The weakest moments of this set are those that try to bludgeon the listener with noise. [May 2017, p.57]

A total blast from start to finish. [Dec 2021, p.59]

A powerful and evocative sound journey. [Jan. 2012, p.64]

By zeroing in on the darkness at the heart of an economy demanding a constant turnover of novelty, they've made something deeply essential for the moment. [Nov 2012, p.57]

The album is not so much a departure as a continuation of Pavement, satisfying and occasionally inspired. [#205, p.59]

Another charming collection. [#248, p.51]

At the heart of the album is a propensity for pop, memorable and simple – but Vanishing Twin are at their strongest when this impulse collides with an equally powerful drive towards texture and sensation – witness the propulsive “In Cucina” for example, or the furtive “Tub Erupt”. [Oct 2021, p.56]

Earth may no longer startle, but against the odds Carlson survives, and this engaging dignified music is both testament and soundtrack to that survival. [Feb 2011, p.50]

Diggin’ In The Carts is the most inventive video game music compilation in living memory. [Dec 2017, p.67]

As I spent more time with their tunes piercing through my earbuds, I finally succumbed to their truly infectious ways. [Jun 2019, p.65]

Whether with Supersilent or on his own, Arve Henriksen has demarcated his own world of sound, communicating in ways that are sometimes inscrutable but always deeply felt. [Jul 2017, p.53]

A band absolutely floating free, and realising that this Throwing Muses thing is beyond all of them, beyond all of us, an almost tidal pull on the cells, forward into life. Sun Racket is an essential truth kit for a post-truth world. [Jul 2020, p.52]

The thick consistency of America is of a different sort: lusher, more polished, wider in scope, almost symphonic in its conception and structure. [Aug 2012, p.43]

Chasny’s vocals in particular, hushed and double-tracked, tend to sound like the performance of awed transport rather than awed transport itself. In that sense Threshold’s instrumental numbers--which on so many albums feel like interludes or filler--are standouts. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Companion Rises does not choose between the structure of a catchy acoustic guitar motif and those sometimes abrasive electric moments where composure is allowed to drift away. Instead it opts to combine them. [Mar 2020, p.56]

Most intriguing are the hi-tech elements that flicker past, adding a hint of touch screen technology to the contemporary urban space. And the snatches of pirate radio speech--now Wen's signature--are engrossing. [May 2014, p.69]

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]

Such durational piece, composed from several instruments, recall Phill Niblock, but Malone’s album is softer, more atmospheric, even melancholic. Does Spring Hide Its Joy is material for deep listening, and its considerable length alone is a radical statement in times of fragmented attention. [Feb 2023, p.52]

It occasionally breaks into shocking moments of lo-fi howl, as on the 11 minute “Distortion”, which begins with a juddering, buzzsaw chord. The jumbled and constant flow of imagery emerges every now and then from the tumult of his guitar, so that one pulls the other in a different direction. [May 2018, p.54]

Pop hooks and club-ready rhythms warp with bubblegum plasticity from track to track, never repeating but luxuriating in the excess of their own ideas. [Apr 2023, p.66]

Young Thug has made a record about the agency public figures have over their own identities. In another, he’s made the year’s most bizarre, brilliant genre exercise. [Oct 016, p.65]

For music built around the shrouding and decay of its composer’s bodily presence, Thresholder feels curiously non-corporeal. In large part that’s attributable to the purity of Craig’s voice. ... But elsewhere--when melting between the tremulous organ tones of “And Therefore The Moonlight” or forming grainy cirrus wisps in “Sfumato”--Craig sounds as though he’s already shed his physical shell and ascended into the cosmos. [Dec 2018, p.46]

In terms of idiosyncratic yet thoroughly danceable electronic music, Cunningham remains nearly peerless. [Nov 2023, p.46]

Effervescent retro fun with a core of righteousness. [Nov 2013, p.66]

The second CD is noisier at times, and more surprising overall, introducing new instruments to powerful effect. [May 2015, p.53]

What the album lacks in innovation, it more than makes up for with its sheer edginess. [#228, p.59]

