It’s a satisfying--if rather safe--album. [Jul 2018, p.44]

The nine tracks here compact his characteristic baroque late jungle excesses into compact, juddering frames. While they still rarely swing, their frenetic motion carries bent and warping keys, rolling breakbeats and maddened blarps of synth towards a clear endpoint. [Feb 2020, p.58]

The album is strong in the style, but offers no real surprises, with the familiar mixture of clacking Tuareg rhythm and scorched Sahelian riffing best illustrated here by the fiercely motorik “War Toyed”. [Apr 2017, p.63]

Davachi’s early love of Bach pervades the initial section of “Perfumes I-III”. [Aug 2019, p.54]

There’s a strongly conceived sense of contrast and drama to “Sorcerer” and "Copter," the latter transforming from overwrought mid-80s action show theme to a slick and drugged R&B jam. [Oct 2016, p.63]

Rather than confessional catharsis, Highway Songs has the diaristic, sketchbook feel of the compulsively creative. [Dec 2016, p.64]

Pared back and abrasive, the music is somewhat diffuse compared to Schofield’s earlier records. The hard edges of its rhythms are scattered, the sound so foggy it’s hard to hear. [Jul 2018, p.46]

What's distinctive about Son is that it is more layered and inventive than Segundo and Tres Cosas. [#268, p.58]

Not everything is great--in particular “Lifting You” with Ed Sheeran is about as limp as you’d expect--but even the clumsier moments feel relevant and contemporary. [Feb 2018, p.51]

Modern Cosmology, which pairs Sadier with Brazilian band Mombojó, go some way to sating that desire on debut album What Will You Grow Now?, their second release following an EP released in 2016. Some way is the operative term, it should be said, with album opener “Making Something” as prime an example as anything. Stereolab acolytes will peg that bubbling bass tone in a trice, while the keys of Chiquinho Moreira are something more akin to jazz funk with tropicalia dusting. [Jun 2023, p.55]

The sonic centre of gravity is Ranaldo’s instantly identifiable guitar sound, and if you can’t get enough of that, this disc is for you. ... Pàndi’s work with Merzbow and Keiji Haino attests to his ability to hold his own in heavy company, but he restricts himself to sparse, black light coloration throughout this session. Urselli is a bassist and electronic musician as well as an engineer, and while he didn’t do any post hoc editing or overdubbing it’s likely that he is responsible for the recording’s rather amorphous final shape. [Jun 2019, p.63]

Negotiate Steve Osborne's rather dated stadium Techno-rock production, and there's plenty to stimulate here... [#211, p.70]

This is liminal pop music for sure, with Pioulard’s bedroom-recorded mixture of field recordings, dubbing tape experiments, ringing acoustic guitars, glockenspiel and murmuring vocals creating cloudlike, ephemeral textures. [Dec 2016, p.67]

It's the wealth of unexpected production touches crammed into its 25 minutes that really bring Maryland Mansions to life. [#240, p.72]

It's ruling mood of detachment might appeal more to listeners who never went out in the first place and who prefer to experience physical release and emotional engagement through the filer of files, screens and headphones instead. [Jul 2011, p.50]

The resulting heady musical cocktail that Portner serves up will be eagerly drained by his fan base, but the cloying bubble gum aftertaste may leave any newcomers feeling somewhat queasy. [May 2023, p.60]

It's an engaging excursion and a good aesthetic fit for the Blackest Ever Black label, but not really a definitive Prurient release, and ultimately Through The Window leaves the impression of the closing of a chapter, a passage to someplace new. [Feb 2013, p.54]

This is perhaps the group's most straightforward release outside of their intermittent collaboration with late vocalist Ronnie James Dio. [Jul 2013, p.52]

The music--hums, clangs and muffled booms--wields an ominous, oppressive power, especially on headphones, that can create a feeling of queasy horror even for those unaware of the record's backstory. [Nov 2014, p.68]

Earth Junk won't top any end of the year polls, but as another clue in decoding exactly where Hagerty is heading, a scrap with which to re-assemble a much bigger picture, it's essential. [Sep 2008, p. 51]

Gendron’s penchant for vintage phrasing gives the record a mid-20th century folk revival vibe that even the guest squalls of guitarist Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba cannot dispel. Gendron’s singing alternates between French and English; the pitch of her voice is low, but its place in the mix is high, held aloft by her unhurried guitar picking. [Jun 2024, p.57]

