The undulating, snarling “Black Transit Of Jupiter’s Third Satellite” is a bubbling 12 minute antimatter expanse, the pot of black gold at the end of this particular rainbow. The journey to get there is ravishingly bleak and massaging. [Jan 2020, p.58]

The Brian Eno collaboration “Here Come The Warm Dreads”, despite having the cheesiest, winking at the camera/self-referential title, coalesces around a regal brass melody and popping rhythm section to created a solidly funky slice of spaced out dub. “Rattling Bones And Crowns” is sharper, darker take on the Rainford cut “Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers”. [Dec 2019, p.52]

Debut album Labyrinth is Kanda’s most sophisticated solo effort to date, swaying through 13 tracks of gorgeous melodies and electroacoustic layers that skip and skitter between beats and material states. [Dec 2019, p.48]

The five CD expansion pack of his 1982 double LP offers a far more enticing peek behind the purple velvet curtain [than Originals]. ... The outtakes are the real draw here. ... It only leaves you wanting more. [Dec 2019, p.66]

Gloopy Aphexian synths add a heady, after-hours quality to his itchy drum patterns, but the takeaway moment comes on the rather different closing track “Phosphorescence”, an endless plateau of serene deep house laced with jazzy keys, Mike Banks style. [Dec 2019, p.54]

Frisell, as always, plays for the group and for the song rather than reeling off solos. He has never shredded, but he doesn’t just shuck corn and whittle, either. Every Frisell performance is shaped with love and care, and with a near perfect balance between form and freedom. He just gets better and better. [Dec 2019, p.47]

What makes Transmission Suite work beyond its sounds is the belief Massey and Barker still have in the 808 project, the push all their music has of maintaining the future both as ultimate aim and ultimate source of anxiety. 808 State’s music has lost none of its foreboding, finesse and power. Sit deep within and enjoy. [Dec 2019, p.44]

While The Daisy Age won’t hold many surprises for diehard hiphop fans, the collection is well curated. [Dec 2019, p.64]

Ultimately Plantasia is often hard to love for the music itself. It was released several years after more evocative pieces for the Moog had already been released – from Perrey and Kingsley, Dick Hyman and even Garson himself – but it remains beloved as an amusing curiosity first and foremost, and for good reason. [Dec 2019, p.66]

The result is an often awkward assemblage of trial and error decisions that either allow the tracks to keep their era’s verve or attempt to punch things up in a modern sense, where the cut-off date is the mid-90s. ... All is not lost, though. It’s insightful to hear where Davis was heading with sleek arrangements such as “Give It Up” and “Maze”. [Dec 2019, p.65]

He’s hung up on Jesus rather than pneumatic women. It’s hard to tell if that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t seem like a regression either. ... An album with zero fat, dense in at least three senses, two of them positive. [Dec 2019, p.60]

Earthgang have one foot in the now, the other turned toward the horizon and an uncertain future. [Dec 2019, p.60]

Leaving Meaning has all of the reassuring turgidity and tortured self-importance devotees have come to expect plus a cast of name contributors (The Necks, Ben Frost, Baby Dee, Anna von Hausswolff among others) for that vital essence of “Well, if they’re working with him, he’s probably OK, right?” [Dec 2019, p.57]

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]

The Sisypheans is a work of personal reinvention that succeeds in open-armed, accessible fashion. [Dec 2019, p.56]

It’s tempting to call these outtakes but their vision is sharp and purposeful, sustained by a consistently monolithic interplay and helped by Steve Albini’s signature traits. It all makes Pyroclasts one of Sunn O)))’s heaviest and most penetrating albums. [Dec 2019, p.55]

Their pop is the sharpest it’s ever been. [Dec 2019, p.53]

It’s definitely a mixed bag, but pays off with “The Dawn” in which Lipstate’s guitar exhales in tandem with a spoken admission of small hours frailty. [Dec 2019, p.53]

Nelson used to use his voice to give focus to soundscapes; now they are means to express some uneasy feelings about country and relationships in the 21st century. [Dec 2019, p.52]

Sounding at times as though someone had isolated the synth track from a classic Hawkwind record, the music here is familiar and invites associations. ... Regardless, On A Clear Day is a pleasant affair.

