A concept album from a cartoon band transporting us to a trash land mass floating in the middle of the ocean. What larks. Damon Albarn - yes! It's him - thinks this environmental pustule will come up roses stewing in his pop juices, and it's time to test the results.

We hit the ground sauntering. The once-dubbed Blackest Man In West London lays down inconsequential beats for Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach that are nevertheless more thrilling than anything Snoop Dogg's drawled over in years. It's a slow-building introduction coming cool on the heels of the real overture, Orchestral Intro, which appears to sneak off the Monkey soundtrack. Gorillaz, Monkey, a laconic Snoop mention of "Planet of the Apes" - we're lucky Albarn doesn't pack up a couple of 1210s and mixer and hit the road as Simian Mobile Disco. Happily, a couple of chancing spoofers are already using that as a front for some staggeringly ordinary glitch-techno. But I digress.

A long album, what sets Plastic Beach apart and keeps us from the skip button is some peerless sequencing, a surprise around every corner. Well, they would be surprises if each collaboration hadn't been breathlessly telegraphed these past few weeks. Let's imagine we're coming to this fresh: Gruff Rhys's sunshine intervention on the daffy De La Soul horseplay of Superfast Jellyfish is a sugary shot in the arm; Bashy and Kano show Snoop what actually awake rappers can do on White Flag's Siamese trip; Stylo is progressively awesome even when you've been told a thousand times how godlike Bobby Womack's testifying is.

Less essential is Mark E. Smith's perfunctory turn on zippy synth skipper Glitter Freeze. And Some Kind Of Nature is, frankly, a Lou Reed track.

Away from starry showstoppers, Albarn (Murdoc. Whatever) occupies his own serene bubble on the gorgeous Broken, dusting off his best Bowie, and On Melancholy Hill is divine. Sorry, Divine. Sebastien Tellier's charming Eurovision squib. Its phrasing also tips its hat at The Beatles' And Your Bird Can Sing, but Albarn is so supernova creative you put these nods down as homage, not steal.

The final third, featuring choral/electro curio Plastic Beach, Womack's lonely Cloud Of Unknowing and the zonked-out doo wop of Pirate Jet, is a somewhat queasy drift, but there's still time to slot in the featherlight skank of To Binge. It's led by Gothenburg's Little Dragon, who earlier offer up their clear-as-a-bell synth-pop to standout track Empire Ants, meshing with alchemist Albarn (um, Murdoc, the others) to turn base tick-tock balladry into hands-up glitterball gold. This sort of fantastic restlessness is Plastic Beach's character made flesh, Gorillaz' 2D forms gone pop-up. If Albarn does his best work behind the mask, long may it not slip.

If you make a game-changing album like Blue Lines, you’re going to find yourself with a right old surfeit of slack.

This means you’ve got carte blanche to slap muzak horrors Weather Storm and Heat Miser on the follow-up, and nearly get away with a Light My Fire that rather pisses on it instead. You can bloodymindedly stick to a zombie’s pace on third album Mezzanine, and pick up plaudits which still ring out a decade later for the archetypal four-good-tracks-and-a-heap-of-filler. Christ, you can even offer up tepid audio scowl 100th Window and still not get harried out of town. That was a decade of regression, peppered with the odd dramatic highpoint, yet ending with chipper old 3-D brooding in Daddy G’s absence.

But mittens to history. G’s back, Horace Andy’s still there and even Martine Topley-Bird’s dropped in now the coast is clear. It’s a quirky full circle. And Heligoland is good, Mezzanine-good – by which we mean nearly-Risingson-good and not Group-Four-good. Tunde Adebimpe brings TV On The Radio’s soul/tricksy fusion to Pray For Rain, Hope Sandoval adds saucily whispered consonants to the creepy Paradise Circus, Guy Garvey lends his peculiar mix of belated recognition and perplexing overratedness to the glitchy, Burial-meets-Japan’s-Ghosts Flat Of The Blade and poor Damon Albarn sounds desperate on Saturday Comes Slow.

It’s not all about the guests. The 3-D/DG/HA triple-header Splitting The Atom is a blast from the past, and 3-D’s pulsating Atlas Air is almost enjoyable. As enjoyable as a fellow snarling “tourniquet will keep its grip” over eerie piped synth can be, granted.

Biggest cheer though goes to Horace Andy and his brilliant travesty of his own Girl I Love You. Appendectomising bass underpins a thrilling, Curve-y, grim deflowering of a once pretty ditty. Super. So the Massive have scrabbled around and found a bit of mojo again; Heligoland isn’t swimming in sunshine optimism, but it leavens the customary dub panic attacks with grace, invention and the generous realisation there are still people out there who are worth the bother.