Monument Builders itself could do with some of that malfunction, some warped colour and cathode ray snow. [Dec 2016, p.69]

It fizzles out in places – there's none of the languor of previous work nor the melancholy that collaborator Jeremy Greenspan perfected in Junior Boys – but at its best this is aural champagne, chill, crisp and delectable. [Aug 2020, p.66]

The album becomes more experimental and confident as it progresses. [#236, p.59]

Combining tight dynamics with the blurred intent of an impressionistic backwsh, some tracks rush by like vast landscapes, with individual features suddenly highlighted in freeze-frames. [#228, p.59]

Admirable in its candour, if at times hard to swallow. [Dec 2018, p.56]

There is a mellowness to the album, underscored by Albini's older, deeper voice, that suggests their edge has been lost. [Nov 2014, p.68]

Pastoral serves to expose the casual but forceful villainy of Robinson and his ilk while emphasising one of folk horror’s core themes: that people are the scariest monsters of all. [Oct 2018, p.53]

The results are tougher and less poised, less prone to pastiche or ironic self-identification. But in the process he’s become a bit workmanlike: you feel he could knock these tunes out to order and they’d all be creditable, but not much more. [Oct 2016, p.63]

This collection, and its atmosphere of sharing a bench with the 20th century’s Mozart as he explores still nascent songs, is an appropriately seductive tease to what will doubtless be a decades-long unearthing of the vault’s untold treasures. The songs themselves, as they’re presented here, really are secondary to this feeling, something like finding a just unearthed message from a departed loved one. [Dec 2018, p.69]

The results may not be especially unpredictable but they sure are fun, the trio milking the testosterone-fueled power-trio/supergroup set-up for all it's worth. [Nov 2014, p.72]

The closer “World” is the culmination of these trials, in which fragments of sound--runs of keys with the uncanny quality of speech, shadowy static, heavily abstract synthesized choirs--drift in a deeply organic and warm silence. [Feb 2018, p.58]

These are elements that need time to present themselves, on an album that requires a retreat inward. It’s the kind of mindquietening escape. [Oct 2018, p.55]

The hi-hats and furiously brushed cymbals of Badalamenti’s pseudo-jazz cues outline these tracks, along with heavy but oddly affectless arco bass. He performs Lynch’s lines, describing scenes of unearthly violence, banality and menace, as if growling the menu of a New York Brooklyn trattoria. What guides the album away from this rather dated aesthetic, apart from the glaring crispness and pitch-black texture of the mixing, is the quality of the noise. [Dec 2018, p.69]

This is no simplistic exercise in cross-cultural groove making--Dyrdahl has responded more to gamelan's harmonic stasis than to its rhythmic insistence. [Jul 2011, p.60]

The slippery polyrhythmic music is a difficult terrain for MCs to conquer. [#253, p.57]

The music is sungura, an upbeat modern pop relative of chimurenga, but the Gonora Sounds take on the style is somewhat more rugged that most. Isaac’s drumming is a downpour of rolls and patters, while his father’s guitar drips cascades of fireflies. [Feb 2022, p.60]

Souleyman’s most recent excursion is seriously upfront music. The Syrian singer’s electro-hype dabke burnouts seem to have been ratchetted up to a degree that makes his own past efforts seem quite mellow. [Feb 2018, p.59]

Ripatti employs a panoply of dynamic breaks and styles without sticking to anything for too long. The results are both claustrophobic and entertaining. [Aug 2022, p.48]

The Invisible Way has Wilco's Jeff Tweedy behind the faders, and he superbly captures the concentrated simplicity of Low's aesthetic. But sometimes the restricted palettes can be a little cloying,[Mar 2013, p.56]

It's far from perfect record--the guests are phoned in, the beats sometime out-cheese pre-breakdown Kanye at his cheesiest--but it has more than a few perfect moments. [Jul 2013, p.68]

Donaldson’s lyrics tend towards the observational, and are often delivered with a wry turn of phrase that can be laugh out loud funny. ... The Town That Cursed Your Name juggles pathos and bathos throughout. [Apr 2023, p.58]

