It’s the confidence and clarity of Dalt’s vision that makes this album a charming, compelling listen. In its best moments, it’s strange and familiar at once, like a weird, beautiful dream. [Nov 2022, p.59]

These are songs with enveloping atmospheres that dramatise their lyrics with crisping, gasping, blinding, thundering, quietly screaming sound design. [Nov 2022, p.60]

This is unmistakeably a Loraine James record – the synths are capacious and the beats are intricately counterintuitive – but Eastman’s work has clearly been generative. [Oct 2022, p.44]

Rather than concocting rich strata from the guitar of Reine Fiske or Johan Holmegard’s percussion, these pieces are mainly stripped back and sprightly, propelled by the dazzling vocals of Ejstes. ... Where previously these atonal chords and odd tempos would have been subsumed into the heavy mixture, they appear here open and light, forming something that’s less earthy and far more fantastical. [Nov 2022, p.60]

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]

It’s heavyweight stuff delivered with a beautiful lightness of touch. [Nov 2022, p.73]

An album that for the most part is ebulliently nasty pop, the monumental “Big Steppa” and the gleefully foul “No Face” in particular will be irresistible to anyone raised on Trina and Missy Elliott, daring us to switch off as the party spirals out of control. [Nov 2022, p.73]

The result is a tougher but spacier sound. The original vocals are mixed in more prominently, and interplay with the deejay interjections relates to the lyrical content. [Nov 2022, p.71]

Along with the usual guitar/bass/drums/vocals, the group have added vibraphone, theremin and back-up singers, a move that has significantly enhanced their sound and bolstered the sci-fi boogie that rolls through the songs. [Nov 2022, p.70]

The album is warm and lush, mixed and engineered by David Darlington, who has worked with Eddie Pamieri and Wayne Shorter. It’s a different side of The Arkestra in a convincing, throwback fashion – to a time when new jazz albums came fast and each was an event. [Nov 2022, p.68]

Oddly charming, goblincore aesthetic, one that capitalises on Björk’s unique strengths: the arrangements on Fossora are among the most complex and lavish of her career. [Nov 2022, p.58]

While the title Shebang has percussive compactness, the music on Ambarchi’s latest release, which is scintillating from the outset and exhilarating through and through, stretches out and expands across four continuous yet distinct sections. When the music fades away, after 35 minutes, the urge to hear it again straight away is simply irresistible. [Oct 2022, p.38]

There’s so much going on in these dense constructions, you’re likely to hear new layers and combinations with each spin. [Oct 2022, p.46]

The tracks likewise evoke the futuristic and the arcane, but the brute force with they are delivered makes them some of the unit’s most exhilarating work to date. [Oct 2022, p.40]

Throughout In These Times McCraven displays a preternatural ability at composing outside of 4/4 time, his oddly metred pieces built upon ear-catching melodies and dynamic rhythmic interplay. ... In These Times encompasses the fire and natural eclecticism found in the best contemporary jazz.

His final, posthumous recording isn’t exactly Norman Rockwell, but it does take The Night Tripper back to his country roots. This kind of twilight recording, with carefully staged surprises – see Johnny Cash’s sepulchral take on Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” – has become something of an industry cliche, but Dr John’s lifelong love for the music here is too well attested to seem like some kind of last minute A&R wheeze. [Oct 2022, p.41]

With Bajascillators the group have achieved master mood shift status, producing a work that is simultaneously dreamy and psychedelically transportive. [Oct 2022, p.38]

Even when the album’s second half remembers it was supposed to be a rock record, its raw proto-punk remains perfectly strange, with guitar licks alternating between J Mascis’s fuzzy melodicism and John Frusciante’s soothing warmth as they drift across a busy, restlessly baroque pop background. [Sep 2022, p.54]

Not every release in the heaving Boris discography is essential; this one most definitely is. [Oct 2022, p.52]

The vibe is hedonistic and dancefloor oriented, blending influences from techno, house and electroclash. The songs are horny, with lyrics occasionally stepping over the cringe line (“Oh yeah, you want it?”). Fortunately the album is also full of bangers. ... Diablo is a fun listen, but you might want a shower afterwards. [Oct 2022, p.40]

It is a gorgeous piece of work. [Jul 2022, p.48]

Air is also an omnipresent agent in Davachi’s extensive use of the pipe organ, as on “Vanity Of Ages” – an exquisitely slow unfolding of clustered tones that give rise to a shimmering microtonality. ... A similar compositional approach is used for the string pieces “Icon Studies I” and “Icon Studies II” but the effect is intimate and fluid rather than cosmic and imposing [Sep 2022, p.44]

An album of sombre yet uplifting electronic music. ... If that [a requiem for a close friend and respected artist] wasn’t the original intent, one can hardly imagine a finer tribute. [Sep 2022, p.43]

Galás crisply delivers excerpts from two works by the German expressionist poet Georg Heym, Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital) and Die Dämonen Der Stadt (The Demons Of The City). [Sep 2022, p.46]

It’s the input of guest musicians and co-producer Dave Harrington that draws the best out of the material. [Sep 2022, p.46]

The result is a record that feels in touch with the qualities that have powered Oneida in the past – the dogged repetition, the scorching climaxes – but this time trades the crankier avant tendencies for a sweet dose of bubblegum. [Sep 2022, p.48]

He raps in a stereotypically ‘white’ voice shorn of regional inflections, and the contrast between his deadpan vocals and the beats ranges from startlingly imaginative (the hammering blapper “Fundrazors”) to anodyne (“Indifferent”). [Sep 2022, p.57]

Best not to think too deeply about it. [Sep 2022, p.57]