[An] outstanding piece of work. [Feb 2012, p.92]

What's really mind-blowing is the audio quality of that initial 60-year-old performance (and indeed, the box set in general), which is so lucid that it sounds as if Miles is in the room playing right next to you. [Aug 2015, p.106]

All of the new mix’s strengths are writ large here. Ringo is restored. The voices feel ‘properly’ balanced and positioned. And in general, where there was whimsy (the bête noire of most Pepper agnostics) the power of solid drums and central voices irons it out. ... It’s an album--maybe the album.

It's among the best albums ever made. [Nov 2002, p.92]

It still vibrates with Warren Ellis's ominous, cosmic-radiation synthesizers and loops, but Ghosteen is less tightly coiled and knotted. ... Cave finds a way to reach out, and reach through. [Dec 2019, p.87]

It's never just meat and potatoes. It's more like eating bone marrow in a fashionable restaurant - earthy, carnivorous but still beautifully designed and knowingly conceptualized. [Jan 2012, p.88]

Idiot Prayer is extraordinary, breathtakingly varied within its minimal format, and compelling throughout. [Dec 2020, p.84]

This 4-CD box is the monument to both the cult and the art. And it's great. [Oct 2009, p.117]

Seductive, stirring songs about crushed hope and the corruption of beauty and some of their most ambitious arrangements make this their most fully-realised and accomplished album yet. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Their most affecting and cohesive statement to date. [Oct 2001, p.108]

An album of colossal strength and maturity. [Sep 2006, p.104]

An album virtually bereft of fluff and filler. [Album Of The Month] [Oct 2001, p.104]

Their debut, Mono, gave voice to little beyond their frustration, and the distance between that impressively venomous fit of black-hearted flailing and Penance Soiree's stereopathic, multiphonic attack is similar to that between Nirvana's Bleach and Nevermind. [May 2004, p.94]

It's as good as anything in this group's monstrous catalogue. [Dec 2003, p.120]

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

Here, backed only by guitar or piano, she inhabits other singers' material (including Smog's "Red Apples") with a fierce conviction that's often startling.

This is a great record for and about New Orleans and one of the best the two men have ever made. [Jun 2006, p.96]

Despite a shared Giorgio Moroder influence, they are more DAF meets Soft Cell and early Detroit techno than a 21st century Human League.

Magic.... Its rhapsodies present a portait of an artist at an early height of his powers. [Feb 2005, p.102]

Like [Brian Wilson's] Smile, it extends the language of pop, setting a fearsome standard for anyone equal to the challenge of matching his limitless invention. [Jun 2007, p.98]

An album that sounds effortless, but at times almost dissyingly diverse--imagine The White Album, but made by happy people. [May 2006, p.96]

Holmes is scrabbling throught he ashes of Vegas strip supper-club jazz to craft a decidedly 21st century soundtrack, mourning its passing while happily rifling its pockets. [Album of the Month, Feb 2002, p.90]

The former Talking Head has rarely sounded so vital.

Listen to Frances The Mute without any prog-induced prejudice... and it emerges as the triumphant sound of a band bound only by their imagination. [Apr 2005, p.86]

If you can stick with its synthetic marionette oompah band designs, become immersed in its whirlwind momentum and flint-eyed wit, the chances are you'll fall in love with the album's deep miined reservoirs of charm and sheer eagerness to impress. [Sep 2004, p.90]

Grohl's pounding presence throughout lifts Killing Joke right back to the savage intensity of their early records.... The best punk album in years. [Aug 2003, p.106]

If Yoshimi.... lacks the sheer shock value of Bulletin's panoramic delirium, its peak moments are enough to make it one of 2002's most rewarding releases. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.92]

A seamless, melodic blend of psychedelia and C&W... the songs and instrumentals here hang together beautifully. [Nov 2004, p.95]