Unsurprisingly the mood is melancholy and the louche, theatrical sexuality or carnal drama of earlier albums is replaced by a battered and searching tone, striving to make sense, or failing that, some poetry or beauty out of the tragedy. The narratives take on a less devilish tone here. [Nov 2019, p.46]

Released on their freshly launched record label Keck, Giant Swan is a front-loaded beast. ... The second half of the record loses momentum, danceable rhythms outweighed by slow motion drones and jagged noise

A return to form, of sorts. Shifting from the dappled sunshine warmth of the psychedelically swamped “Away From You” to the black stoner sludge orgy that is “Shadow Of Skull”, the direction guiding LφVE & EVφL twists and turns like a bucketful of electric eels. [Dec 2019, p.43]

This album explores that idea of opposites attracting and co-existing within one entity. It’s also a powerful, confident pop record tooled up to compete with the heaviest hitters (Paul White’s production is key, as it has been for Danny Brown and Charli XCX) while occupying its own uniquely ambivalent and querulous space. [Nov 2019, p.60]

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]

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]

The sonic diversity and range of Magdalene is a marked departure from the breathy triphop of LP1, yet a thematic trajectory is clearly traced from the suggestive sensuality of the first to the combative provocation of its follow-up named after a defamed biblical figure. [Nov 2019, p.54]

It’s not just that this set feels way more focused and streamlined than the debut; the band have also been sharpened up by incessant live work to the point where Lally and Canty are murderously diamond-tight, and Pirog is flat-out incredible, encouraged by the sheer precision of what backs him to fly into some gloriously discordant fuzzed-up psych and post-punk abrasion. [Nov 2019, p.56]

The musical quality is high, and it’s unusual among the saxophonist’s post-1959 studio recordings in reprising earlier compositions – he mostly featured new material. Coltrane’s rather unvarying dynamic level makes him a less effective film composer than his former employer Miles Davis, with his dramatic mastery – but Trane can’t be blamed for not fitting his music to the action, given that he had little idea what that would be. [Nov 2019, p.69]

It blends jazz, funk, dub and electronic sounds into a seamless, at times psychedelic whole. [Nov 2019, p.66]

The whole set has the provisional, unfinished feel of a diary or sketchbook. Some tracks are arranged so sparsely you’d think they’re missing parts; the flipside of this is that For You & I an incredibly personal, even intimate listen. [Nov 2019, p.64]

It sounds like something struggling to be born, and probably not something you’d want to see grow up in your house. [Nov 2019, p.64]

One Eleven Heavy have an uncanny knack for sucking in the charms of rock heroes of yesteryear and expelling them with contemporary fancy, with the best results being the hazy drag of “Hot Potato Soup” and the dizzying Allman Brothers-like closer “Three Poisons”. [Nov 2019, p.62]

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]

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

She’s the type of restless innovator that doesn’t stick with the same style for too long, and FIBS is a joyful, energetic follow-up to her debut. [Nov 2019, p.56]

Gordon sings with a becalmed daydream-y satisfaction, mixing and matching phrases from different notebooks into a confident patchwork. [Nov 2019, p.54]

From the cartoonishly unhinged prog/ boom-bap hybrid “Savage Nomad” to “Shine” (a duet with Blood Orange that flirts with melancholic, synth-heavy new romanticism) it’s the seemingly contradictory emotional timbres that animate uknowhatimsayin¿ and provide the core tension that brings the project to life. [Nov 2019, p.50]

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]

This is a record that doesn’t sound like it emerges from hermetic isolation, rather it feels as extrovert and joyous and intriguing and intrigued as the city that inspires it. New York City made sound flesh.

