This release is less spooky than its predecessors, and more earthy. ... Phantom Orchid” pulses with the austerity of the botany lab, but in places, Entangled Routes is possibly the first Ghost Box release that sounds almost…sexual? [Dec 2021, p.61]

A terrifically engaging collage of incompletion and one of the most blazing returns of 2021. [Dec 2021, p.59]

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

Glover’s voice is intimate and unguarded, as if every song were being run down for friends, but it’s hard to imagine them sung in any other way, without losing the burr of nostalgia suffusing them. [Dec 2021, p.58]

His bringing the audience in to the creative process only intensifies its authenticity and demonstrates his desire to emulate the endeavours of his family, his own version of working in a team that shares the labour of shifting piles of dirt and stone, or raising the foundations of a new building. [Dec 2021, p.58]

Springtime’s music feels free, but never carefree, full of spontaneity, acidity and momentum, sputtering in a thousand different, noisy directions at once. [Dec 2021, p.56]

Although Lee Perry’s name will probably sell more copies of Guide To The Universe, New Age Doom are what makes this album worthwhile. ... With everyone involved recording their parts remotely, the result is impressively coherent and live-feeling. [Dec 2021, p.54]

Achieving a powerful balancing act between beauty and terror throughout. [Dec 2021, p.52]

The depths of the production reflect the depth of concept, as Morgan makes vertical connections between personal relationships and queer and Black histories. ... Water is a palpable step forward from a versatile, ambitious artist. [Dec 2021, p.52]

Hurley was simply ready to make a new record, which includes a cover of The Louvin Brothers’ gem “Alabama” and a remake of his gorgeous “Lush Green Trees”, and that’s what he did. It’s a gesture that shouldn’t be taken for granted. [Dec 2021, p.50]

Fortunately, aside from this piece “Let Me Sleep”], the banal Clark-adjacent string spiccatos of “The Horror” and certain sections that drag on and on, this is compelling, bodymoving and occasionally inspired music. [Dec 2021, p.

A general choogle drives most of the songs, the production tends to suppress any heavy metal impulses, while the dense arrangements also neuter Dawson’s gnarled improvisational guitar style, so extremes are essentially cancelled. It’s the most normal sounding record I’ve heard from either party, but the singer can’t help but entertain even within these surprisingly prim surroundings. [Dec 2021, p.48]

Charged with relatable warmth and an emotive, human energy that’s close to 2003’s For Octavio Paz or a less melancholy version of 2005’s School Of The Flower. [Dec 2021, p.47]

The overall effect is that of a mutated being, inexplicably functional but undeniably alive, slowly making sense of the alien world in which it finds itself. [Dec 2021, p.44]

Gay’s latest is a deep dive into memory but emerges as a triumphant celebration of a past and future antilineage, uniquely conjured from the inner complexities of an artist not tortured by the past but possessed by it. [Dec 2021, p.50]

The addition of Morgane Diet’s seraphic vocals provides an emotional access point, filtering a grand cosmic aesthetic into a relatable and human scale. [Nov 2021, p.64]

One of 2021’s most impressive and poignant examples of progressive rock? Damn the torpedoes, let’s go with that. [Nov 2021, p.62]

A polished affair which approaches doom metal with something like a pop sensibility – the melodies bring to mind Deftones or the accessible end of UK bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, though Esfandiari’s strain of gothic gloom, for all its theatricality, feels less superficial and more the product of genuine internal turmoil. [Nov 2021, p.62]

Pungent and atmospheric. [Nov 2021, p.62]

It would be very hard to see Y In Dub as completing the project of taking dub into white punk, but taken on their own, separate terms these tracks are deep and engrossing explorations of a set of possibilities few others have dabbled with. [Nov 2021, p.57]

The gauzy textures that she creates on New Decade do capture something of crystalline stasis. It’s only the rhythmical structure of the “Snow And Pollen” – two electronic pulses that sound, one, two, one, two – that connotes a diffuse sense of menace. [Nov 2021, p.57]

The 20 minute centrepiece “Water Meditation” is a startlingly realised suite of wonder that flows from fragmentary shards of sax, voice and synths to stealthy dubby menace through to a collage of impacted noise and shattered beats that’s one of the most emotionally affecting delineations and reimaginings of resistant Black art you’re likely to hear in 2021. Essential listening, and the same can be said for Open The Gates as a whole. [Nov 2021, p.53]

There’s a lot to wrap your ears and brain around, and it can make a strange load of sense if you allow yourself to be carried away by its relentless stream. [Nov 2021, p.52]

At over 22 minutes, it’s ["The Offender"] one of two side-long pieces and could just as easily have gone on for an hour, or all night. ... The short pieces are just as good as the long ones. [Nov 2021, p.52]

It’s darkly, powerfully feminine, exquisitely produced and haunted as fuck; maybe the best record she’s ever made. [Nov 2021, p.50]

Written on a piano and organ instead of guitar and featuring a 24-piece ensemble of strings, winds and brass, -io is the purest realisation of Fohr’s pop sensibilities. [Nov 2021, p.50]

With the stylistic anchor lifted, the 12 cuts sound progressively more deranged as they blossom into alien dance floor mutants from bubbles of heady synths, deliriously processed voices, absurd squiggles and reversed beats. ... It’s difficult to imagine a better debut for ex-DFA head Jonathan Galkin’s new imprint FourFour. [Nov 2021, p.48]

There’s a heavy Eddie Henderson vibe here, propulsive, warm and engaging, and by the time the album closes on the jagged street vignette of its title track, it’s evident that BBNG have gone back to find a new future, a new lease of life. [Nov 2021, p.48]