The biggest problem with Noname’s Room 25 is that the opening two tracks, adding up to barely four minutes of music, are just too damn good. ... The rest is merely exceptional. Essential. [Nov 2018, p.68]

The sonic scribbles of Kid A are far more stimulating than their regular grind.... Along with Primal Scream's Exterminator, Kid A is a vital work. Anyone remotely interested in contemporary music should listen to it at least once. [#201, p.59]

This is what happens when you expose the oneiric to daylight. It’s jazzy, symphonic, tough, tender, true. Plain magnificent. [Jul 2022, p.45]

Marks a radical departure in its scope and overall sound.... Unwound have reinvented their music as Progressive hardcore, framing abstract conceits in rock solid structures. This brave, ambitious record retains its edge in a blur of invention. [#206, p.76]

We should be thankful at least for this one precocious masterpiece, where even the big closing motivational ballad “Energy” comes humble and soothing. The 14 flawless blasts of pure hunger that precede it are equally spare, allowing room for all sorts of monumental chords and vocal inflections to weave their way into Salieu’s tales of frontline Coventry. [Jan 2021, p.87]

The music has an originality that sounds remarkable even now. [#248, p.52]

Sounding like nothing else out there, distinct even from Tribe's previous work, We Got It From Here is political without being preachy, fun without being unintelligent and next level out while being street corner down. A superb swansong. [Jan 2017, p.71]

A thousand times more exciting in every way than most everything in the air at the moment.... Timbaland's production is frontier staking stuff... [#208, p.58]

Sound Ancestors is a masterpiece. The 16 pieces not only expand the conversation around the art of sampling, but also further hiphop’s ability to grow as a collaborative Black artform. [Mar 2021, p.54]

The vinyl pressing is high quality and these albums deserve every extra crumb of clarity analogue can muster. ... Clear the shelves. [Dec 2017, p.74]

Mozart’s Mini Mart, his first LP since On The Hot Dog Streets (2012), is militant and magnificent--as oddsome as dress wearing-era Kevin Rowland, as socially astute as Sleaford Mods, as mythomaniacal as Kanye West.

A superb album, in which Wyatt gathers all of his strengths, with the personal and the political, the aesthetic and the ethical are brought together as only he can. [Nov 2007, p.64]

Spellbinding throughout, this music may invite you to check out of the world, but only long enough to help you recover and face it again. [May 2019, p.48]

Juggles multiple ideas of modernism with unusual grace and success. [#234, p.53]

One of the year's best releases, remix or not. [#241, p.71]

It's surely his finest recorded hour to date. [#230, p.61]

Wooden Wand's contemporary contributions to songwriting tradition have produced some great work, but on Death Seat he has excelled himself. [Nov 2010, p.64]

Lamar offers a commitment to effect change through the work itself. Whether or not that's realistic ideal the delivery is so powerful it's hard not to get caught up in the rapture. [May 2015, p.50]

This box is not an artefact but an act, a decisive statement of Czukay’s immutable id bereft of egoistic nostalgia or sentiment. ... Cinema is a beautifully appointed and stylish tribute to a sampladelic pioneer who changed the sound of popular music forever. [Apr 2018, p.72]

The five CD expansion pack of his 1982 double LP offers a far more enticing peek behind the purple velvet curtain [than Originals]. ... The outtakes are the real draw here. ... It only leaves you wanting more. [Dec 2019, p.66]

For Bjork, this release marks a development in her craft.... SelmaSongs is a little big brave collection of songs that makes me feel better whenever I listen to it. [#201, p.58]

Would their punk model work for a Stravinsky cover, with its unique challenges? The answer given by this recording is a resounding yes. [May 2014, p.58]

This could have been camp on a Himalayan scale. Its strength is that it's anything but. [#255, p.51]

The Icelandic icon moves ever closer to the Platonic ideal of what it means to be Bjork. [Dec 2017, p.50]

If it was possible to see the debut Carbeth as a local gem of modest proportions, it's hard to receive The Constant Pageant as anything other than a finished masterpiece, with four or five songs that have longevity written in and the rest of them as musically sharp as they're lyrically alert. [May 2011, p.56]

