A captivating fourth album from the Richmond, Virginia outfit that casts a woeful eye over Trump’s America. [Jun 2019, p.56]

Where Inter Arma employ Cascadian elements and bottomheavy tonalities in order to plumb the depths of the soul, Full Of Hell express the desire to not simply ponder life’s futility but to actively resist those feelings. [Jun 2019, p.56]

Droneflower is both the most persuasive release Nadler has put her name to since 2014’s July and one of Brodsky’s finest efforts outside of Cave In. It gestures at a beautiful future, should the duo choose to pursue it. [Jul 2019, p.52

Wiggs’s music works best when it sets out its melodic ideas, then takes its time subtracting elements until you’re left with a filament of what you started with, as on the stunning penultimate track “The Soft Stars That Shine”. [Jul 2019, p.58]

Real feast of words expressing a way more convoluted and realistic portrait of a conflicted British psyche. [Jul 2019, p.55]

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]

Flamagra is still more accessible than either Quiet or Dead! and this is most likely due to Ellison’s choice of vocal collaborators. [Jul 2019, p.49]

The parsimoniously arranged, mostly acoustic sound of the record enhances its projection of intimacy. ... Callahan doesn’t entirely give up his old taste for blankly delivered disturbance; his memory of childbirth includes the blood. But he’s never sounded so open or so genuinely happy. [Jul 2019, p.48]

The production from DJ Mustard hits like a cannonball dive into chlorinated waters, as Greedo croons his mystical pain salves, channelling Soulja Slim and Boosie if they grew up on Grape Street. But he shows his depth on the gorgeous anthem to his wife “Gettin’ Ready”. [Jun 2019, p.69]

Rainford is a classic set of Scratch vocals: science fiction nursery rhymes, apocalyptic lullabies, their melodies light as air yet rocksteady. Scratch’s delivery at the age of 83 is like Dylan’s present-day rasp, no longer about hitting notes or even tone necessarily, but heavy with the weight of his personal and musical history. [May 2019, p.61]

The minimal tracks here stretch (and sometimes tangle) like long chains of extruded material, pulsing along into the future. [Jun 2019, p.68]

The end result is the closest Cave In have ever come to revisiting the stellar stream of 2000’s Jupiter – the space rock monolith that boosted them into the wider consciousness. [Jun 2019, p.52]

His ability to manipulate sounds of urban bleakness into piss-stained musique concrète is as present as ever, from bass that booms like mourning gasometers to choking metallic smog ambience. Yet Younger’s skill lies not as yet another artist soundtracking urban decay but in enticing and confounding with sounds that straddle the uncanny valley. [Jun 2019, p.40]

Tracks have potent moments, but they’re slapped together with little thought for overall flow. [Jun 2019, p.60]

Although The Canon is a late arrival its mood is consistent with that of its predecessors. The recording is sharper and more delineated, but Leon steers clear of modern sonics that might date it. ... Apart from the titles, there is no narrative as such to this collection, but it works as absolute music, in which Leon creates the impression of mysterious and open spaces. [May 2019, p.58]

Dig into the four-to-the-floor derangement of “Lapwing” and the post-rock inflected “First Light” to hear a band seemingly capable of doing anything, yet remaining fleetfootedly themselves throughout. [Jun 2019, p.56]

As I spent more time with their tunes piercing through my earbuds, I finally succumbed to their truly infectious ways. [Jun 2019, p.65]

The narrower focus, combined with the decision to return to Seattle’s Studio Soli, raises the thought that Earth might have, at last, orbited back to the roaring wastelands of their early 1990s work. Jump into the longer cuts here, though, and you find something that sounds less like a trip on Tibetan quaaludes, more a slow chug of whisky. [Jun 2019, p.56]

But where Konoyo was a more visceral invocation of the electronic sublime, Anoyo stretches out and creates space for the reeds to be heard amid the splices, obstructions and reversals of the Los Angeles based producer’s typically stratified sonic design. [May 2019, p.67]

“Myopia For The Future” and “No Body” present similar augmentations that make the voice and its simulations indistinguishable from one another in their respective waves of swagger and cheery melody. Meanwhile, warped tones and looping bass melodies lift into the clatter of keys that almost – but not quite – resemble a rhythm in “Swordmanship”. [May 2019, p.59]

But if the technology has moved on, he’s moved with it, and the results are significantly more interesting than what he was up to in the 90s. It feels rural, but modern; rustic, but hardly an idyll; a feat of true uneasy listening. [May 2019, p.51]

From the vantage point of 2019, the Braindance sound has dated slightly--that splattery, all the drums at once style has been rinsed to death by the breakcore hordes. But there’s a sense of homespun whimsy to Raczynski’s music--a sense of the maker behind the machine--and a track like “329 15h”, a simple but artful blend of scalpel-sharp pseudo-junglism and music box melody, proves this music still has an energising effect. [May 2019, p.51]

Third Avenue is less approachable, more problematic [than Dave's Psychodrama]. ... But overall he shows a range Dave should take note of. [May 2019, p.50]

Haley retains the analogue wobble of his earlier work, particularly evident on 2010’s Cyanide Sisters and 2011’s Galactic Melt where his crisp and crunchy beats are at their impactful best. But on Persuasion System he’s combined them with stronger melodies and arrangements, elevating their effect from that of incidental, if still effective background music to the gripping theme of a main character. [May 2019, p.48]

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]

Explosively powerful, yet resoundingly fragile, her extended vocal technique illuminates an astoundingly rich range of embodied possibility. [Apr 2019, p.64]

LEGACY! LEGACY! is just as much a celebration of Chicago musical talent. ... It also demonstrates Woods’s vast talent as singer and songwriter. [Apr 2019, p.69]

It’s clear he’s still able to switch on a plausible menace when the situation demands. In that balance and his gleefully amateur unretouched singing lies the heart of a great album. [May 2019, p.68]