9: KASABIAN – EMPIRE (COLUMBIA)

Both album and mob chant of triumph for the new indie army, ‘Empire’ found Tom’n’Serge – the Eric and Ernie of futurist techno-rock – hone their filthy electropunk to razor-edge. Slashes of ’70s glitter-stomp (‘Shoot The Runner’) and bits that sounded like the Noel Gallagher/Chemical Brothers sessions ending in a crack bender (‘Sun Rise Light Flies’; ‘Apnoea’): no longer wannabe Mancs confused by their own Gulf War references, ‘Empire’ announced the new Band Of The People.