Isn't so much a leftfield perversion of HipHop as it is a restoration of the genre to its avant garde roots. [#231, p.67]

This is crystalline and intoxicating: an album to return to repeatedly for inspiration. [Feb 2011, p.48]

Prince didn’t put a foot wrong in his golden era, right down to what was left in the vault. [Jan 2021, p.94]

What’s most thrilling about Big Fish Theory is that it doesn’t sound leftfield or challenging; instead it provides a scintillating snapshot of both the state of the art and the untold history of underground black music for the past 30 years. [Aug 2017, p.65]

In the end, Vespertine commits its magic by daring to go places more obvious and more human than one would have ever expected. [#210, p.52]

The meat of the set almost certainly wouldn’t have been released if Prince were still with us. ... They add up to arguably the strongest new set of Prince recordings since Lovesexy. [Aug 2017, p.70]

A highlty nuanced album which is at once razor sharp, and rich in new openings and possibilities. [#206, p.60]

Their most beautifully conceived and ambitiously extended work to date. [#252, p.59]

This ludicrously exhaustive deluxe edition includes hour after hour of live takes, demos and interviews. Fascinating, but none of it overshadows the original album. [Dec 2017, p.70]

Approaches the psychedelic grandeur of Spiritualized or Mercury Rev at their finest while still offering a wealth of carefully placed sonic detail. [#229, p.71]

Countless Branches does nothing different, but seems to knock them all dead by virtue of its naked simplicity alone. Some of these tracks are scarcely crafted songs at all but simple musings, addressed to no one in particular, not even an inward self, just uttered over soft, slow piano chords. [Mar 2020, p.48]

The folk inflection and multiplicity of Gately’s vocals make the album seem ancient. Or conjured. The songs aren’t ghostly as much as they feel witnessed, imbued with a palpable presence. ... Gately has sampled and mixed in her mother’s voice with her own, as if in acceptance of the balance of life and death. This co-existence – or the yearning for it – is ingrained in this astonishing album as a freshly carved cut in a foundational wooden beam. [Mar 2020, p.48]

Knowles’s instincts guide the cultural conversation in a way that feels healing, intentional and authentically collectiveminded. A well-constructed spell, cast with intention. [May 2019, p.63]

Imagine cLOUDDEAD jamming with Wilco, with David Lynch producing, and you're only halfway there. [#257, p.70]

These performances have been rightly cherished by collectors for decades. [Oct 2011, p.54]

Jurado's spare, edgy songs are miniature masterpieces of mood and character. [#229, p.68]

This remake justifies the whole shebang. So perfect is the fit, in fact, that it feels uncannily like Scott-Heron’s sonorous rasp must have been recorded to fit this backing. ... Though often dark, this is both a celebration and a vindication: a truly great album. [Mar 2020, p.56]

Narkopop has a symphonic majesty, a sense of form and forward movement that no prior Gas record quite reached. Voigt's forest no longer merely murmurs; it positively exults. [May 2017, p.46]

This is a remarkably rich and complex achievement. [#267, p.52]

The most triumphant volume in the series, an at times nearly orchestral realisation of Branch’s unique compositional vision. It’s a shame there won’t be further volumes, but this caps off one of the great catalogues in 21st century jazz. [Oct 2023, p.46]

A taut, brutal collection which is as strong as anything they've released in their previous incarnations. [June 2003, p.65]

Despite its complexity, the album is full of ravishing, soulful production and vocals--as catchy and emotionally stirring as it is subversively and intellectually thrilling. [Dec 2012, p.75]

Burial has transcended his dubstep origins, belonging to a Gothic tradition that takes in Massive Attack and even 4AD at their most grandiosely despondent. [Jan 2008, p.53]

The album glows white-hot with fury and energy, familiar yet fresh. [#243, p.66]

Both totally entertaining and instantly accessible to both avant rap devotees and curious passers-by. [#246, p.66]

The posthumous tracks that have emerged are among the best of Hendrix's late work. [Apr 2013, p.50]