Dunn’s production is broad and volatile yet retains a measure of mainstream appeal. At all times Danilova’s voice threatens to destroy – the compositions that try to contain her, the recording equipment that seems to clip and distort, reverb effects that overload and scream, speakers and ears that feel like they might melt from the sheer intensity. She’s never sounded better than this. [Jun 2022, p.48]

“Ablaze”, “Beauty In Falling Leaves” and the monumental title track attain a state of angelic transcendence before crashing solidly back to earth with “The Screen”, a stone cold falling meteor of a song that leaves a crater in its wake, and is probably the heaviest piece of music they have yet produced. [Aug 2018, p.59]

These New Puritans feel better equipped than most to carry that mantle, a vision of English pastoral music heavy with stoicism and solitude; both steeped in, yet strangely unencumbered by history. [Jun 2013, p.55]

As a superior melodic rapper, Open Mike Eagle seems to communicate with a kind of preternatural whimsy. Even when he sifts through his trauma, his voice serves as a velvet glove, keeping this 30 minute album from descending into painful self-pity. [Dec 2020, p.54]

For the most part, however, throughout its undulating ride, Antiphonals transfixes and immerses, transporting the listener deep into their own psyche. [Sep 2021, p.52]

It's a firm and deliberate withdrawal from the spotlight but one tinged with sharp self-awareness and the humane intelligence that governs all of Bunyan's work. [Sep 2014, p.52]

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]

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]

Sirens is unlike anything produced under his other aliases The Bug, Techno Animal or Ice. It exists as a piece of sound art rather than a club record. ... Sirens is testament to the ability of sound and its manipulation to transcend language. [Jun 2019, p.60]

Guerilla builds upon constant percussive propulsions, creating a frenzy that doesn’t overbear with political weight and favours a sense of catharsis even through the darkest moments of Angola’s history. [May 2020, p.56]

I Was Real isn’t going to disappoint 75 Dollar Bill’s old fans. ... Augmentations and roots moves do nothing to dilute 75 Dollar Bill’s essence. If anything, I Was Real is ultra-real. [Jul 2019, p.44]

Heavy, expressive and uncompromising, both Wrecked and Analog Fluids Of Black Holes gesture at fresh, purposeful possibilities for noise and experimental music. [Nov 2019, p.49]

Few among us can craft an album as seamlessly fine as Fade. [Feb 2013, p.51]

These processes are slow, sometimes painful and on multiple scales, but with each track and each album, the producer is changing our understanding of sound, data, memory and our own bodies in musical space. [Jun 2016, p.56]

The unreachable past collides with a dark, unpredictable future, leaving the listener with a pit in the stomach and endless respect for the way that Ishibashi has upped her game. [Jan 2019, p.67]

This is Ambarchi at his most user-friendly, waxing nostalgic for a music that never was. [Aug 2019, p.50]

What works so well here is that all the elements are pursued with equal intensity. It is not that noise cedes to the electronics, or the guitars make way for the voice, or turns are taken. On the contrary, everything is plugged in, blindly ongoing without lessening. [Dec 2017, p.50]

A few tracks stand apart: "Story Of OJ" and "Mercy Me" both impress for verve and venom if not his every chain of thought. Otherwise it's all so dry that after a couple of listens it feels more like spoken word. [Sep 2017, p.62]

This feels like a love letter to dayglo dreams of the online world of 20 years ago, with beats and samples too evolved, too exuberant to sink into mere nostalgia. [Oct 2016, p.51]

Bringing further gravitas and grace to mundanity, he continues in the business of poetically detailing everyman strife and significant moments. [Oct 2019, p.50]

If their forthcoming albums match the confidence and uniqueness of Bible eyes, Night Slugs may enjoy another year in the spotlight. [May 2011, p.49]

A sound thrumming with bold analogue synthesizers and beefy rock drums. [#254, p.67]

This LP kicks off with a run of tunes that are wistful and simply beautiful. [Nov 2019, p.56]

