Implausibly enduring, oddly endearing and extreme in ways both unexpected and otherwise. [Sep 2020, p.57]

Combining tight dynamics with the blurred intent of an impressionistic backwsh, some tracks rush by like vast landscapes, with individual features suddenly highlighted in freeze-frames. [#228, p.59]

While Steinski's work with DeFranco aka Double Dee, is the most dazzling--precisely because it avoids the pitfalls of run of the mill culture jamming and guerrilla media tactics--Steinski's solo tracks certainly have their own pleasures, even if they are more straightforwardly textural than his collabotation with Double Dee. [June 2008, p.57]

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

So it's Ra the entertainer we get here.... On the second disc the first three tracks take matters further out. [Oct 2014, p.70]

The new Pusha T album is more assured and therefore effective than the last Clipse album, nowhere near the focused brilliance of their first two. All production is handled by Kanye West who’s likewise harking back to his glory days with assorted updates on his College Dropout sound. [Jul 2018, p.62]

His new LP is a sonic assault; holding tight to punk ruthlessness and discipline, drenched in Dirty South origins. [Oct 2018, p.68]

Though the compilation is vast and the songs hardly bleed into one another--we’re often jumping genres, pivoting off cascading basslines and quickly changing pace without missing beats--there is a level of thematic cohesion here. [Feb 2019, p.66]

It’s hard to get with the tiresome self-deprecation of that album title, the way he hides his pain behind a smile and hides his smile behind a dope aesthetic on that artfully blurred cover. When Earl does choose to project beyond his navel he has a powerful, booming voice and an ear for novelty. Where his gaze shifts to the outside world he can be inspirational. [Feb 2019, p.56]

On Scaring The Hoes, Brown and Peggy sound great together while offering few artistic revelations. [May 2023, p.52]

As with For You And I, the awkwardness of these beats seems dictated less by technical nuance and more by the idiosyncratic rhythms of the human body. ... Even more so than its predecessor, the album is maybe most striking when this idiosyncrasy explicitly reflects James’s lived experience as a Londoner, channelling the steppy rhythms of the hardcore continuum. [Jul 2021, p.60

The album's so-called simple songs might be ambiguous enough to leave you wondering what they're about, even as you're thinking that they were written just for you. [Jun 2015, p.49]

The album has almost Wagnerian scope and immersive power, and at just over 50 minutes it's well organised as a start-to-finish listen. [Mar 2011, p.50]

His cartoonish vocals remain charmless, his lyrics as tediously self-referential as ever. [Oct 2017, p.57]

Beautiful. [Jan 2022, p.64]

It's far from perfect record--the guests are phoned in, the beats sometime out-cheese pre-breakdown Kanye at his cheesiest--but it has more than a few perfect moments. [Jul 2013, p.68]

Pick A Day To Die pieces together Sunburned fragments dating back to the late 2000s, resulting in an endearing zigzag of moods. [Mar 2021, p.58]

An account of stifling domesticity plays out over a propulsive 4/4 rock beat and swirling woodwinds, which serve to evoke how, in spite of everything, she felt “electric, alive, spirited, fire and free”. .... Testament to the subterranean efforts to prevent this woman’s story from being forgotten. [Oct 2023, p.52]

The combination of simple but taut musicality and literate lyricism is a winning one. [Apr 2021, p.54]

It reignites the traditions it draws upon and creates something utterly contemporary. If this record sounds familiar, it is because it is the music your soul has already worked out we need for the struggles to come. [Jul 2017, p.46]

Science Fiction Dancehall Classics is a more than serviceable as an On-U sound primer, yet may throw even those who think they know the label. [Oct 2015, p.70]

The 20 minute centrepiece “Water Meditation” is a startlingly realised suite of wonder that flows from fragmentary shards of sax, voice and synths to stealthy dubby menace through to a collage of impacted noise and shattered beats that’s one of the most emotionally affecting delineations and reimaginings of resistant Black art you’re likely to hear in 2021. Essential listening, and the same can be said for Open The Gates as a whole. [Nov 2021, p.53]

This is the most elaborately arranged thing Gunn has ever done, jammed full of understated yet excellent guitar. [Oct 2014, p.54]

She delivers an almost unrelentingly banging techno set whose cuts, while perhaps underground, could never be referred to as deconstructed. [Apr 2019, p.57]

Ultimately the digressions charm and gel thanks to the generosity of Freedia’s performances, marshalling us through dance manoeuvres in service to the communal heart of bounce. [Sep 2023, p.52]