Blues Dream is both a compendious evocation and synthesis of a range of genres that never sounds merely eclectic... It's one of Frisell's most ambitious productions to date. [#207, p.61]

As always Harris’s dedication to using a small spectrum of sounds to convey a wide range of emotions is noteworthy. Shade is another stunning piece of work – after all these years, Harris still makes it easier for some of us to get to know ourselves. [Oct 2021, p.48]

It’s one of the most vibrant, purposeful rock records of the year, as Ambro balances the sickly weariness of this day and age with a triumphant jubilation of simply being alive. [Dec 2023, p.54]

She’s not one to let ideology or commercial realities kill her sense of uninhibited playfulness. So the scorching “Balloons” with her withering take on white fans buying Black trauma is followed by the flirtatious “Boomboom”, buoyed by the same hunger, the whole even more than the sum of its individually magnificent parts.

If you value surehandedness, richness, immaculate timing and the occasional tilted eyebrow then there's a lot to enjoy on Tortoise's most assured set to date. [#204, p.65]

A conceptually intriguing and emotionally powerful masterpiece based around the antihero of the title. [Feb 2016, p.59]

This album is a stunning, multivalent piece of artistry that hits an anxious and weary world like a light-bearing gift. Remain In Light is one of the most fascinating albums in rock history, and Angélique Kidjo may have just released the definitive version. [Aug 2018, p.56]

Riveting. .... The lucidity behind every message on My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is arresting, as it is drawing from a well of pure emotion that can be comprehended in full. [Jul 2023, p.48]

Possibly their best.... Brave, bleak yet compassionate. [#225, p.77]

EBM equals R Plus Seven. [Sep 2013, p.49]

It feels distasteful to rate so powerful, so raw an album in any aesthetic terms and yet it brilliantly, blackly, radiates life. Skeleton Tree is a work of mourning, yes; a work of reverie, yes; and also an immensely moving attempt to reach out of blackness towards life. [Nov 2016, p.65]

At this moment, Bad As Me might be his best ever. [Nov 2011, p.68]

Throw in an evocative, anthemically chanted lyrical snapshot, some cryptic tales and a blues rock cover and almost every successful Fall trick familiar from the last two decades is also deployed. All of which amounts to a vital late period masterpice. [June 2008, p.47]

After four decades, the album's concentrated blend of brutalism and intricacy, fluidity and fracture, sound as uncompromising as ever. [Nov 2011, p.69]

Stands as a monument to punk rock action at its most intelligent. [#236, p.60]

This is his second essential album of 2012. [Sep 2012, p.70]

A less deranged response to celebrity than Kanye West’s Yeezus, more imaginative than Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP or Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, it shares with the former an economy of form, and with the latter two the giddy energy of an artist coming into perfect sync with their audience. It’s also a sumptuous sounding pop record, polite streamlined mass market psychedelia. [Jun 2017, p.64]

This is an archive of surprises. And one of the surprises of the year. [#220, p.50]

There may only be nine tracks here, but it’s like there are worlds upon worlds to explore; Strom had a knack for making every note feel special. [Feb 2021, p.55]

Given her capacity to align reinvention with a developing maturity, the 13 lucky songs of Stories deliver a complex text. It is certainly less frenetic, as if Harvey is finding new ways to exert her presence. In addition, its thoughtful spaces and pauses suggest room for doubt and manoeuvre. [#202, p.49]

The trio crowbar open new fissures in metal’s ever-shifting tectonic plates with five astonishingly powerful songs, each imbued with its own magic and mystery. [Jun 2021, p.54]

async is an exceptionally beautiful record, in the way that maths is beautiful, quite free of rhetoric or ‘effects’. Its coherence of tonality and timbre gives it the feel of an imaginary soundtrack and yet each track has its own internal logic and direction which means that it never sounds like a grab-bag of musical supervisor’s cues but like a proper album of songs. [Jun 2017, p.70]

The songwriting and lyricism are strong, but her storied voice elevates the album and invests it with a depth and serenity that few can match. [Jan 2019, p.64]

