Many of these tracks barely scrape two and a half minutes. Crazed voices talk about “hair” and a “super-weird looking guy” while the deranged piano of a haunted ballroom plays for no one (“The Hidden Joice”). But it’s a fun, fairground of a record too, with a hare-brained 1960s Wurlitzer pop song (“Give It To Me”), dopey scat (“Scooba”) and silly names and phrases like “Chicken Butt” and “Eat Yourself Out”.

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]

Oczy Mlody fluently balances three decades of untamed experimentation with the poppier sensibilities they've gained along the way. [Feb 2017, p.51]

This level of gross hallucination could risk indulgence... But for straight-up bad vibes to the head, Fast Cars is compelling. [#252, p.67]

While bound by established conventions, [it] is nonetheless rich and dazzling enough to soundtrack a saga that exists outside the bounds of normal human capabilities. [Oct 2008, p.60]

Without a doubt these are good songs, and Osborne's vocal is always ear grabbing. But I'd love to hear the full band versions they deserve. [Jun 2014, p.55]

It's hard to shake off the suspicion that The Fifth Release contains more than a few offcuts and outtakes that never quite made the final cut of its more assured and inventive predecessor. [#202, p.55]

Listening in one session is like wolfing a hurried seven-course meal with post-dinner coffee and is roughly as messy. [Sep 2013, p.65]

[The album] is so blatantly, almost self-consciously pleasurable it should come, like an insalubrious takeaway, with heavy duty napkins. [Apr 2014, p.65]

I'd like this to be much more depraved, or just for El-P to fully embrace his Eno role for another solo album of weirdness. [Aug 2016, p.59]

The music works on its own--laser-sharp, energetic and gloriously fun. [Mar 2016, p.55]

At times it takes an effort to differentiate Hive1 from many other of the gentle experimental works involving modular synthesizers across the decades, despite its unique origins. But there are subtle--and again, intensive--surprises scattered throughout, both in sounds and forms. [May 2015, p.47]

The atmosphere is underwrought, miserable, monochrome. [Jun 2015, p.46]

It’s as stunning and vibrant a set of agitpop brilliance as Conn has ever produced. If he’s ever moved you, move to this. [Apr 2020, p.64]

The record works best however when Leandoer wears his heart unashamedly on his sleeve.

This is drivel inflated to whole new levels of bombast. [#235, p.72]

Blue Songs nevertheless presents a level of poetic inventiveness that isn't easy to trace in the dance pantheon.

Slug Guts embrace their destiny as swaggering, bar-destroying dirtbags, and we're all better for it. [Oct 2012, p.68]

The album’s strongest moments aren’t the existential musings of “Marathon” or “World Of Flaws” but the palpable joy when he reflects on his everyday life in the ebullient title track, and the problematic yet precious local pride of “Brixton Baby”. [Mar 2018, p.47]

DeGraw's skill for mixing and matching swatches of sound is unparalleled, but without context it becomes much like choosing colours for your living room. [Dec 2013, p.48]

The results are mixed. The album never fully escapes the feeling of rootless hipster genre-rifling. But the skill of Mast and Stroud at engineering riffs cannot be denied. [Jul 2010, p.60]

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]

While nothing on III is exactly a soundtrack to sipping caipirinhas in the sun, there's also nothing about it that suggests grimacing theatrically on a darken dancefloor. [Oct 2011, p.52]

As Town And Country's move into mellow artists maturity, C'mon is an oasis of sensitive calm from our loutish world. [#217, p.61]

Celebrity guests or not, this is what Beans is--a densely indigestible acquired taste. [Apr 2011, p.70]

Apart from a few works for chamber instruments, which have a similar pleasing air of fakeness to Michael Nyman’s faux baroque cues for Peter Greenaway, these sketches all have uncertain origins and textures. [May 2020, p.66]

There's something very likable about this album....The problem with Too Old To Die Young is that it's too familiar to sound truly fresh. [May 2008, p.65]