A few of these ten songs burble with easy rhythms – “Lye” rocks with crunchy, prog rock horns looped by The Alchemist. But overall, the tone of SICK! feels contemplative, slowly unfurling with repeated listens even as Earl crams over 20 minutes of thoughts into the work, with no hooks to leaven the intensity. [Mar 2022, p.43]

It's inscrutable and inspired, and this time mystique has nothing to do with it. [Apr 2013, p.51]

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]

Like her otherwise innovative Couldn’t Wait To Tell You, the 41 minute album has its inevitable longueurs (the abstract “Snowing!”). Otherwise it moves along with purpose and confidence. [Apr 2023, p.56]

Introspective, emotionally charged pieces such as “Father Time”, “We Cry Together” and “Savior” provide high – or jarring – points on the record, but elsewhere there are periods of lull absent on previous efforts. ... As sonically impressive as his latest album may be, his approach to the topics under discussion doesn’t feel sufficiently thought out. [Jul 2022, p.48]

The mood is subdued, the backing spare, meditative, but--as we've become used to with Bush--lacking in any adventurousness of spirit, at points, you could even describe it as late night jazz club tasteful. [Dec 2011, p.52]

While their tonal depths speak to undiscovered worlds, they’re grounded by the sound of Sakamoto’s breath, audible on every piano track. The palpable humanity is moving, and Sakamoto’s ease with melodic phrasing remains astonishing. ... Would these stark, simple pieces be as moving and filled with meaning for newcomers to his work? Perhaps not, but becoming an understanding receiver of work is one of the great privileges of longtime listening. [Feb 2023, p.45]

Fires Within Fires is the summation of 30 years of experimentation in tonality and texture. Yes, Neurosis are firmly positioned within the extreme metal underground, yet their music, with its ability to generate images of beauty akin to those many of us have experienced in our own lives--not to mention the loss that accompanies them--challenges this categorisation. [Oct 2016, p.49]

Absolutely gorgeous. ... It’s as clear, translucent and dazzling as the medium it both plays with and describes. [Mar 2018, p.52]

On Malibu, melody unifies and smooths over divisions: rap and R&B, black history and black modernity, spiritual uplift with the rough material of the everyman's everyday, all made cohesive by Paak's considerable songwriting talent. [Apr 2016, p.64]

She’s doing something unique and off-kilter on her debut album. She plays analogue synth and pedal harp, both essentially dreamy instruments, and her compositions are like gentle blends of spiritual jazz and ambient music, not that far from Alice Coltrane’s devotionals, if remixed by The Orb and minus the chanting. [Jan 2022, p.71]

Dreaming In The Non-Dream is a protest record through and through. It captures a rabid collective frustration and expels it with a palpable urgency. The fact that Forsyth and the rest of his group can do it with an eloquence that’s hard to summon in these dire times makes it all the more rewarding. [Sep 2017, p.50]

The music for the horror/revenge fantasy developed from Cosmatos and Jóhannsson’s mutual appreciation of heavy metal and psychotronic cinema, and it shows. [Nov 2018, p.56]

There’s a consistent low level sense of discomfort, or of familiar sounds or words taking on bizarro parallel forms. Lyrically, the album is enigmatic, full of personal mythologies, and swings between the divine (Jesus, Elvis) and the domestic (schools, peanut butter sandwiches). The song titles are a puzzle of repeated words and variations of phrases, like a secret language in plain sight. All over the album are sounds that can’t easily be identified, or that sit in between recognisable timbres. [Jul 2023, p.52]

With no lyrics to anchor their meaning, many songs here are infused with pathos and awe. [Apr 2013, p.57]

JPEGMAFIA ain’t really here for the put-ons and doesn’t expect his listeners to be either. But those expectations do not come without a kind of sound education, one that considers the context and multiplicity of characters he’s speaking to and through. In that way, Cornballs demands repeat plays, critical engagement and a goddamn sense of humour. [Nov 2019, p.57]

[The Lost Tapes is] a welcome re-opening of the gates. [Jun 2012, p.53]

Fire is frequently scorching. [Sep 2021, p.50]

Most of these songs will startle you at some point. [#268, p.50]

It’s an impressive whole, even if a few of the individual parts don’t hold up to scrutiny. [Jul 2021, p.70]

If Atrocity Exhibition doesn’t connect with quite the same power, it’s not for lack of commitment or craft. [Oct 2016, p.53]

Propulsive and beautifully weighted, this is music of absolute clarity. Sangare’s voice gleams adamantine. [Oct 2020, p.67]

“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]

