L is for...

Huge amount of worthy Ls, much to my surprise. Here's a tenuous top ten, but who are the pictures of?

- Bill Laswell

- La Dusseldorf

- Thomas Leer

- Kerry Leimer

- Library Tapes

- Lard Free

- Lobe

- Gary Lucas

- Led Zeppelin

Laswell is the genre-less musician par excellence, from funk, world and ambient to improv, jazz and noise. La D's three albums are all timeless but if I had to pick one it would be Viva! Gilbert Artman's Lard Free were one of the best French bands of the 70s. Kerry Leimer put out a few great Eno-influenced albums in the early 80s on his own Seattle-based Palace of Lights label, then went very quiet for a decade or two, but has been once again releasing stuff since 2000.

Thomas Leer is an odd one: experimental first single and shared album with Robert Rental, fabulous EP and slightly less good LP on Cherry Red, then very commercial period with an album on Arista and collaboration, as Act, with Claudia Brucken, then nothing for a decade, and now he's back making fairly low-key, OK instrumental music.

Lobe are in there, if only for their first abum, one of my favourites from mid-90s electronica. And I'm happy to include more recent discoveries (for me anyway): the deliciously ambient Library Tapes (aka Swede David Wenngren) and Gary Lucas, one-time Beefheart guitarist, both courtesy of another Gary. Led Zep? Well, if only for their third album.

But there's a ton of others: Ligeti, Alvin Lucier; Dickie Landry, The Lost Jockey, Little Feat, John Lennon, Liliental, Lemon Kittens, Pacale Languirand, Daniel Lentz, Benjamin Lew, Logic System, Lounge Lizards, Laraaji, Lydia Lunch, Laibach, Lights in a Fat City, Lush, Loop, Alan Lamb, Daniel Lanois, Lamb, Laika, Robert Leiner, Leftfield, LFO, Locust, Loop Guru, LaBradford, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Ladytron, Landing, Larsen & Friends, Lost in Hildurness, Le Lendemain... most of which could have ousted half of the 'Top Ten'.