Wintery designs warmed by the likes of Bitchin' Bajas layering instruments, voices and electronics. [Feb 2017, p.99]

A delightful demonstration that sticking to your guns can be well worth it. [Mar 2017, p.95]

Without sounding like a faintheart, it comes as a relief that this album features a crop of high quality songs and instrumentals playing with dazzling finger-picking. [Mar 2017, p.90]

It's hard to fathom what such a talented songwriter needs to indulge her inner karaoke quite so far. [Mar 2017, p.97]

A thing of dark, possessed beauty. [Mar 2017, p.96]

The most satisfying Melvins-related release since Nude With Boots in 2008, Crystal Fairy also makes for a fine entry-point into Teri Gender Bender's dark, gnarly and theatrical oeuvre. [Mar 2017, p.97]

Deep immersive dream landscapes of calm and uncertainty that seem to push at the boundaries of space and time. [Mar 2017, p.97]

The resulting work is an entrancing inner space voyage through shapeshifter drones and radiant electronic nebulae. [Feb 2017, p.96]

A vast swirling dystopia of euphoric white noise. [Mar 2017, p.97]

The tenth album from the fabulous Sadies is up there with the best. [Mar 2017, p.93]

With Memories Are Now, she understands exactly when to use the bridle and bit on these wild, wise songs. [Mar 2017, p.98]

The 12 songs here are mostly wild, loud, anarchic and irreverent but hardly ever subdued. [Feb 2017, p.96]

Everywhere ageless rock'n'roll brio comes freighted with careworn sagacity. [Mar 2017, p.93]

If nothing else, this yearning, realpolitik-infused road movie of an album is one to point to the next time somebody pronounces there are no decent protest songs any more. [Mar 2017, p.92]

Elaborate motorik grooves, dense, post-rock complexity and intricate electronic experimentalism. [Mar 2017, p.94]

A music from within. [Mar 2017, p.93]

Hypnotic channels occasionally, degrade into ruts, but more often this is a fabulous freakout. [Mar 2017, p.98]

Pissed Jeans might deal in uncompromising, near-unlistenable noise, but in a world gone increasingly crazy, their scourging hi-jinks make more and more sense. [Mar 2017, p.94]

Black Star Riders have delivered a record befitting their pedigree. [Mar 2017, p.94]

This short but sweet EP is her love letter to the Lone Star state. [Mar 2017, p.93]

A crop of high quality songs and instrumentals played with dazzling finger-picking. [Mar 2017, p.90]

Their natural domain is bouncing festival stages, but, with pounding beats and attitude, this is the perfect way to usher people there. [Mar 2017, p.94]

Sports is more circumspect and subtle. Yet when the hooks of White Pebbles, Bad Rockets or Syncing In slyly take hold, the effect is indelible. [Mar 2017, p.97]

Mehldau sounds at home on folksy rambles like Tallahassee Junction while Thile imbues the jazz standard I Cover The Waterfront with a desolate tone, his plaintive vocals accompanied by suspenseful mandolin tremolos. [Feb 2017, p.90]

These are top space-jams. [Feb 2017, p.90]

Undoubtedly one of his strongest. [Feb 2017, p.97]

Sampha's solo debut sits somewhere between the ghostly avant-soul if Frank Ocean and James Blake's emotionally wrought electronica. [Mar 2017, p.90]

Understated, lovely. [Feb 2017, p.98]

When the album's latter half descends into cluttered abstraction, Delicate Steve measures up as disappointingly slight. [Mar 2017, p.96]

Rueful, ruminative and ultimately hypnotic, Garden Of Ashes sings a welcome blues for the coming apocalypse. [Mar 2017, p.97]

Annual waft of immersive drones, synthscaped romance, glassy yogic remixes. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Lush and emotive. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Jardin retain the EP's satisfyingly minimalist approach. [Feb 2017, p.92]

Ultimately Prisoner is tethered by sturdy, familiar images of tightropes and trains. [Mar 2017, p.94]

One of the year's best. Which year? Any year. [Mar 2017, p.92]

[A] disarming, relatable debut. [Mar 2017, p.97]

It feels more like 10 individual songs than an album. [Mar 2017, p.93]

Thoughtfulness never rocked so hard. [Mar 2017, p.96]

Little Fictions is more upbeat in tempo and outlook an sounds like a band given a jolting shot of B12. [Mar 2017, p.88]

The faithful can still but with confidence--these are polished performances--but others may weary of a long journey round past glories. [Feb 2017, p.96]

The Pace of The Passing is, ultimately, oddly inscrutable, a musical ghosting, seductive, meticulous textures elegant compensation for the lack of a strong centre. [Feb 2017, p.90]

This eponymous offering once again demonstrates his effortless, and seemingly innate, ability to make the familiar feel fresh and enticing. [Feb 2017, p.90]

A rump-shaking whole. [Feb 2017, p.99]

The DIY disco maverick channels vintage R&B and thrilling dancefloor pop of an '80s Madonna/Janet/TLC stripe, in a voice that's crystal cool in up and downtempo settings. [Feb 2017, p.99]

It's dense and intense digital compositions enter your headspace with stealth or, at other times, occupy it with an assault of breathless beats. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Stellular serves up a lovely, liberated tonic in dark times. [Feb 2017, p.93]

This follow-up is more considered, though occasionally suffers from one too many mid-paced hard rock standards. [Feb 2017, p.90]

Michael Chapman sounds just fine exactly where he is, deep in the knowledge of what is coming, but finally aware of how far he's come. [Feb 2017, p.88]

Despite the presence of a few additional collaborators, much in Half Japanese-world is as anticipated. [Feb 2017, p.94]