Sifting through these hermetic songs is like coming across a cobwebby box of photographs in an empty home. Tiny fragments of narrative emerge, only to be drowned by ambiguity and absence. [Oct 2018, p.58]

Toure's tone is richly sonorous, his vocal strength such that he actually buttresses and strengthens the tracks... It's a great shame that the sound quality falters on the later tracks. [Jul 2015, p.58]

His voice is better suited to confiding, but it's slapped on top rather than properly featured, and this seems symptomatic of the muddy arranging, But the aim is to swagger and excite, and the group's ragged fervour is not in doubt. [Jun 2015, p.50]

It's seven tracks whip by in a 35 minute blur, with only a dew isolated moments sticking out. [Aug 2013, p.57]

Belief is one of his more structurally conventional turns. [Mar 2018, p.58]

Butler offers seven tracks whose energy swings between chaotic and cool. [Nov 2023, p.62]

Sauna Youth are a tight unit, their constituent parts meshing into a formidable wall of sound, but it might be an idea to lose a member or two, subtract an element and make space for uncertainty. [Jun 2015, p.52]

Where the vocals are murky, the synthesizers have a queasy over-clarity, poised somewhere between the repellent and the sublime. [Aug 2011, p.58]

The record slips easily into a catalogue that is consistent with the familiar John Maus aesthetic, which will no doubt satiate a voracious fan’s appetite for music that exists outside of time, always and at once. [Jun 2018, p.62]

The bold accessibility and nostalgic tone of Bermuda Drain is a surprise. [Jul 2011, p.60]

How literally Allen wants us to take his nod towards Herman Melville’s whale is left tantalisingly openended, although this tapestry of ghoulishly misremembered tales has an obvious parallel with Melville’s patchwork of story and allusion. [Apr 2020, p.49]

Rising Down's most immediate qualities are the raw aesthetic and the burning importance of its message. [July 2008, p.66]

It's fair to say that not much new ground is broken here, but it's remarkable how endearing their blend of chugging underground pop and frail ragas still sounds. [#210, p.66]

“Stir The Sea” coasts on a choice yowly blues metal riff, but teased out slow jams like “Arcurlarius – Burke” are equally their forte. The vocal resemblance of Brian Markham and Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood helps crystallise a bubbling under comparison with the latter, although Dommengang aren’t in The Puppets’ league when it comes to ingenuity or, frankly, personality. [Aug 2019, p.64]

All told, there are some beautiful moments on this record, as well as a sense that the gap between what Fennelly wants his music to be and what he is able to accomplish is gradually narrowing. [Jun 2018, p.62]

Will depend on how indulgent you personally feel towards the Parliamentary legacy. The smart thing to do would be to purchase tracks selectively and sequence your own version of Medicaid Fraud Dogg. In other words: be wise and sample before you buy. [Jul 2018, p.55]

Bachman probably spent more of Almanac Behind’s production time processing sounds than strumming strings. [Jan 2023, p.61]

Grave Of A Dog presents a challenges to the listener because although it succeeds as a well-executed project, there is a disjunction between form and content. Hayter in particular seems to gesture at a narrative, but its precise nature is left unclear. [Apr 2020, p.60]

These are worn vintage sounds, but the songs here lack the choruses and hooks to invest them with fresh life, and Buttery's voice is forgettable. [Dec 2010, p.46]

Byrne has done a tidy, if not terribly exciting job on the soundtrack. [#235, p.57]

The nine songs her give a reason for detractors to raise their voices and for devotees to hope for something a little more evolved. [Sep. 2007, p.49]

Lacking the eldritch weirdness of Actress's music, their faded grandeur somehow feels strangely mundane, despite their inherent beauty. [Oct 2012, p.62]

It's certainly big, but it's less clear if it's clever. [Jun 2014, p.60]

As it is, Have Fun With God is never less than listenable but seldom more than vaguely pleasant. [Feb 2014, p.44]

A decent film soundtrack. [#219, p.74]

Despite their brevity, each track articulates a complete piece; they’re eventful miniatures, not sketches. But while they are sufficiently eventful to engage, the lack of someone to play off of deprives this music of the sense of an emotional stake that arises from White’s decisions to challenge or facilitate someone else. [Jun 2024, p.57]

It feels crudely stitched together. [Mar 2011, p.49]