While Steinski's work with DeFranco aka Double Dee, is the most dazzling--precisely because it avoids the pitfalls of run of the mill culture jamming and guerrilla media tactics--Steinski's solo tracks certainly have their own pleasures, even if they are more straightforwardly textural than his collabotation with Double Dee. [June 2008, p.57]

It's exhilarating and rare to hear such bruised raw performances as these. [#242, p.71]

This is a rare gem of an album that projects Kacy and Clayton into the category of all time great folk duos. [Jun 2016, p.50]

Despite the obvious post-production touches and curation, the outtakes from 20 minute studio improv sessions featured across the four pieces feel authentically extemporaneous and evolve organically, akin to a late night jam between friends. ... “Bloodstream” provides the stunning album with a fittingly grandiose ending by digging into a psalm-like recital full of solemn organ, voluminous textures, invigorating fanfares and rumbling spectral melodies. [Feb 2023, p.52]

The first three Meters albums are their best by far, but every disc in this box is overflowing with addictive, brilliant funk. [Feb 2020, p.64]

UK rap’s first masterpiece of 2021. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Contrasting epic, experimental freakouts with concise chamber music, 5 is a diverse album, full of gems bleeding with icy brilliance. [#235, p.69]

A record that awakens mysteries and meaning from sparse elements; a masterful ritual. [Jan 2019, p.67]

Anjou’s transition from post-rock to power ambient now complete, Epithymía sees these musicians extrapolate into new directions masterfully, squeezing out a mesmeric minor masterpiece in the process. [Mar 2017, p.45]

Frankly, the guy defies you not to be impressed by what he's got. [#234, p.53]

The 20 minute centrepiece “Water Meditation” is a startlingly realised suite of wonder that flows from fragmentary shards of sax, voice and synths to stealthy dubby menace through to a collage of impacted noise and shattered beats that’s one of the most emotionally affecting delineations and reimaginings of resistant Black art you’re likely to hear in 2021. Essential listening, and the same can be said for Open The Gates as a whole. [Nov 2021, p.53]

A complex and challenging listen. [#257, p.61]

Return To Solaris is a fearsome ride, sublime in the most complete sense of the word. [Jul 2021, p.60]

This is a spellbinding album by a singular guitarist who combines the dexterity of Paco De Lucia with the hypnotic death-drawl of Bukka White. [Oct 2013, p.51]

Every track is a killer. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Building a strong, solid foundation for his skyscraper of words, the rapper channels everyone from Malcolm X to James Brown into a mountainous manifesto of beautiful blackness that is reflective of the struggle for dignity and equality, while also working towards the banishment of stereotypes. [Jan 2017, p.61]

It's simultaneously the group's most successful integration of the various strands they've chased over the years and their most ambitious and expansive work to date. [#241, p.50]

Sonic Youth have made a joyful return to their No Wave hardcore rock roots with a vibrating set of muscular songs which glide effortlessly from Gooey power pop to full on guitarmageddon meltdown, skulled out psychedelia and beyond. [#220, p.53]

Shygirl represents the very best of avant leaning contemporary UK pop on this generous seven track EP without a single dull moment. [Jan 2021, p.85]

In emotional terms Titanic Rising is immense – names like Annette Peacock, Linda Perhacs and Judee Sill come to mind, but only because it feels like so long since you’ve heard pop this epic yet unmannered. ... With tracks like the stunning “Something To Believe” lodging themselves into your heart with the sure knowledge that your relationship with this music will only deepen as the year unfolds. [Jul 2019, p.52]

This constellation of miniature masterpieces is arguably the finest introduction to the Ra universe there is. [Jan 2017, p.84]

Absolutely gorgeous. ... It’s as clear, translucent and dazzling as the medium it both plays with and describes. [Mar 2018, p.52]

Exquisite acoustic compositions meet Crampton’s taste for dissonance and distortion. [Aug 2020, p.54]

A splendid piece of work; compelling even when shorn of its conceptual and procedural backdrop, and infinitely more invigorating when considered as one with its making. [#205, p.58]