Rampen feels more expansive than much recent output – it’s certainly longer, but its panoramic character is neither purely durational nor new for the band. Their affinity for a kind of psych folk balladry has been clear since at least as early as their covers of Lee Hazlewood’s “Sand” (1985) and Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew” (1987). Rampen calls both to mind, but the work it’s most consistent with is 1996’s Ende Neu, an album of latent possibilities in the pit of a creative block. [Jun 2024, p.48]

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

“Casino High” has all the makings of a future garage summer banger. It’s skippy and infectiously danceable, employing vocal samples in a thoughtful way. The first of three collaborations on the album, “Real Hot N Naughty” (featuring actor and performer Felix Mufti) is a love letter to queer dancefloors. Flirting between trance and less chaotic hard house, it injects a tongue in cheek dose of fun into proceedings. [Jun 2024, p.61]

Though still harbouring a sense of fun, there’s a maturity felt throughout Dennis. [Jun 2024, p.61]

Indebted to various traditions of US rock, from resonant folk and blues to elegant indie pop, its understated songs are looser and more varied here than in her music with bands like Helium and Ex Hex, as if serving a different, affirming purpose. [Jun 2024, p.61]

Finlay Clark and David Kennedy ride a similar wave to improv duos like 75 Dollar Bill or Orcutt/Corsano, recalling their own thrilling work on 2020’s Fast Edit. The sliced mayhem of that set is missing here: instead, the group seem to have spent the years working on stitching themselves ever more tightly together. [Jun 2024, p.58]

Funeral For Justice comes a step closer to channelling an authentic Mdou Moctar live experience. The title track wastes no time to demonstrate the unfettered power on tap, bursting from silence into a series of electrifying riffs and fervent claps, never letting up. [Jun 2024, p.53]

Timeless and considered, Lives Outgrown is a complete, but still complicated, portrait of the intersection of grief and life. [Jun 2024, p.50]

Though some of the genre mixing does feel abrupt rather than fully integrated – for all its charms, “Asha The First” is a bit overstuffed – the album largely works, unified by Washington’s unwavering vision and exploratory spirit. [May 2024, p.58]

“Working The Ditch” and “Smiler” sound like they could come from the same sessions as Melvins’ 1993 major label debut Houdini. But there are atypical twists in “She’s Got Weird Arms”, whose new wave-ish verses are broken up by cascades of bug-eyed dissonance and “Allergic To Food”, which reminds this listener of “Forkboy” by Al Jourgensen and Jello Biafra’s side-project Lard with the tempo lowered to mid. [May 2024, p.50]

The acoustic guitar led instrumental “Underwater City” being an exemplary diversion into acid folk. Elsewhere “Re-generate” and “The Black Sea” are a couple of highly enjoyable (albeit slight) space jams, and exit track “Stargazers” regrettably bails out just when it starts to take off. [May 2024, p.60]

Something In The Room She Moves feels impossible to completely pin down. [May 2024, p.52]

Lines like “History repeating itself” and “She never lost hope/When life was so hard” feel a bit generalised – the sentiment might have benefitted from a more nuanced or poetic approach. Overall however the decision to give the heroic and celebratory a wide berth is a sound one, making way for something much darker and more unsettling – a reminder that doing the right thing in times of widespread fear and conflict is seldom easy. [May 2024, p.49]

Akoma is unpredictable without any recourse to smartarsedness, Jlin keeping everything sounding fresh and spontaneous, as though both she and the listener are on a journey of innovation and discovery. [Mar 2024, p.48]

Its ten tracks are heady, contemplative, spacious with a sense of impending loss. [Mar 2024, p.56]

Walls Have Ears is a postcard from Sonic Youth in their salad days, with newly recruited drummer Steve Shelley cementing a core line-up that would endure until disbandment 26 years later. [Apr 2024, p.75]

Despite the sonic shifts – from grinding electronic roars to manipulated vocal samples and field recordings to shimmering harp to desolate piano – it remains unified, because of Ayewa. [Mar 2024, p.50]

Hard edged synths and massive, crunchy beats lend righteous swagger to Gordon’s bleary guitar squalls and jetlagged sprechstimme. [Mar 2024, p.46]

The sounds can seem a bit insubstantial when compared to his earlier work, like 2018’s Soil, where serpent angled to suffocate the listener in raw emotion. But he eventually finds a nice groove that yields rewards. [Mar 2024, p.59]

It’s gorgeous stuff, but whether the future she imagines is entropic or hopeful, it’s hard to say. [Mar 2024, p.57]

I dig a conceptual framework but to be honest my enjoyment of Rooting For Love has little to do with earthbound concerns and everything to do with sheer escapist pleasure in form and grain. [Mar 2024, p.52]

All the ingredients required are present: sonic invention, surprise, risk taking, fun and adventure. [Mar 2024, p.56]

Although this record is Rhys’s most polished to date, he does squeeze in moments of strangeness – subtle and paired down, bubbling beneath lush production and melodic arrangements. [Mar 2024, p.52]

An air of devotion does indeed hover over this music, filtering through the stately intonation of Anima Brass and the a cappella singing of The Macadam Ensemble, as well as the quiet concentration of Malone’s own playing. Yet it emanates not from the rarefied air of religious sentiment, but from the composer’s passionate dedication to sound itself, and her respect for its potential capacity to realise, as the title of the concluding piece puts it, “The Unification Of Inner & Outer Life”. [Mar 2024, p.50]

[“Vapours”] is brilliantly executed and, in places, genuinely frightening. Yawning drones and hissing percussive swells open the gates to chaos in “Of Shadow And Substance”, an epic 21 minute churn of layered tape loops, cello and bass strings, harp and percussion. .... The piece is more haunted and atmospherically dense than its predecessor, however both pieces share a remarkable sense of immediacy.

It’s one of the most vibrant, purposeful rock records of the year, as Ambro balances the sickly weariness of this day and age with a triumphant jubilation of simply being alive. [Dec 2023, p.54]

With unobtrusive, yet telling contributions from friends including Meg Baird, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, she conjures up a bittersweet sense of location and changing times through six pieces that are subtly complementary, in their character and impact, meriting comparison to the finely nuanced ambient soundtracks of Angelo Badalamenti. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.96]

It’s a startling new sound she has here, featuring voices of an unplaceable vintage, piano, bells and chains that carry centuries’ worth of dust and shadow, the songs a distorted and twisted take on gospel that’s sometimes slurred like a warped record, sometimes scarifyingly stark and always tightroping between redemptive faith and avant garde oddity. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.92]