While this record smacks of a youth spent listening to Blur, Oasis and their baggier forbears The Charlatans and The Stone Roses, its pool of influence is bigger.

As a solo artist who’s far eclipsed the output of his former epoch-defining band, no one can criticise Brown for trying. But he can definitely do better.

This gallopingly demented album comes off like a battle between two gargantuan, city-pulverising, sci-fi beasts engaged in an epic ruckus.

FSOL fans may not be impressed. But for connoiseurs of sprawling, loony progtronica, this other-worldly masterpiece is so far out you need a telescope to see it.

The second half is noticeably weaker than the first and the constant perkiness will grate if you're in anything other than a blinding mood, but there's plenty here to appreciate and it's perfect iPod fodder. [Sep 2008, p.46]

Frustratingly, flashes of the wired energy that got them noticed in the first place are few and far between.

This is some of the most focused, ferocious rapping that Lil Wayne has achieved in ages. Yet this still doesn’t necessarily result in a great album.

Vitalic's third album retreads the same gleefully maximal path as the records that came before it.

At times, ‘In Pieces’ still stands as a fragmented version of the songwriter and producer’s talents.

Sadly, The (I)NC have mistaken the ultra-safe sound of maximum R&B for the scream of revolution. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]

Eyes Wide Tongue Tied is more testament to subtlety and getting the basics right.

If you get a kick out of glorious, ragged old rock'n'roll, then you'll consider it essential.

If you can get past the earnest nostalgia and tweedy affectations, this isn't a bad album, just an average one.

The album had to happen, and for a band that are now ostensibly a touring entity, the measure of its songs is whether you’d want to hear them being played at, say, Field Day this summer. Slipped between their classics, they’ll do just fine.

Their taste in remixers still tends to the indie-friendly, but their imposing guitar squalls are repeatedly processed into a wildly different beast.

With their third album, bijou trippy-hippy souljazzfunksters Morcheeba have let it all hang out - and so all those half-formulated ideas they hadn't the guts to record earlier are here. It's

Sadly, it seems that with 'Audioslave' these people who were involved in some very exciting rock records in the 1990s, now seem happy to be making some bad ones from the 1970s.

Suit represents Nelly going smooth and seductive for an entire LP, and it is about 9,000 times as bad as that sounds. [2 Oct 2004, p.63]

The trademark tempo jiggery remains and it's all threaded together with airy production that underlines rather than overwhelms.

MS MR might lack some of the extrovert star quality of the acts Plapinger usually signs, but 'How Does It Feel' is an emotional ride that shows she has plenty of her own worth sharing.

There are moments when her A-Level Debating Club earnestness gets the better of her, but there's still three quarters of a great album here.

Ultimately 'Porcelain' proves that there's more to great bands than good musicianship. [10 Jul 2004, p.49]

Sounds like helium-voiced rockers Rush discovering a social conscience. [30 Oct 2004, p.65]

Ultimately, 'Killing Puritans' is well-crafted and commendably diverse, but somewhat joyless and cold. It aspires to social significance without having much serious to say, just as its creator casts himself as a taboo-trashing auteur rather than accept his true status as a skilled artisan in the commercial dance field.

Dr Alex Paterson and co are open for business again, plying their dubby squiggles, electronic bubblebaths and trippy soundbites to the next generation of cosmic travellers. It’s well worth a dip.

It’s yet more evidence that Drake’s art is suffering under the strain of his obsession with churning out as much music as is physically possible. And while 21 doesn’t have the same problem, both halves of the duo are responsible for an album that had the potential to be a classic, and missed.

It may not be game-changing and it'll be slaughtered by those who have a hatred of hipsters/fun. But it's harmless entertainment, and London gets full marks for what he's best at--experimentation.

It's an album full of the sort of drippy ballads and droopy soft rock that should induce an involuntary gag reflex in anyone under the age of 45.