What makes Lodestar a genuine progression from what has gone before--is the sinking and deepening of her voice. It is still neutral enough to act as the conduit it always has done, but the milkmaid’s lilt has been transformed into a maven’s burden. [Dec 2016, p.55]

Fela’s youngest son inherited Egypt 80 from his father in 1997 when he was 14 years old and keeps alive its joyously angry spirit. “Last Revolutionary” is a passionate tribute to the wider inheritance of anti-colonial effort and courage that comes down through Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Jomo Kenyatta, as well as the Nigerian founders. It gives way immediately to the signature title track, which owes much of its airplay to a typically intense but refreshingly unmannered Carlos Santana feature as well as some of Seun’s most intense tenor saxophone. [Apr 2018, p.51]

Bardo Pond's most focused work to date. Who knows whether the group would take that as a compliment? [#206, p.61]

This is a dark night of the soul record, a distant country cousin of Young's Tonight's The Night, but it feels flooded with light and air and space. [#232, p.73]

A whole album of these bolts would be nuts, in a good way. [Jul 2013, p.66]

In C Mali has a delightfully loose and relaxed feel. [Mar 2015, p.51]

The clunkier, funkier patterns mapped out here have something proufound to say about the relationship between us and our technological world, about where our dancing and moving bodies fit in among the conurbations and databanks of our lives. [Apr 2015, p.57]

It’s clear he’s still able to switch on a plausible menace when the situation demands. In that balance and his gleefully amateur unretouched singing lies the heart of a great album. [May 2019, p.68]

Brassy and direct, it looked north and west, toward the coastal Caribbean and into the forest. Kicking carimbó, bangué, siriá and other up-country sounds are ably documented on Jambú. [Aug 2019, p.67]

With its mix of anxiety, fun and catharsis, it provides a compelling listen for a tumultuous year. [Oct 2020, p.56]

These aren’t stoical songs; nor are they blandly defiant. They speak a deep truth about ageing, and one that spikes several more humdrum cliches: age isn’t just how you feel, but an ineluctable fact; it isn’t just a matter of numbers, but very much a felt experience, and Chapman has delivered a beautiful continuum of musical experience since he emerged in 1969 with Rainmaker and Fully Qualified Survivor. [Mar 2019, p.48]

This is resolutely a group effort, and freer and more fluid than, say, the proto-Americana of The Grateful Dead's American Beauty. [Sep 2013, p.52]

Wow, does it reward your attention. [Feb 2015, p.54]

A range of compositional strategies are succinctly worked through, pivots in structural dynamics executed with an often startling sharpness. [Aug 2015, p.52]

Surprisingly, it works and doesn’t come apart, punctuating a conceptually striking, musically flawed, but altogether enjoyable record. [May 2020, p.53]

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

These eight tracks feel like a consolidation of his practices, interspersing sombre classical suites with footwork-indebted rhythms that flicker like distant pulsars. [Jan 2016, p.69]

This EP chases Cosmogramma into the same territory, but seems to favor consistent, looping palettes and original electronics over the latter's ad hoc sampling. [Oct 2010, p.66]

There is an alchemy at work here. [Apr 2016, p.57]

The beginning of the record is slow – “News About Heaven” feels aimless, while the repeating melody of “Pray For Rain” gets tedious after its third or fourth time through – but with “Something Will Come”, the album’s ominous depth comes to light, ushering in a nostalgia that permeates through the final tracks and illuminates the depth of the duo’s sound. [Oct 2021, p.55]

[Wyatt's voice} is not the most technically 'correct' voice, but in the setting of Ros Stephen's arrangements for string quartet, with Gilad Atzmon adding alto saxophone, it is as though that uncertain crack, that flaw floating in the clear quaver of his voice is a precise match for the happysad ambiguities that haunt so many jazz standards. [Oct 2010, p.62]

This worthy sequel to XXX is the first release since 2011 to offer a convincing portrait of Brown as a wholly realistic character. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.81]

It may look wildly out of control but closer inspection reveals the symmetry and order that supported the garden’s historical design. [Nov 2017, p.53]

