It’s very easy to get lost in this music, in the sense of immersively absorbed rather than uncomprehending. [Jun 2022, p.47]

A song cycle following the blossoming and sudden death of a relationship, the conceit frontloads Broken Heart Club with joyous dizzy pop in “Tie The Knot” and the aptly titled but most definitely not saccharine “Sweet”. When heartbreak comes she’s brilliantly poised, pleading on “Heartfelt Freestyle” then flipping a finger to regret on “Missing Out”. [Jun 2022, p.62]

There’s a mite more polish on Reason To Smile than some might favour. But there’s also a rich seam of dark humour and rage worthy of Kendrick Lamar or Silent Eclipse. [Jun 2022, p.62]

The songs are politically sharp and socially conscious, and Vieux sends out darkly nutating tendrils of blue over rolling, ravelling backing. [Jun 2022, p.61]

Not surprisingly, given Marhaug’s presence during the time of global crisis when it was produced, this album has a harder edge than Owens’s previous releases. [Jun 2022, p.60]

The issue with Pusha’s fourth solo album isn’t his insistence on portraying a heartless American striver as if he’s the rap game Al Pacino – it’s that he’s unable to consistently conjure the menacing intensity that enlivened his work with with twin brother Malice as Clipse. [Jun 2022, p.52]

One can’t help but be in awe of the production mastery on display and the confidence with which Matmos have turned a man’s creative remains into a freshly expressive musical instrument. [Jun 2022, p.51]

Suffice to say that future, past and present are safe in the hands of 700 Bliss. [Jun 2022, p.47]

Heavy Pendulum sees the group return with one of the most accomplished releases in their decades-long career, while Scofield’s songwriting spirit is kept alive. [Jun 2022, p.46]

These pieces exude a jazz inflected cool that's immediately intriguing. ... Dramatic and cinematic in its conclusion. [Jun 2022, p.44]

Their words are not protest or polemic, but messages from the frontline of a war that’s being waged under our noses and hidden in plain sight. And also, crucially, it completely slaps. [Jun 2022, p.44]

Almond – who recorded his vocals while recovering from Covid – sounds audibly frail at times. But this works in the album’s favour, working humanity into the glossiness. The most effective tracks are those with sparse backing, such as “Polaroid” and the drolly misanthropic “I’m Not A Friend Of God”. [May 2022, p.53]

At least the fusion here doesn’t have the overly respectful politeness of similar multinational projects, with the guitar noise and roaring likembes providing aural grit. By the middle of the record, though, the shorter studio tracks shine with low-key brilliance. [May 2022, p.44]

Heavy with lurid and dazzling detail, seeking to put drum ’n’ bass-like textures and hyperkinetic beats against the gruff distortion of rock, it recalls Pitchshifter and Asian Dub Foundation in its genreless aggravation and futurist push. [May 2022, p.55]

While the overt campiness on display in Laibach’s The Sound Of Music has been toned down here, the choice to pepper the set with familiar German showtunes (“Flieger, Grüß Mir Die Sonne” and “Das Lied Vom Einsamen Mädchen”) feels ominous when paired with the stomach-turning paintings by Gottfried Helnwein on the cover. [May 2022, p.48]

A collection of grungy, haunting songs that sound and feel timeless. Led by Hersh’s velvety grunts, this is the sort of rock that borrows the best from all the music’s variations to create something familiar yet surprisingly fresh. [May 2022, p.56]

On the opening “Asynchronous Intervals”, Golding’s beautifully burnished tenor tone – sumptuously recorded here – plays against free drums that gradually morph into a slowly burning groove. On “ActiveMultiple-Fetish-Overlord”, that tone is broken up against Luthert’s palpitating, roiling low end work. “After The Machine Settles” is muscular jazz rock; “Because Because” with multitracked/echoing soprano, is a stirring conclusion. [May 2022, p.58]

The precision and control and grand guignol gothery are all still in place – but there’s also surprise (check the startlingly clean and gorgeous nine minute odyssey of “They Move Below”) and a palpable energy the band haven’t shown in years. [May 2022, p.55]

The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

The album primarily features solo guitar, harmonica and lap steel, all cloaked in gauzy atmospheres, and often conjuring mental images of a sprawling, rural America. The most compelling moments on the album make a hazy blend of guitar twang and swirling electronics, as on “Outskirts, Dreamlit” whose nostalgic melody tumbles almost without a sense of time. [May 2022, p.52]

Marc’s production skills are impressive; he layers beautifully recorded organic instruments with synths and sampled vinyl crackle, adding just enough reverb and bass boom to bring it all to vivid life. [May 2022, p.50]

He remains a fascinating and fearless artist. But one can’t help but miss the outre experiments of Terror Management, where he bombed away over noise rock flurries and sepulchral beat loops alike. [May 2022, p.54]

Balance[d] between the exquisite – lines aching with elegant age and restraint, chords feeling bruised and heavy with knowing (“Hymn”, “An Intimate Distance”) – and the slightly underdeveloped (“Bells”, “Innocence”). ... The Turning Year is calming and often very beautiful. [May 2022, p.44]

If takes on his own catalogue feel lazy on paper, it’d need a heart of stone to resist something like 1977’s “Materialist” which in this version is probably the dubbiest and most typically Sherwood moment on here. Most importantly, perhaps, that voice has lost none of its storied opulence. [Apr 2022, p.42]

Valentine has gotten undeniably skilled at being slick; even at its weirdest, this record is quite easy on the ears. ... A welcome tonic. [Apr 2022, p.51]

Continuance is one of the better examples of their prodigiousness, its delights ranging from the piano glissando of “Reese’s Cup” to the fuzzy jazz fusion keyboards of “Kool & The Gang”. [Apr 2022, p.59]

Even beyond this shared ending/beginning, the new material flows like a continuation of the previous album, but with a more progressive and tenser edge to it. [Apr 2022, p.56]

Guerilla Toss’s music is now disarming in its earnest post-digital exuberance and cutesy directness, while a fragile thematic framework holds it all together. In the process of getting here, they traded their convulsive rock progressions for slowly decaying walls of texture and Kassie Carlson’s Auto-Tuned vocals. The effervescent bangers “Live Exponential” and “Mermaid Airplane” are especially awesome. [Apr 2022, p.56]