In mindbending, psych-wormhole cruising mode. Nobody should be able to write a song like “Flesh Fondue”, about alien invaders out for human snacks, as a stomping rock-out, but Hawkwind pull it off. [Nov 2019, p.55]

There’s a lot to unpack, endless fun to be had cataloguing his references from Three 6 Mafia to Octavia Butler, his consummate brilliance as a wordsmith and architect of flow. ... But it gets monotonous quickly. [Nov 2019, p.52]

Balancing the 31 minute title song is “Heart And Soul” – another surprise, in that it’s contemplative and piano based, written by former bassist Derek Spaldo, who, for geographical reasons, has largely taken his leave of the band to make way for Andy Cush. It’s the epic title track that carries the whole thing though, making One Step Behind another step beyond for these Peoples. [Oct 2019, p.52]

Whatever your take on Tibetan Buddhism, this is done with powerful sincerity and musical sensibility. The Albanian born Kodheli in particular does a remarkable job, and I defy anyone to listen to Anderson’s voice for an hour and not become a better person. [Oct 2019, p.48]

More so than her previous work, Carla dal Forno establishes a cold, dreary atmosphere as the ground for lyrics and delivery that strike a balance between doleful and cool. [Oct 2019, p.50]

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

Each listen evokes a different feeling. At times there is a feeling of contentedness. [Oct 2019, p.55]

Sonic Citadel is a showcase for titanic, incisive riffs, gnarly yet immediate, accessible. [Oct 2019, p.56]

Somebody’s Knocking is marginally more rockin’ than 2017’s uninspired Gargoyle – due to a slightly increased emphasis on guitar – but it doesn’t measure up to 2014’s Phantom Radio (or its EP companion No Bells On Sunday). [Oct 2019, p.63]

Unlike the alluring textural build-up that precedes it, this rocking culmination feels frustratingly empty, as if missing a voice. ... Eventually [on "8 Spring Street"] a groovy, almost accidental rock lick is dispersed by a radiant conclusion. ... [On "Galaxies (Sky)"] Picked and bowed strings sound pleasant like wind chimes, then painful like nails scraping across a blackboard. The guitarists’ incessant repetitions are reminiscent of Orthrelm’s OV until a lone guitar breaks the cycle by oscillating sharp chords, augmenting them to saturation. [Oct 2019, p.56]

This album finds itself wandering far too into pop territory, without the accompanying substance and adventure that made his preceding releases so refreshing. [Oct 2019, p.67]

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]

Patton and Vannier make a fine combination, vintage and modern, taking familiar sounds wonderfully elsewhere. [Oct 2019, p.58]

It’s dense and esoteric, but gorgeous. [Oct 2019, p.55]

There’s a sweetness, and an earnestness, driving these ecstatic breakbeat rave confections (you can hear the influence of Drew’s hardcore-heavy record collection too). In someone else’s hands that mood could feel forced, or just plain naff, but Resonant Body never does – if your hairs don’t stand on end for the daft euphoria of “Spin Girl, Let’s Activate” or the raw junglism of “Ecstatic Beat”, it’s about time you got off the dancefloor. [Oct 2019, p.64]

There’s a weighty sense of looking back and taking stock to Venus In Leo, while simultaneously navigating a present that’s growing increasingly alien to its protagonists. [Oct 2019, p.55]

Antwood hops between an arcade’s worth of genres, twiddling microprocessors to their squiffy, pixel-helicopter max later in that track, or embracing flute and some approximation of a banjo on “Castalian Fountain” before the Street Fighter beats hit. [Sep 2019, p.65]

Devour is unwaveringly formless; drills, drones and hysterical screeches become food for trauma. It’s frightening, at many points torturous, but not without emotional weight. The record mirrors what oppression really looks, sounds and feels like – no pool parties, ice tea, sunglasses and shiny colour palettes, just untamed agony, screaming and pain. [Sep 2019, p.60]

Code warms up as it winds down, as Malone is joined by frequent collaborator Ellen Arkbro for a trio of live recordings. [Sep 2019, p.56]

The End Of Radio’s cache of 1994 and 2004 John Peel sessions admirably bucks expectations even as it serves up multiple reminders that Shellac are a crack live unit equipped with airtight panic room ragers. And while singer/guitarist Albini takes care to toast BBC DJ Peel, who died weeks prior to the 2004 sessions, the charge here lies in hearing Albini, drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston improve upon and deviate from the studio recordings. [Sep 2019, p.62]

