Resident Advisor's Scores

  • Music
For 1,177 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Biokinetics [Reissue]
Lowest review score: 36 Déjà-Vu
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 1 out of 1177
1177 music reviews
    • 84 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Inspired by this sentiment, as well as Halo's time scoring a film for the Dutch art collective Metahaven, the more abstract aspects of Raw Silk Uncut Wood allow her to establish moods that are at once non-prescriptive and immediately visceral.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Morgan sings and raps on the LP, the first time they've used their voice on their records. That helps make Power their most accessible release. The singing is charmingly unpolished.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Her robotic sing-song is more unsettling than affecting, and the synth backing is never quite immersive. Spontaneity is often this pair's strength, but with more ambitious ideas it limits them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    On K.O their ideas are rendered in higher fidelity, and while not every track on here leaves a lasting impression, the album as a whole certainly does.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Byen could use more of Torske's signature sense of chaos. Listen to this one when it's time to unwind. Save the others for when you really want to visit space.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Essential isn't as essential as its title suggests, but don't let that stop you from seeking it out. It has more of the loveable chaos that once made Soulwax among the most important acts in electronic music. This time it's more controlled.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    His latest LP isn't nostalgic. If anything, Voids proves Deijkers is as comfortable in the here and now as he's ever been.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds, with its stylistic and thematic missteps, too often shakes us out of this trademark groove.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Some of these tracks are simply mind-melting.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Baha's production skills are clear across Free For All. Fans of instrumental grime artists like Slackk will find much to admire in the austere yet precisely constructed "Aliens," whose sense of space is uncommonly sophisticated.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    As Wet Will Always Dry proves, Blawan has pushed things forward by showing that the traditional techno template can still be sculpted in surprising new forms.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The mix of familiar sounds and snippets of intimate conversation makes for dance music that can feel deeply affecting, even as its spastic rhythms keep the energy at a constant high.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, SOPHIE's first proper album, presents her artistic vision in a purer form than anything she's done before. It is at times unapologetically poppy, beginning with the opening power ballad, "It's Okay To Cry." But it's also utterly, defiantly weird, flouting conventions of rhythm, composition and, perhaps most of all, taste.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    One of the album's key qualities is how Vynehall uses these musicians to enrich a sound that feels authentically his own. There are almost no dance beats on the record, but again, this feels like Vynehall moving farther down a path he'd already explored.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Her music can feel frustratingly fragmented one second and suddenly coalesce into something brilliant the next. IRISIRI is baffling and inspired in equal measure.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    serpentwithfeet is not a project that deals in restraint, but it's the mix of melodrama and newfound control that makes soil a great record.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trying to follow these songs as they unfold is a bewildering experience. But if you take Hassell's advice, and "scan up and down the sonic spectrum," taking in the moments of beauty as they occur, the album's title makes a lot of sense.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Dream House, then, is a mixed bag. But like with everything Âme and Innervisions put their name to, from the label to the performances to the Lost In A Moment parties, the good outweighs the bad.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Age Of is the sound of an internet addict sifting through the digital ruins, part of a culture jamming legacy for future generations, should they exist.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    As DNA Feelings dissolves to a close, a quiet kind of power lingers on.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    An album that's alluring in passing, but might not have you doubling back for a closer inspection.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elysia Crampton isn't always an easy listen. In fact, it's a little bit ugly at times. That intentional clash is exactly what makes her sound so compelling. She cultivates a juicy, electric tension by combining pieces that aren't made to fit evenly together.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    As Rausch shows, Voigt is still finding inspiration in his childhood memories and those old forests, subtly changing the way we see and hear them each time.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Murmurations is as rewarding for the listener as it must've been for the artists.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    A comparable transition on Singularity, between "Everything Connected" and "Feel First Life," is made to feel seamless, less like a change in circumstance than an ascent onto some higher plane. Some will feel completely immersed in that; others might simply admire it from a distance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    A series of instrumentals pivot and twist slyly, dropping hints of chord and lithe rhythm, but the bolder moments of the album's opening section aren't repeated. Instead it ends with a track called "Antiform," two minutes of hiss and vague metallic clanking. At first this is sort of a disappointment, but on repeat listens it deepens the album's appeal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    If the album doesn't always hit the same highs as the excellent Mondo Beat or Trance LPs, there's still plenty to love: the bending techno synth waves on "Modularity," the slowed-down Nitzer Ebb flashbacks on "Post Industrial," and the krautrock computer glitches on "Noise Floor."