The emphasis this time around is on poppier melodies, but for all its attention to song form, Sonic Nurse feels more like a collection of exercises than a cohesive album. [#244, p.63]

The five tracks penned and played on by PJ Harvey... reverberate with all the dark, elastic abrasion of PJ's best work. [#248, p.66]

Drumming that starts off in a motoric groove warps into something way more minimal and amateurish, something undanceable, yet difficult to resist at least shrugging along to. [Aug 2016, p.59]

I'd like this to be much more depraved, or just for El-P to fully embrace his Eno role for another solo album of weirdness. [Aug 2016, p.59]

Ultimately, though, it’s a portrait of the artist on permanent vacation. [Jun 2018, p.72]

In its favour, the album is immaculately realised, with a chromium production sheen that Lustmord imitators can only dream of. On the minus side: the fact that the album's polish makes it sound safe and predictable. [Jul 2013, p.69]

On some of the songs Langford’s slightly rough and ready approach is the grit that helps produce the pearl; on others it’s made to sound out of place by the very musicians who play his songs so well.

Unfortunately, for all the insight, this willingness to play victim often overshadows the incisiveness of the MC's observations when it come to the beats he has chosen to rail over. [Sep 2008, p.66]

There's a mismatch between sound and vision here that forestalls true wonder or joy. ... A little more concision and concentration throughout could have made Guild of the Asbestos Weaver more effective. [Sep 2019, p.62]

It all slides down very easily--but there's isn't much of an aftertaste. [Aug 2010, p.66]

Overall, as a listening experience in itself, The Master feels like a retreat. [Nov 2012, p.59]

More than half of Pretty Ugly combines vocals prominently into the mix after a style that sometimes flounders in its own ambition. [Mar 2012, p.52]

Over melodic, it sounds like it was made by a TV composer working to a brief for a rave episode. [Apr 2015, p.65]

Patton’s signature style is overpowering, transforming an opportunity to create something unique into another of his side-projects.

The moments of beauty caught fleetingly in the gaps between over-arranged blocks make for frustrated listening. [#218, p.64]

It's impressive on the first few listens, it grows irritating with repeat play. [Apr 2011, p.57]

However hit and miss, though, all of these voices and genre grabs are made to sound stylistically coherent. [#236, p.71]

The best stuff views the world through the sunkissed psychedelic lens of Brazilian psych-troupe Os Mutantes; the lesser material just sounds like lite Brian Wilson. [#243, p.59]

It’s definitely a mixed bag, but pays off with “The Dawn” in which Lipstate’s guitar exhales in tandem with a spoken admission of small hours frailty. [Dec 2019, p.53]

Their focused, cleverly crafted pop fiffs are impressive, for a time.... But by the fifth track, things start to go wrong. [Mar 2008, p.48]

At their worst, Ui thrash like run of the mill math-rockers, basses turned to 11 and meandering loudly.... What rescues them is a burgeoning melodic sensibility. [#233, p.71]

Likeable but fairly forgettable listen. [Feb 2016, p.57]

Cave and Ellis have created a brave and fittingly incongruous score. As a standalone album, however, it doesn't walk so tall. [Jun 2015, p.45]

A pleasant if somewhat plain folk-rock record, less adventurous than either Wilco's or O'Rourke's own recent outings. [#227, p.68]

Parts of Dark Crawler are thrilling. But it sounds less like a confident stride forward than a cautious toe dipped into an unpromising future, one eyeball trained wistfully on the past. [Nov 2012, p.66]

This is an overgrown jungle of music; ideas bury one another, making it all the more striking when a pure, clean line manages to weave its way through the tangle and rise, like a flower turning to face the sun. [Mar 2024., p.46]

Mind Bokeh feels driven by the way recording music allows its maker to home in and hear clearly hazy, unformed ideas as material for the next piece. This at least would account for its restless churn of styles. [Apr 2011, p.69]

The pattern repeats elsewhere: the big showcase tracks like “Never Forget” and “Let Me Be Great” sag a little under the weight of their pomposity, where deep cuts “Imposter Syndrome” and “IDGAF” just get on with showcasing her untouchable cool. [Nov 2022, p.73]

One can absorb the enthusiasm while feeling somewhat repulsed by the taste. On occasion, it works. [Nov 2013, p.65]