Closure is more substantial than that implies, carrying on the more direct approach of 2005's Disaffected. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Retour Au Champs De Mars oscillates malevolently with throaty, Death Star bass synths; like much of Iris, it uses a covert approach to win you over. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Here the formula is still fresh and potent, with punchy production, twisting song structures and sweeping choruses. [Feb 2017, p.96]

This covers collection moves with mysterious grace. [Feb 2017, p.90]

It ranks right up there with 2010's exquisite Black Sands. [Feb 2017, p.98]

From the spooked synth attack of hellish 12-minute opener A Natural Satellite inwards, they do little to dispel those fears, robust drums and dirty organs underscoring the swaggering menace of Grace Jones and The Murder of Maria Marten. [Jan 2017, p.98]

Remarkably moving. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Languid piano, sleazy Rickenbacker, intellectual Lothario. Lethal. [Oct 2016, p.96]

An unexpected sound-palette of smouldering beauty, often lit up by sumptuous orchestral arrangements from one Sebastian Hoffmann. [Jan 2017, p.101]

Still crossing the many rivers of doubt, hope and despair that have faced him since his American Music Club days, Mark Eitzel's tenth solo album can nonetheless throw out surprises. [Feb 2017, p.96]

Trials & truths is a diffuse experience. [Feb 2017, p.94]

The jazz roots of George Clinton's Mothership, Ra's visionary music now sounds simultaneously joyous and bereft, a possible future now consigned to the past. [Feb 2017, p.107]

Patchy seven-song set. [Feb 2017, p.105]

When they crank out breathless melodic euphoria like Darkened Rings, originality seems a pointless objective anyway. [Feb 2017, p.98]

Soft Error's background in film and TV composition is the foundation for the opulent, operatic electronica on Mechanism. [Feb 2017, p.95]

For his fourth album, which fuses poo, techno and retro-futuristic disco with deftness, direction and a thick slice of humour. [Feb 2017, p.95]

The eight-song concoction is a joyful, lush and fittingly grandiose suite. [Feb 2017, p.93]

There are 14 songs here, without chaff. [Jan 2017, p.94]

He's at his best, however, when he takes it all very seriously indeed. [Feb 2017, p.96]

His tendency to overemote can prove distracting. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Future Politics' galvanised vision takes myriad forms. [Feb 2017, p.95]

I See You is more nuanced and upbeat than their previous records but, perhaps shrewdly, it enhances their blueprint rather than completely redrawing it. [Feb 2017, p.91]

If lyrics about mushrooms, unicorns and frogs are your jam, Coyne & Co. of course have you covered. The Naked Slaves and Amazon strippers do feel tiredly exploitative. [Feb 2017, p.93]

There's something romantic about this quiet, thoughtful music, but there's a sad quality to it too. [Feb 2017, p.94]

It's pleasant enough, it hardly transcendent, and feels--whisper it--ever so slightly old fashioned. [Feb 2017, p.95]

The results are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. [Feb 2017, p.95]

This is a pure genre exercise but done well. [Feb 2017, p.92]

This radiantly executed effort is also, curiously, Childish Gambino's most anonymous. [Feb 2017, p.92]]

A bold and celebratory affair. [Feb 2017, p.90]

Rich, understated and resonant. [Feb 2017, p.97]

There are tidings aplenty, but little comfort and even less joy. [Feb 2017, p.97]

As with previous Immersion material, analogue synthesizers provide the musical focus here, sporadically infused with electric guitars, often played in the oblique, angular style that Wire Fans will instantly cleave to. [Feb 2017, p.98]

A weave of sublimely lysergic folk-pop. [Feb 2017, p.99]

[John Renbourn & Wizz Jones] playing with such joy, skill and passion that unequivocally shows they were both still on to of their game, successfully marrying two contrasting guitar styles. They both sound good vocally, too. [Oct 2016, p.95]

Stand Up blueprinted the sound that would carry Tull ringmaster Ian Anderson and his troupe through the next decade, [Dec 2016, p.105]

Aloe Blacc swaggers with a charming insouciance on C'est Bon, which is an accurate description of Red Lips itself. [Jan 2017, p.94]

All this may seem so exhaustive as to verge on the absurd, but fear not. It is the most fascinating document imaginable. [Dec 2016, p.100]

Heart Song dips deeper into drama, with additional electric guitar and heavier drums adding chiaroscuro to her patented slowburn. [Dec 2016, p.89]

At least 50 years out of date, and wonderfully so. [Jan 2017, p.98]

One listen, maybe two, will be enough for most. [Sep 2016, p.93]

The true centerpiece is Tiny Wood's autobiographical 20-minute suite, Blue Remembered Hills. With pastoral inserts and thematic crescendos, it's evocative and emotionally raw. [Jan 2017, p.98]

From the moment she opens her mouth here: her gargley vocal, set to fortissimo, summons dusty trails, rattling trains and late-night boozing. [Jan 2017, p.99]

If it doesn't reach the sustained invention of John Coltrane's odyssey in E, Africa/Brass, Youngs' talent for wringing emotion from base materials remain undimmed. [Jan 2017, p.102]

Rousing, otherworldly, outlandish. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Definitely one of 2016's better achievements. [Jan 2017, p.99]

Regardless of how they're captured, these songs still have the capacity to enthrall. [Jan 2017, p.113]

Once inside, you discover fresh wonders. [Dec 2016, p.104]

It's hard to imagine a more comprehensive collection from such an important group. [Dec 2016, p.98]

A bruised, heartsore set. [Jan 2017, p.104]