duran Duran’s overtly sexualized dance smash".

Jill Labrack reviews Scout Niblett's Kidnapped By Neptune - "raw, damaged, modern day folk-blues-punk rock with a vengeance".

Ian Mathers revisits Weezer's Maladroit and proclaims it "their peak" - "It's the most mannered album Weezer have ever made — a more Weezer album than their others in the way that 'The Royal Tenenbaums' was a more Wes Anderson film than 'Rushmore'. Which is not, sadly, why it's so wonderful; the record's focus on Rivers Cuomo's neuroses hold it back from being as good as it can be. Rather it's a testament to this band's talent that this brief patchwork of an album sounds better than a hundred less queasily self-obsessed others".