Gane forgoes the intensifying momentum found elsewhere in his work for a more conventionally cinematic arc. [Aug 2020, p.52]

Far from being some utopian unity of the opposites her work has summoned – beyond binaries – she’s still clearly experimenting and sometimes failing. [Aug 2020, p.48]

The album suffers a little from its 14 song duration. The Mael wit works best when it’s tightly presented. [Jul 2020, p.52]

It’s a strange brew, some distance from the monumental party music that has tended to characterise the duo’s three previous albums. [Jul 2020, p.50]

Where Tuttle takes a more detached standpoint he’s less successful. Perhaps attempting to mimic corporate blandness, “Cambridge Drive Shopping Centre” mixes field recording of shoppers with a dogged guitar motif to fast diminishing effect. For the most part however he keeps cynicism at bay, a welcoming guide to his kingdom of everyday beauty. [Jul 2020, p.53]

It’s a much rougher around the edges effort than 2019’s GREY Area, but it works because Simz is an alum of the pirate radio days; this is her forte. Sonically it’s a dream. [Jul 2020, p.59]

Barring the title cut’s debt to Steely Dan, the pomp is dialled down just enough on Deleted Scenes for the band to flex their fusionoid chops, adding a whole other element of kookiness to their already brow-raising style. [Jul 2020, p.56]

An exciting second album. ... Their otherworldly fetishisation of dystopian collapse is so exhilarating it’s almost tolerable. [May 2020, p.48]

The eight pieces here function as a drummer’s showcase, certainly, but Contact’s wilful limitations conceal an eclectic approach. ... Time spent immersed in Contact will reap reward. [May 2020, p.52]

An album of big hooks of which “Golden Brown” is perhaps sharpest with its promise “The boys are back in town”. [Jun 2020, p.62]

White noise is the most versatile tool in Brighton producer Alan Myson’s kit: he deploys it as a gloss on everything, to either mind-quieting effect on tracks like “Angel In Ruin” and “Oblivion Theme”, or as an anxiety accelerant as on the fuzzed out battle-pitch “Bladed Terrain” where static hisses behind stomping, crunching thwacks and arpeggios. [Jun 2020, p.60]

In the past this rage was intrinsic, wounds covered with cheery sugar, but now there is emotional distance at the core of Heavy Light, filled with others’ voices. Whether or not a deliberate choice, through this transformation the album loses some of its potency and ability to affect. [Jun 2020, p.59]

Music that feels lived in and vivid, instilled with notes that roam between lives of people on the fringes while finding magic in the mundane. [Jun 2020, p.59]

As a whole, Goons Be Gone feels strangely anachronistic, but not nostalgic. Retrieved from the heyday of punk rock, but with a lot of its own to say. [Jun 2020, p.59]

The record works best however when Leandoer wears his heart unashamedly on his sleeve.

Where Spectrum was full of empty (head) space, All Things Being Equal is flooded with warm, luxuriant modular texture, across its bandwidth. [Jun 2020, p.56]

1988 is full of these striking juxtapositions, placing tales of hustling and gunplay in smoothed out, soulful musical beds. [Jun 2020, p.50]

With their reverent, celebratory tone, tracks like “Naked (You Enter & Leave This World With Nothing)”, “I Will Follow You For Life, Everywhere” and “We Must Grieve Together” speak to the music’s function as an integral part of a community’s healing process. Sung together in deep harmony and pulling their inspiration from a source too powerful and mysterious for words, fra fra’s funeral songs offer a glimpse into how the people of this particular corner of West Africa deal with the pain, uncertainty and finality of death. [Jun 2020, p.49]

For Schofield, the word scrambler symbolises both a sort of opiate and a happy place from childhood, so the music highlights this dichotomy by fusing danger and warmth into an irresistible oxymoron. A sensation of the world ending while we carry on dancing. [Apr 2020, p.51]

Whether the listener feels it succeeds will depend on their willingness to accept its surface passivity. ... Shall We Go On Sinning is most persuasive on the second side. [May 2020, p.60]

There’s a kind of manic, excessive inventiveness here, as if the song needs just one more bridge or a doubling of the refrain to sustain its ideas. Yet on closer inspection they are often internally samey. [May 2020, p.53]

Apart from a few works for chamber instruments, which have a similar pleasing air of fakeness to Michael Nyman’s faux baroque cues for Peter Greenaway, these sketches all have uncertain origins and textures. [May 2020, p.66]

Strike a rich vein of form. ... This record lacks a stated motif, but finds the musician digging into the American primitive style (which has often been at least in the orbit of his playing) more keenly than before. “Celerity”, “Enville” and “Vellum”, deft instrumentals all, sit ably in Fahey/Basho territory. [Apr 2020, p.50]

As Jackie Lynn, Fohr’s voice still occupies center stage, but it does so within synthesized set pieces crafted for her to inhabit. Like a hotel decked out with themed rooms, each song on Jacqueline has its own fine-tuned palette and nostalgia-tinged lighting scheme. [Apr 2020, p.49]

The too brief, purely instrumental “Sensational” is the best track, with suggestions of Weather Report’s jazz rock expansiveness. But the general impression is gimmicky and lightweight – effects without causes. [May 2020, p.66]

Filled with ghosts; confessions; jokes; an abundance of Jay-Z features and a prodigal son offering explanations for his disappearance and return. [May 2020, p.65]

The production is flawless. ... But the obvious big tunes fall flat.

It Is What It Is is a fitting ethos for an artist whose genre-twisting tendrils have extended themselves into the highest reaches of the pop canopy, simultaneously flexing their deep funk and jazz roots. [May 2020, p.62]