• Record Label: !K7
  • Release Date: Aug 1, 2011
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 16
  2. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Aug 5, 2011
    90
    The result is louche and intoxicating.
  2. Nov 1, 2012
    80
    Azari & III's sound is less about chasing contemporary club trends than it is about summing up the last 30 years of underground dance music, so the album still sounds fresh.
  3. Q Magazine
    Feb 22, 2012
    80
    Opener Into the Night sets the tine with its robotic glitterball soul music, while Undecided fantastically tweaks the Roland 303 to Olympian levels of ecstasy. [Mar 2012, p.111]
  4. Uncut
    Feb 8, 2012
    80
    Todd Terry and Masters At Work's percolating euphoria warms every groove on this intelligently realized debut. [Mar 2012, p.79]
  5. Aug 30, 2011
    80
    All told, Azari & III is a solid work with plenty to offer newcomers and devoted fans alike.
  6. Aug 29, 2011
    80
    They're making music for people who love dance music, which makes them part of their own audience. If you fit the demographic, you'll feel right at home.
  7. Aug 19, 2011
    80
    Those of you disappointed in similar efforts this year by Hercules & Love Affair or, say, Jessica 6 will find many of their itches scratched here.
  8. Aug 12, 2011
    80
    From a purely musical perspective, however, it executes that very most rare form of retroism--the type that makes the tired, forgotten and domesticated once again radical.
  9. We would have liked to have heard more lead vocal from the uniquely talented Cedric, but this is a small quibble when we're talking about the soundtrack to dancing like your life depends on it in 2011.
  10. Sep 2, 2011
    73
    Really, though, its the earlier track "Lost in Time" that best sums up the record's appeal--on one level, it's about the dancefloor as an escape, while on another, it winks at the group's time travels.
  11. Oct 30, 2012
    70
    Azari & III is a pretty not bad approximation of what dance music must have sounded like 30 years ago to an audience who might not have had access to riffling the records that build the foundation of sound displayed here. Still, it's when the group follows the maxim "Shut Up and Dance" that they are probably at their most successful and artistic.
  12. Aug 26, 2011
    70
    Overall it's a great promissory note to the world, and a view of what's to come in the dance world. If anything, all I can hope for are more divas and fewer bros dominating the scene.
  13. All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

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