This album is not about re-using their old sounds. Most of the tracks offer something different and work well to complement the story being told. [Sep 2019, p.54]

He cites Frank Sinatra and Disney soundtracks as influences, and creates gorgeous music that paired with the vibrant visuals, disguises the horror within the film itself. [Sep 2019, p.56]

Not hating the LP, but not liking it much either, seeing it as a mid-level release covering all bases; political interludes, references to reparations and racism, interspersed with rap-frat boy antics. [Sep 2019, p.58]

They sound for good or ill like they’ve beamed in from psychedelic hard rock’s boom period too. ... Face Stabber is 80 minutes long, with two songs accounting for 35 of those minutes, and betrays mild hubris as regards their ability to jam interestingly. [Sep 2019, p.60]

Torche’s engagingly awry blend of harmony and heaviosity finds full fruition on Admission, an album you might feel somewhat ashamed for enjoying so thoroughly. [Sep 2019, p.61]

There's a mismatch between sound and vision here that forestalls true wonder or joy. ... A little more concision and concentration throughout could have made Guild of the Asbestos Weaver more effective. [Sep 2019, p.62]

An even deeper dig into the wound exposed on her debut. The album is drenched in divinity, its consideration of good and evil as polar concepts is biblical, elevating vengeance to a God-given imperative. Her classically trained voice deals in spiritual cadences, and commands gothic instrumentation of strings and drones. [Aug 2019, p.58]

This is folk music for the post-industrial era, which aspires to the condition of a true world music, not as a postcard from some Club Med of the mind, but as a dispatch from the front lines of both climate change and the extinction of animal species (real and imagined). Essential listening, and a real adventure in the undergrowth of the underground. Sit a spell in the shade of the Borametz. [Aug 2019, p.56]

Delivers on the forward-looking promise of The Art Ensemble’s motto: great black music – ancient to the future. [May 2019, p.61]

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

House And Land’s eternal music drone tendencies are more sparingly employed than their debut, but folkie staple “Blacksmith” is a glorious outlier to this end, Morgan’s shruti box a keening back and forth foil to a two centuries old tale of metalworker induced heartbreak. [Aug 2019, p.64]

he 22a label founder flexes his expansive musical influences across ten new creations. One of the most exciting tracks here is “Buffalo Gurl”. Dividing its time between earlier R&B and sultry jazz chords, it’s the pick me up you didn’t know you needed. [Aug 2019, p.65]

Things improve markedly when he plays to his strengths with the nuanced narrative of “A Boy Is A Gun”, but ultimately such moments [are] hard to hear over the pitiable “Puppet” and “Earfquake”, functional pop wisely rejected by Justin Bieber and Rihanna. When the narrative sags and his mind seems to wander, it just isn’t enough, no matter how stylish the trimmings. [Aug 2019, p.68]

“Simon Says” and “Pimpin’” prove she works well with Juicy J as long as he stays away from the mic. But “Hood Rat Shit” is the real highlight, a moment where for all the gory details her glee is more Dennis The Menace than Lil Kim. [Aug 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]

There’s a food theme to this super light and easy but lushly layered 1970s and 80s themed reverie. [Aug 2019, p.66]

“Stir The Sea” coasts on a choice yowly blues metal riff, but teased out slow jams like “Arcurlarius – Burke” are equally their forte. The vocal resemblance of Brian Markham and Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood helps crystallise a bubbling under comparison with the latter, although Dommengang aren’t in The Puppets’ league when it comes to ingenuity or, frankly, personality. [Aug 2019, p.64]

The music on Old Star is not black metal, stylistically speaking, but it nonetheless telegraphs Darkthrone’s cackling, sardonic grimness so as to transpose a blackened atmosphere into speed metal riff salad, epic/trad doom and frequent moments that call up Celtic Frost’s hallowed splicing of iron and velvet. [Aug 2019, p.64]

Limned in choirs, organs and brass, the languorous “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” flips dolour into something magical, and transcendent. Strip away that prairie pedal steel and loosen the seams, and “Darkness And Cold” would be the kind of standard Leonard Cohen might test drive, were he still with us. [Aug 2019, p.59]

