As inspired as it is, The Return Of Dr Octagon is no sequel. [#269, p.44]

There's such a freshness to Brett Sparks's music that few comparisons can be made. [#269, p.42]

Probably his most accessible work to date. [#269, p.45]

What stands out across Rather Ripped are the remarkable melodic turns throughout. [#268, p.63]

What's distinctive about Son is that it is more layered and inventive than Segundo and Tres Cosas. [#268, p.58]

[By "We Dream Free"] it all starts to loosen up and swing a bit more. But even here it ends up treading water. [#269, p.42]

Herbert still seems like the same oddball he ever was. But the first half of Scale underlines how much fun there is to be had in playing the misfit. [#268, p.56]

Most of these songs will startle you at some point. [#268, p.50]

Packed with energy and furious with ideas. [#269, p.45]

There's more here than nostalgia, with a range of styles and influences incorporated into Cabic's deceptively direct arrangements, and an afterglow that's testament to his talents. [#269, p.53]

This is a remarkably rich and complex achievement. [#267, p.52]

At first Songs And Other Things sounds simple to the point of throwaway, but gradually gives up its secrets after a number of plays. [#266, p.67]

A beautifully realised collection, Around is remarkably ego-free -- perhaps too much so. [#266, p.67]

There's less sense of puzzle and struggle than we're used to with Aphex Twin... but Chosen Lords is certainly meticulous and absorbing. [#266, p.51]

Introduction serves both as a reminder of Thompson's often overlooked sense of humour and an exploration of certain cliches endemic to the pop song, but most importantly, it just rocks. [#266, p.63]

Nearly a quarter of a century after its initial release, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts remains a beautifully finished work, despite its complexity: every line and fragment in place, every surface and effect neatly separated out. [#266, p.56]

A clear triumph, a dense work destined to grow thicker with each listen. [#266, p.65]

A high-level concept album that never wastes a note. [#266, p.59]

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

As you try to sift through the dense crosstalk of twittering beats, your ears are beguiled ever deeper into Konono's rhythmic threshing machine. [#253, p.52]

These are what protest songs can sound like, feel like and taste like in the 21st century. [#257, p.52]

This music's shoreline is made up of instrumental delicacy and subtle arrangements, which burble, froth and foam washing over the listener with an insistent but gentle force. [#257, p.61]

Buck's refusal to recognise musical boundaries and his instinctive ability to pick out elements that work together--sometimes surprisingly so--have given us a genre-bending album of high artistic vision, spit and grit. [#258, p.52]

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

Some of these tracks have a stark, haunting beauty that marks them out as perfectly realised compositions in their own right. [#258, p.68]

A richly nuanced album, and eloquent in its restraint. [#257, p.57]

Callahan is a true original. [#255, p.65]

Hebden is a voracious consumer and producer of ideas, although there is sometimes the feeling, amid all this glut and gusto, that they're ideas for idea's sake. [#256, p.54]