Resident Advisor's Scores

  • Music
For 1,096 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Biokinetics [Reissue]
Lowest review score: 36 Déjà-Vu
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 1 out of 1096
1096 music reviews
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is actually one of his more readily enjoyable albums, even if it's a little less adventurous most of the records from his long-running Pan•American project.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album's wordless songs are almost as riveting as their counterparts.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's a fine line drawn between pastiche and surefire songwriting, and the group straddle it deftly.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's invigorating, vulnerable and, at times, uncomfortably raw.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The album is not only one that fans will cherish for years to come, but it will surely be the record that draws a whole new generation of fans into her deeply personal, and always captivating, world.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quivering In Time is a kaleidoscopic sequence of house music tunes that tend to blend into one another, sounding more like a DJ mix than a typical electronic album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Voigt's mix of art music, techno and classical, of fairy tales and field recordings, feels singular and timeless 25 years on. It's not Voigt's most beautiful or immersive record as GAS, but it remains a forest we can all get lost in.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rhinestones is a skeletal, mostly acoustic continuation of this sound, gripping in its own mysterious, quiet way.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    At its best, the LP touches on the dizzying maximalism that made past records so thrilling. But at other times it treads the same ground as the healing frequency meditation videos that proliferate on YouTube.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of the most adventurous in recent memory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These songs are whittled down, a rare moment where the overwhelming density of Arca's music falls away, raw and stripped of any protective coating. ... There's a newfound and striking intimacy—the last gasps of the KiCK series before the explosive climax "Crown," where kiCK iiiii's softness is ripped apart by cathartic blasts of noise. It's one final, triumphant punch that leaves everything on the table.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Left bruised and raw from the previous entry, the soft pads and thick walls of synth noise on tracks like the Planningtorock-featuring "Queer" feel like weighted blankets. ... kick iiii plays like a surrealist diary of Ghersi's experiences as a queer person and transgender woman.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anyone who's seen her DJ could tell you about the confrontational aggression she hasn't yet captured on an official album. KicK iii tries, pushing the choppy, freeform and unrelenting part of Arca to the fore and pulverizing the listener over its brief, 36-minute runtime.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here she pushes things in a more aggressive direction: on "Tiro," her vocals become increasingly scattered and dramatic, as the percussion warps into a mash of cracking whips, laser shots and grinding metal. On its back half, KICK ii dips into abstract territory, sounding more like a tangled web of overactive synapses than anything immediately recognizable as pop.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    By drawing energy from Garcia’s abundant source, these remixers try to answer those questions in their own respective sonic languages, offering intriguing answers and new ways to hear Garcia's potent energy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sinephro's spaces not only feel full of life, they're built with the very sounds of it, too, reminding us not to take it for granted.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When relationship blindspots are exposed in "Always You," the untroubled lust of earlier tracks matures into some of the album's most introspective moments.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shade is another beautiful and often devastating entry in the Grouper catalog.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Like Reed, Tarelle and Inyang are involved in gritty, street-level investigative poetics. ... This is detective work, through which they hope to discover their own place—figuratively and literally—a sense of purpose, of honest labour.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Home is by no means an easy listen, especially for people who aren't used to extreme metal vocals. But it's well worth the effort—the LP features some of the most beautiful music I've heard all year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mod Prog Sic is the latest stop on this journey, taking the band to an evolved new place for a deeply satisfying blend of primal expression and visceral pleasure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Liminal Soul doesn't have the pop-fueled rush of her last LP, nor the lo-fi chill of her debut album, Ariadna. It displays her vast set of influences, brilliant vocals and ultimately, the infinite potential of Russia's dance music scene.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Its best moments draw you to the formative dance floors of Space's past, the parties where he watched dancers react to the thrilling amalgam of styles that would become footwork, and where he danced himself, absorbing the lessons that would feed into a genre based on movement.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Where Devotion was light and feathery, Colourgrade is haunting and visceral. She sounds wiser, more assured, laser-focused on what matters most.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The 13-track record is anti-corporate music at its finest—this was not created for mere enjoyment, but as an outlet for the global psychic mood. Each track feels like 2020. ... The entire album is captivating, but the middle section is exceptional. ... In Ayewa's hands the heady concept [Afrofuturism] gets new life.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Free from spatial or historical associations, these songs now feel modern and ancient at once. The album's undulating textures can distort familiar surroundings and plunge the listener into heady contemplation. It's a defining work for Davachi that once again demonstrates her uncanny ability to draw new and arresting shapes and feelings from familiar materials.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hye Jin refines her sound, pulling from trap and boom-bap, not to mention dubstep and techno, to turn out a coming of age hip-house album. Before I Die is the clearest artistic vision we've heard from Hye Jin.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    While GREY Area was a collection of great songs, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert feels like a therapeutic breakthrough. ... A body of work so rich with innovation, so broad in its influences and so powerful in its storytelling that we'll still be finding new things to love until the next one comes along.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fire is a classic-style Bug album, just with everything turned up to 11. It's more intense, but the rhythms are familiar and the format is the same.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On his latest, the palpable, sometimes uneven spontaneity that defined the first few years of DJ Seinfeld is gone. In its place is the sound of a producer who's found a confident, definitive voice.