It is al-gitarra in the classic style: raw and intimate, with the gravel-voiced Abaraybone leading the band through the militant and melancholy blues that have long been his trademark. [Oct 2019, p.61]

Much of the album feels like this – danceable songs with lyrics that urge thought about the state of the world and your own place within it. The most engaging moments are those where Hval lets herself escape into the pure fun of making jams. ... On a quarantine album, a little bit of escapism feels right. Hval continues to ponder philosophy in her writing, but throughout Classic Objects she brings light to her fears and memories too. [Mar 2022, p.48]

Pateras is much less dominant in the mix, mostly smouldering beneath the scintillating haze of distortion but occasionally slicing through like white light. Sitting on top of the mix are an assortment of glowing meditation bells played at unexpected intervals, which have the effect of plucking awareness from the dark recesses of sound one could otherwise be pulled all the way into. [May 2019, p.63]

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]

It's an unlikely triumph of personality, a glacially slow decay of his icy facade revealing an earnest dedication to his craft, in its own way every bit as spiritual as his brother's more orthodox practice. [Feb 2016, p.56]

In Cauda Venenum is a peculiarly convincing example of retro rock but that’s not to say the album is anchored to one particular scene or era. ... What’s also helpful is that frontman and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary rock, an impassioned croon whose soulfulness defuses any potential for pomposity. [Dec 2019, p.57]

I found myself wishing [the booklet] was three times longer and the music three CDs less. [Nov 2011, p.60]

Gay’s latest is a deep dive into memory but emerges as a triumphant celebration of a past and future antilineage, uniquely conjured from the inner complexities of an artist not tortured by the past but possessed by it. [Dec 2021, p.50]

Less successful is “Turned To Stone”, a somewhat sluggish performance that indicates a temporary loss of direction, hobbled by formless vocal grunts that are accompanied by bouts of panic stricken death metal guitar noodling when the otherwise omnipresent grim mood falters. Mercifully Obituary swiftly regain their footing and kick back with “Straight To Hell.” [Apr 2017, p.52]

At nearly two hours long, it can get claustrophobic and anti-exuberant out of these tunes' native club element.... Nonetheless, there's an undeniable freshness.

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]

This album feels more urgent and defiant than its predecessor. [Jun 2023, p.49]

Especially potent are moments in which Rundle’s velvety delivery overlaps with Bryan Funck’s bitter growls. Here, they find strength in one another and traverse a valley infested by guitar riffs dripping with filth, earthshaking tom hits and forlorn swirls of folk, leaving behind a harsh yet stunning trail of music. [Dec 2020, p.62]

Combined with the sincere and fiery anguish of Lenker’s delivery, this propensity for surprise makes Big Thief a genuinely affecting proposition. [Nov 2019, p.50]

The music develops through collective improvisation, but it’s supremely focused and tight. These formal qualities are combined with a keen political edge. [Jul 2021, p.58]

His voice retains a high pitched vulnerability, but the urgency of his reports from the flipside of hippiedom have softened into the sound of someone more comfortable with their place in the universe. [Sep 2013, p.48]

There’s no subject harder to broach in polite society than loneliness. Martin and Robinson know this and should be commended for taking an extended gaze into this particular abyss. [Mar 2019, p.54]

Tasteful pedal steel from Lanois gives a gentle country inflection to cuts like “Arajghiyine” – there’s a neat dovetailing here between two desert musics – but Tinariwen’s refined nocturnal heaviness reigns unchallenged. [Oct 2023, p.60]

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]

On The Comeback Kid Marnie Stern has returned bolder, brighter and stranger than ever, an artist in complete command of her idiom. [Nov 2023, p.51]

Halfway through its flow, Gave In Rest reveals itself as her first sustained attempt--a successful one--at stranding listeners in a mellow darkness before taking them back outside. [Oct 2018, p.51]

The fit between Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet--whose list of previous collaborators includes Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass--is so natural it’s almost a wonder they haven’t worked together previously. [Mar 2018, p.53]

They’re on fire here and now, reassuringly within that sound world you’re familiar with but – perhaps because the album is self-produced – sounding freer, looser and more magnificent than ever. ... A band who’ve clearly lost none of their miraculous touch with their sources, who incredibly seem to have an entirely new lease of life. [Mar 2023, p.60]

Crackle and hiss are still in evidence, but the effect is toned down, and less suggestive of sonic patina than of the hostile climate of a world far removed from the languid, sun-dappled pools and rolling vistas suggested by 2005's The Campfire Headphase. [Jul 2013, p.53]