He doesn’t strain in the falsetto passages and there’s no papering over the cracks in his phrasing. He’s as accurate and precise as he ever was, projecting even at low volumes. [Aug 2019, p.55]

Davachi’s early love of Bach pervades the initial section of “Perfumes I-III”. [Aug 2019, p.54]

Their third album Horizon is mellifluous and pretty, with a rolling, tumbling quality that feels like a downhill race. [Jul 2019, p.57]

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]

It joins Titanic and Big Thief’s UFOF (members of Big Thief are present) as one of 2019’s leftfield pop gems, a record created with no detectable consciousness of a wider scene but with a bedroom-wide sense of possibility. [Jul 2019, p.52]

Some tracks go on far longer than is comfortable, some peter out prematurely, some wander off in a direction that doesn’t immediately make sense. But even without the context of Troxler’s career, that’s fine. It’s obviously a personal record, with a distinctive sound palette, expressing some fairly profound and fun experiences. [Jun 2019, p.58]

The bouncy yet deadpan Italo energy of first single “The Girls Are Chewing Gum” sets the tone, with cosmic blasts and ray gun bleeps lending variation to the subsequent tracks. [Jun 2019, p.49]

Real world concerns – motherhood, self-growth, the responsibilities of adult life – are transformed into brightly synthesised fantasias. ... For a small scale project, Bamboo’s vision of pop feels pristine, a little utopia realised. [Jul 2019, p.57]

Sounds as if it could have been recorded in the city 50 years ago with a hotshot producer like Bones Howe or Curt Boettcher at the helm. ... “If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will” might be the best example of this delicate balance, with the track “Fools” being the second; even though that song sometimes leans into mid-1970s schlock territory best left to Boz Scaggs or Andrew Gold. [Jun 2019, p.65]

On their sharply delivered follow-up, they delve into darker realms of the genre utilising the combination of abrasive though sparsely used guitars and dub inflections to exhibit something similar to This Heat, or maybe even present day British noise rock collective Gnod. [Jun 2019, p.65]

The sonic centre of gravity is Ranaldo’s instantly identifiable guitar sound, and if you can’t get enough of that, this disc is for you. ... Pàndi’s work with Merzbow and Keiji Haino attests to his ability to hold his own in heavy company, but he restricts himself to sparse, black light coloration throughout this session. Urselli is a bassist and electronic musician as well as an engineer, and while he didn’t do any post hoc editing or overdubbing it’s likely that he is responsible for the recording’s rather amorphous final shape. [Jun 2019, p.63]

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]

A captivating fourth album from the Richmond, Virginia outfit that casts a woeful eye over Trump’s America. [Jun 2019, p.56]

Where Inter Arma employ Cascadian elements and bottomheavy tonalities in order to plumb the depths of the soul, Full Of Hell express the desire to not simply ponder life’s futility but to actively resist those feelings. [Jun 2019, p.56]

Droneflower is both the most persuasive release Nadler has put her name to since 2014’s July and one of Brodsky’s finest efforts outside of Cave In. It gestures at a beautiful future, should the duo choose to pursue it. [Jul 2019, p.52

Wiggs’s music works best when it sets out its melodic ideas, then takes its time subtracting elements until you’re left with a filament of what you started with, as on the stunning penultimate track “The Soft Stars That Shine”. [Jul 2019, p.58]

Real feast of words expressing a way more convoluted and realistic portrait of a conflicted British psyche. [Jul 2019, p.55]

In emotional terms Titanic Rising is immense – names like Annette Peacock, Linda Perhacs and Judee Sill come to mind, but only because it feels like so long since you’ve heard pop this epic yet unmannered. ... With tracks like the stunning “Something To Believe” lodging themselves into your heart with the sure knowledge that your relationship with this music will only deepen as the year unfolds. [Jul 2019, p.52]

Flamagra is still more accessible than either Quiet or Dead! and this is most likely due to Ellison’s choice of vocal collaborators. [Jul 2019, p.49]