Grassed Inn is both beautifully stupid, and much, much smarter than you think. [Jan 2014, p.63]

In isolation, no individual song is particularly memorable but together they add up to a musical vision you just can't ignore. [#215, p.52]

Bob Mould is not pulling up stylistic roots on Sunshine Rock, but it’s still breezier than his average, thanks in part to the use of an 18-piece string section on much of the album. [Mar 2019, p.62]

OOIOO retain and reconfigure the most appealing elements of rock music while reimagining the familiar band-as-gang dynamic to suit their own personalities. Charismatic and cool like few contemporary rock bands are, their sense of fun always feels inclusive of the listener. [Feb 2020, p.52]

The end result is the closest Cave In have ever come to revisiting the stellar stream of 2000’s Jupiter – the space rock monolith that boosted them into the wider consciousness. [Jun 2019, p.52]

I can attest that despite initial misgivings, this does grow on you. [Sep 2008, p.64]

It’s a gorgeous sounding album, with a fat, woody drum sound and well-defined bass frequencies that are headphone umami. [Dec 2016, p.57]

Their latest concoction is a study in maximalism that weaves ideas from a multitude of artists into a succinct stylistic language. [Sep 2020, p.56]

The whole album feels like a coda, a soundtrack to the closing credits of a career that has taken them far beyond the exploratory punk of their roots. [Nov 2010, p.53]

Hegarty's eco-femism finds a much better ambassador in his songs. [Oct 2012, p.58]

The beats are tighter, the rhymes sharper and the subject matter more relevant. [July 2008, p.66]

The mood is always unsettled and unsettling, either furious or fragile. [#258, p.67]

Once you make the adjustment and accept these songs for what they are, ther are moments of loveliness. But for the most part, one can onlyy wonder what attracted Russell to indulge in this sort of stuff given his more renowned output. [Nov 2008, p.68]

Da Mind of Traxman Vol 2's density feels cryptic, a series of questions posed to listeners and the floor. [Jun 2014, p.57]

With mute on, Smith can project a tender fragility through a single lingering note, reminiscent of Miles at his most thoughtful and noirish circa Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud. Smith's more strident statements convey an emotional rawness. [Apr 2016, p.65]

Rundle explores shadowy dreams and gothic fantasies through a series of precariously balanced electrified compositions that hover around her--light as a feather one minute, heavy as lead the next. On Dark Horses rides headlong into the singer’s psyche as she pulls us into the darkest corners of her imagination and breathes out fevered secrets. [Oct 2018, p.64]

Melnyk’s playing has a rare capacity to energise and exhilarate, and in that respect Fallen Trees does not disappoint. [Jan 2019, p.82]

Downbeat, deliberately anticlimactic, refusing to abide by rap orthodoxies, while affirming one of the genre’s dominant reflexes – calling out pretenders. Think of Marceliago as Macbeth transferred to Hempstead, Long Island, or any of the city’s other unacknowledged locales. Marciano’s rhymes read like rap koans. [Feb 2020, p.60]

Dirty and invigorating? Yes. [Jul 2021, p.67]

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

It isn’t Blonde On Blonde or John Wesley Harding – two acknowledged influences, on the decision to go to Nashville, at least – but the sheer energy of association and the adolescent clarity of understanding often yields strikingly subtle results. ... It isn’t always grown-up, but there’s nothing more mature than embracing immaturity. [Nov 2022, p.62]

Bores are in the minority and easily avoided, the exquisitely curated majority impress both in isolation and together as kaleidoscopic wonder. An unlikely joy. [Jul 2023, p.58]

The One is both sonically and conceptually strong enough to transcend that small internet buzz circle. [Mar 2011, p.62]

This music never lacks for deep roots into Allen's background with Fela's Afrika 70, but it is also fresh in conception and execution. [Oct 2014, p.50]

At times 50 swerves near to MOR Americana, but Chapman’s guitar playing, the bedding of every track, bristling with thorns, won’t let it. [Jan 2017, p.61]

The songwriting is strong.