A breathless, party-starting exploration of the connection between the Congo and cumbia. [Mar 2025, p.91]

Producer Hal Willner has dug deep to improve on [the original Rogue's Gallery] and reckons he has a happier collection as a result. [Apr 2013, p.88]

bare-knuckled rhymes and eerie sing-song hooks deliver the trademark thrills, though Muggs' lysergic touch is often missed. [Apr 2022, p.89]

[A] mix of old themes and new forms. [Nov 2015, p.96]

Amok Achieves a seductive unity of purpose which is all the more impressive for stemming from the advent of additional personnel. [Mar 2013, p.84]

Isla feeds on Steve Reich mathematics, Radiohead dread, African desert grooves and ECM northern melancholy to travel into a new, chiming cavernous sound-world that is both exotic and hypnotic. [Nov 2009, p.100]

In less accomplished hands it could have spiraled into pastiche. Instead, by being so dedicated to the past, Wilson has shaped a delicious future. [Aug 2011]

An admirable attempt to try something genuinely different has compromised an otherwise fine album. [Oct 2011, p.94]

Unity Band is now a scintillating platform for Metheny's fretboard wizardry. [Aug 2012, p/94]

Wald is a continued move in more playful directions. [Oct 2015, p.95]

The spaciousness foregrounds the band's relentless pulse and frontman Timo Kaukolampi's incantations. [Apr 2016, p.93]

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

Yet for all the invention and undeniably impressive groove control, there are lulls when their meditative update of '70s fusion stars Lonnie Liston Smith, Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers slicks into something wallpapery, doodly and unselfconsciously by-numbers. [Aug 2018, p.95]

MacIntyre's creativity is clearly in full flower. [Nov 2018, p.90]

Zietsch's music upholds the sparse, haunted tone set by Lana Del Ray, the minimalism so acute that each chord change often lasts for just one stroke of the strings or ivories. [Jan 2024, p.88]

With barbed lyrics and messy, thrumming guitars a Honeyblood speciality, things never get overly pretty on thes 11 tales of "horror, lust and laughs," while new Honeyblood drummer Cat Myers, successor to Shona McVicar, has bedded-in nicely. [Dec 2016, p.90]

Easily their most accessible album, Algiers is also Calexico at their most expansive and very, very best. [Oct 2012, p.94]

The music... still has the from-odd-angles of Smog records, but now there's exquisite light amid the shade. [Jun 2007, p.114]

Willie makes a hell of a job reshaping an array of Sinatra classics. [Nov 2018, p.93]

Blood pressures doesn't quite take charge of their joint destiny as decisively as it needs to, the cohesive chain smoking cool do their earlier albums diluted by sudden shifts in tempo and mood. [May 2011, p.104]

This eco-themed, sci-fi clad concept album bristles with electro-pop sounds (Light Years, the OMD-ish title track) yet retains Gab's furrowed-brow lyricism and singular approach as he forges his own space within this changing landscape. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Building on the fresh inventiveness of 2017's Uyai, this new album cheerfully chops up and reassembles genres in a way that is seriously funky. [May 2019, p.89]

There's nothing here to shock or surprise, but that's a major part of the attraction and Erasure remain a guiltless pleasure. [Sep 2020, p.91]

Ghost are soundtracking a fresh, modern hell. [Mar 2007, p.99]

Slime & Reason practically revels in its juicy sense of freedom. [Sep 2008, p.112]

Fallon tempers the rancour with expertly crafted tunes. [Oct 2011, p.97]

Gigi Masin bathes us in pure sunlight for 90 minutes. Emotional, but never over-wrought. [Feb 2020, p.91]

A succession of sprawling mini-epics--throbbing with energy, insidious basslines and pulsing chords--prevail. [Mar 2016, p.95]