For much of the record he has opted for the middle ground of an unchallenging electronic music LP in the twinkly and tasteful tradition of Four Tet and Border Community, as ready for coffee table listening as a full AV show at London’s Barbican centre. ... At its most restrained Ephem:Era advances the sound of Signals in exciting directions. [Aug 2018, p.63]

Don’t Look Away is an even tighter proposition, the majority of its songs being sparsely but sensitively arranged and melodically direct. [Sep 2018, p.62]

What emerges is a futuristic and dystopian vision, but it’s also something primal. There’s a human pulse, trapped in the heart of all the noise. You hold your breath and wait for it to collapse, and for the carbine rifles to come. [Sep 2018, p.57]

This Valley is deeper and wider, thanks in no small part to Gelb’s voice, which has matured beautifully over the decades while retaining its waywardness. It’s exceedingly rare that a Gelb/Sand release is a waste of time, and Returns doesn’t buck that trend. [Sep 2018, p.63]

These are tragic celebrations, Dionysian seances for the most schizophrenic of times. [Sep 2018, p.66]

None of the pieces seems to reach a destination, and are all the more poignant for that. [Sep 2018, p.58]

Consistently excellent, the album reaches its zenith with “My Shadow Life”, a simple love song from out of the gloom: “On my life I swear that I love you/My shadow life, I swear that I love/I love you”. [Sep 2018, p.55]

With his best record in years, Gibbs gets a bump stock boost from Kenny Beats (03 Greedo, Key!), a former EDM DJ turned grimiest white boy rap producer since Alchemist. This is Gibbs being Gibbs. [Sep 2018, p.66]

It’s invigorating and a ton of fun. [Sep 2018, p.63]

The LP’s best tracks are those where the producers keep it undercooked and Westside Gunn is kept in check--to a point. [Sep 2018, p.62]

While visually hereditary is fatally flawed by its failure to frighten, sonically it is as scary as hell. [Sep 2018, p.61]

As comebacks go the album has an almost blissful assurance. It positively levitates with calm, like someone back from a long trip who knows they have all the time in the world to tell you about their new guru. [Sep 2018, p.54]

While some will label these 12 pieces as evidence of Alex Paterson’s genius, the majority definitely won’t, and although it’s a well-produced work, it doesn’t bend or expand expectations. [Sep 2018, p.54]

Tracks run the usual gamut, aggregating pop references and stylistic tropes from the entire history of hiphop, rock, punk, techno and their esoteric subgenres, and assembling them into a harrowing Frankenstein that’s more sardonic than revelatory. [Sep 2018, p.50]

“Hot Pink” reads clearly like “BIPP”-era SOPHIE, with its urgent metallic breakdowns and deep, heavy bass lines, while the high synth registers and spatial ambient of “It’s Not Just Me” conjecture a Generation Z folk-pop-disco hybrid. As a more mainstream addition to the avant-pop trajectory of artists like SOPHIE and felicita, however, Let’s Eat Grandma are not nearly as disruptive and original. [Sep 2018, p.49]

From its cryptic title to its discombobulating assemblage of stylistic approaches in the track listing, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides is chaotic and disjointed. ... Bringing a range of seemingly contrasting elements together, SOPHIE has been problematising commonly accepted binaries since dropping the berserk dance pop of “BIPP” on Glasgow’s Numbers label in 2013. [Sep 2018, p.49]

The London based producer integrates his maternal Polish roots in the spotty, fragmented and incidental way that only a truly intercultural artist can. [Sep 2018, p.49]

Its one of those Wobble albums that marks time between more major projects, and it's typical of his restless musical nature. [Sep 2018, p.65]

What we have here is the hangman’s blues, the alienated piano soliloquies of classical, the wary prayers of gospel, the lustful frustration of R&B, the drugged lightning of rap. Beastmode 2 is Future at his worst, which is to say, Future at his best. [Sep 2018, p.66]

There is some extremely sophisticated signal processing going on here, resulting in complex subliminal sound patterns in the spaces between beat and the 303s’ scrolling and glooping. However each track is about relentless repetitions of one monolithic kick and one acid riff above all else. While the processing can occasionally resemble some of Tin Man and Cassegrain’s recent dismantlings of acid, which float in motionless seas of reverb, the primacy of the kick ’n’ riff lends the forward momentum of these tracks a glorious singlemindedness. [Sep 2018, p.52]

The tunes recorded on 6 March bear no relation to that relaxed and delicate session [with Johnny Hartman]. Instead, they’re much closer to the kind of high-octane material the quartet were pursuing in live performance at the time, albeit with considerably less intensity than could be witnessed on the bandstand. [Aug 2018, p.74]

No News Is Good News is a grown up rap album by a grown up rapper that still manages to be utterly thrilling. [Aug 2018, p.69]

20 years of silence have created an even more authoritative tone to the declamatory rhymes here, the fury undimmed but increasingly replaced by a more simmering sense of foreboding and dread. [Aug 2018, p.69]

Gat is a gnarly and thoroughly exciting guitarist, and somehow Universalists is aberrantly gorgeous and totally fried. [Aug 2018, p.68]

As an album it’s almost entirely soporifically dull though beautifully appointed throughout (and it’s a joy to hear Beyoncé rapping) by some smart production from both main protagonists and some slick grooves from the Daptone band. [Aug 2018, p.68]

Keszler’s percussion underpins Coates’s soaring cello as Laurel Halo ensures the combination stays orderly. Its calm melancholy reflects the quoted text that ends: “Need little. Want less. Forget the rules. Be untroubled.” [Aug 2018, p.67]

This analogy of applying interdisciplinary approaches to uncover a certain reality carries through to several aspects of the album, where a folding over of electronic and acoustic space circles in on and augments a broader understanding of sound. [Aug 2018, p.67]

An agreeable mix of electro, retro-rave breaks and thumping party house. [Aug 2018, p.66]