Musically, in other words, Strange Mercy delivers plenty of interest. What's not so convincing is the songwriting, specifically the lyrics. [Oct 2011, p.60]

The folk inflection and multiplicity of Gately’s vocals make the album seem ancient. Or conjured. The songs aren’t ghostly as much as they feel witnessed, imbued with a palpable presence. ... Gately has sampled and mixed in her mother’s voice with her own, as if in acceptance of the balance of life and death. This co-existence – or the yearning for it – is ingrained in this astonishing album as a freshly carved cut in a foundational wooden beam. [Mar 2020, p.48]

Anjou’s transition from post-rock to power ambient now complete, Epithymía sees these musicians extrapolate into new directions masterfully, squeezing out a mesmeric minor masterpiece in the process. [Mar 2017, p.45]

async is an exceptionally beautiful record, in the way that maths is beautiful, quite free of rhetoric or ‘effects’. Its coherence of tonality and timbre gives it the feel of an imaginary soundtrack and yet each track has its own internal logic and direction which means that it never sounds like a grab-bag of musical supervisor’s cues but like a proper album of songs. [Jun 2017, p.70]

Despite her apparent striving towards sharpness and clarity, Hatis Noit avoids sterility in these pieces, all eight of which are constructed solely from her voice; while this starkness could leach the emotional impact, instead it is magnified. [Aug 2022, p.53]

The intense volume and solemn pace of the music is given extra weight and dimension by Scheidt's extraordinary vocal. [Oct 2014, p.61]

RAP Music is a self conscious throwback sonically, lyrically and even visually.

Each musician adopts a groove-plus approach, adding tunes, subtracting beats and spinning tension building, counterintuitive phrases off the common path, but never tripping it up. [Dec 2022, p.60]

A series of hermetic, drifting analogue tracks sprawling over eight sides of vinyl. The occasional bizarre touches of the more conventional numbers show his techniques best. [May 2015, p.59]

It's clear that, for Shipp, The Tradition clearly goes way beyond jazz. [Jun 2011, p.54]

A set of intelligently performed rock tunes distinguished by Karen O's smart and smarting lyrics. [#232, p.74]

Of the 23 tracks, only four truly stand out. [#218, p.58]

His long awaited first album polishes up the summer sounds for a new crowd and, even if it's not visionary, his electro-pop grooves still go somewhere. [Mar 2016, p.55]

Her ability to overdub against herself, creating the illusion of live interaction, is startling and thrilling to hear. Too often, one person music has a certain sterility and airlessness, but Thackray’s work is loose and groove-oriented, shuffling with an energy that brings to mind Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah albums while singing about opening one’s third eye. [Jul 2021, p.71]

The ten tracks on Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? provide – with occasional turns towards kosmische or lounge music – some of the most pop oriented music Daniel has ever released. [Nov 2022, p.66]

A striking collection of shadowy electronic soul. [Nov 2023, p.62]

Estrella Sanchez and Amor Amezcua (daughter of Mexican rave icon Bostich) avoided the trap of a rushed debut album, and Pasar De Las Luces justifies the simmering approach, albeit too long at 64 minutes. [Mar 2018, p.58]

Post Self is an extreme, and extremely good, record, as moving as it is troubling. [Jan 2018, p.69]

Fantasy Empire stands out from run of the mill noise rock because it captures not only the ferocity of the playing, but also the fecundity of sharp and serious ideas that lesser acts cannot match. [Apr 2015, p.58]

The outcome is a typically serene and spacious deconstruction of concept and melody; a compression, or reduction of a vast palette of reference points, ideas and processes into a remarkably integrated set of movements. [May 2019, p.64]

Though Gonzalez has always been a great arranger and producer, this album demonstrates how much she has improved as a lyricist. [Sep 2021, p.56]

This new set sees them nailing their sound to tighter structures a little, but there’s still that delicious ill-discipline at work throughout. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Musically, it’s a perfect mix. It didn’t seem possible to top Roberts’s association with Amble Skuse and the great David McGuinness, but Völvur’s use of saxophone and fiddle, paired with Roberts’s deceptively relaxed picking, makes for a perfect, unpredictable setting. Nothing synthetic here. The word, if you want it, is syncretistic. [Sep 2021, p.57]

Orchestras must be the greatest album from a jazz composer since the glory days of Gil Evans. [Jun 2024, p.64]

It's spiritual chamber music, mythopoetically encrusted, captivating and terrifying at the same time. [Sep 2014, p.55]

The synthetic sounds are more liquid and alive, the rhythms more nonchalantly funky, the unfolding narratives more gripping than previous work. [Dec 2012, p.64]