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music For Installations doesn't offer a single listening experience: these tracks make far more sense looped, either alone or in small groups, to create a particular, sustained mood.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    It probably wasn't hard for Koze to look beyond house, because it never completely won him over. Knock Knock makes a case for others to do it as well.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This music suits periods of poignant, existential anguish.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Without much more than endless stretches of sound to hang onto, The Four Worlds occasionally drifts into tedium. The record's pair of vocal cuts stand out as a result, regardless of how effective they are.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Most of his LPs show his love of prog and fusion. In other words, they've been lengthy, ambitious full-lengths with an array of singles sprinkled throughout. Cerebral Hemispheres is exactly that. Whatever its flaws, it's a solid entry in a legendary discography.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    "Napoletana" got the Project Pablo ear for melody and signature sweet mood, but the sonics are pristine, every lead flourish and bassline wiggle perfectly placed. Elsewhere the mood deepens, and Project Pablo flavours his melodic groovers with rich atmosphere.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    The album channels Alva Noto's trademark sounds into jittery, funky music that loses none of the complexity of his more challenging work.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These tracks are rescued by gorgeous chords and melodies, which give otherwise grey arrangements rich shades of melancholy and optimism. Avery had a knack for a hook back in the days of Drone Logic, too. His attitude to the dance floor might have changed, but the important stuff hasn't.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The music sometimes suggests inventive new directions, but the strange, tonal weirdness of the vocals doesn't always sit right, and ends up sucking out the individuality from Pharrell and Kendrick Lamar alike.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Jaar's samples might not seem obvious, but 2012-2017 can feel generic. Most tracks are just looped soul samples fastened to heavy kicks. They might be uplifting if they didn't feel so utilitarian.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Path's final moments are fleetingly hopeful, conveyed through faintly chirping birdsong. But once that warmth fades, the album's unsettling mood is what lingers. It's one of Essaie Pas' finest efforts yet.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Still Trippin''s sound design too often lacks textural depth, and it sometimes undermines otherwise good songs. The hip-hop tracks are a mixed bag as well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Whether you like Long Trax 2 depends in part on how much you hear this message. ... Long Trax 2 runs the risk of monotony instead. But that seems to be Long's message: we're stuck, sorrow repeating without end.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The LP's initial tranquility gives way to a perkier second half, transitioning from sugar-dusted melodies to a fusion sound that feels more live.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Where Providence showed that he can still make ambitious statements, this EP is a simpler pleasure.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    All That Must Be is a smooth journey from start to finish, but it too often feels familiar. In spite of a new cast of collaborators, little about the LP improves on its predecessor. What sounded unique from FitzGerald three years ago isn't quite as satisfying this time around.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mullinix's production chops have improved enormously in the 12 years since Two/Three—today, he sounds more like a proper hip-hop producer than a quirky crossover act. Listening to Three/Three, though, you might miss that crossover a bit.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    What's remarkable about the LP is that most of its 11 artists--whether newcomers, collaborators or longtime fans--all make tracks that sound like natural extensions of the originals.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    There's an intense and cautious feeling to Sakamoto and Nicolai's approach, keeping everything at a constant volume and introducing changes only gradually. Glass is good for close listening, trading narrative for pure texture and mood.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Tejada being Tejada, the machines aren't done away with entirely. Amid the orchestral strings and irregular drums you'll hear the rich melodic layers and electronic processing that have long been Tejada hallmarks. His stamp is all over this typically classy if unsurprising album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    A graceful continuation of her catalogue, Air Lows has an alluringly frosty charm.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    There are few surprises here, but much of it is enjoyable.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Melody is remarkably well-rounded. It's not a techno album, it's not a classical album and it's not an ambient album, but it at times resembles all three.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    It's a rare example of him writing and singing lyrics, and it's endearingly youthful.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Because of its occasional bursts of rhythm and melody, Post Self is one of the more accessible Godflesh albums.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Lex
    As esoteric as the use of language translation software might seem, Doran and Carlile work their magic on these dialects and accents.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The band's mix of disco, funk, new wave, dancehall and West African music would in most hands sound muddled or derivative. What happens instead is music filled with life and imagination of the kind described by Stuart Evans, the cofounder of the Green Door Studio, who once likened Golden Teacher to seeing "a robot dancing with a leopard."
    • 84 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    It may not have the broad appeal of past Steffi albums, but that was never the point. It's modern-day braindance for listeners willing to find meaning from within.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    At over three hours of half-lidded drone and ambient, Rainbow Mirror is one of the quietest Prurient albums, yet also one of the most demanding.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Other M.E.S.H. records--including his 2015 debut LP, Piteous Gate--were narrow beam; Hesaitix is the full spectrum.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Klein's work exists entirely on its own terms. It's a vocalist and her piano presenting a form of singer-songwriter music that doesn't need words to get its feelings across.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Afternooners is deceptively complex for soundtrack music.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    The album's mix of chipmunk samples, sound shards and tender melodies sounds contemporary, but it fails to bring out the ingenuity and energy of Carnell's best music. On Value, he bares his soul, but we don't learn much.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    His latest LP, Prins Thomas 5, is a less extravagant take on space disco. ... The LP's calmest moments are its standouts.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Dunn fulfills the title's promise by exploring other styles, though most fall squarely within the "old-school house" category. ... Other digressions don't fare as well. ... Still, when My House From All Angles hits, it hits hard.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    The producer's peacenik ambitions are never far away, though, and the more naked they become, the more his music loses its depth and subtlety.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    while it's not perfect, Les Fleurs Du Mal is a brave leap into the dark, a place so suffocating, black and unknown that it bears revisiting just to see what you might encounter on your next descent.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    With enough listens, you'll even catch yourself humming its melodies, but the ideas come close to feeling generic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    By faithfully spotlighting the range and craftsmanship of Japanese computer game music, Diggin In The Carts pays effective tribute to the place from which that pride stems.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The dark liquid that once represented Björk's emptiness becomes a source of love that gushes and flows through her. Where once it felt suffocating, here it feels open and endless.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Though Arpo draws from Seaton's private life, its heady daydream vibe is open and accessible.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Clarke sounds reinvigorated here. It's clear he feels he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    But even if it isn't brilliant all the way through, Belief System is still an achievement. 12 of its tracks are as electrifying and giddy as you'll hear all year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If The Inheritors was the sound of the former trance artist undergoing a spiritual rebirth, The Animal Spirits is as close as he's come to transcendence.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    As you would expect on a 17-track compilation, in places the experiment really works and elsewhere it probably could have been left alone, but there are enough killer moments here to make it all worthwhile.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    DJ-Kicks lays out each of his influences piece by piece, almost like listening to a deconstructed Lone album. For fans of Cutler's singular music, it's an essential entry in his discography.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    It never feels like Dreijer is playing catch-up. Plunge is the natural next step, a realization of impulses that have long lain dormant, or at least unrecognized.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    The Centre Cannot Hold is about flux, about the flow of change through cycles of destruction and serenity. It's a more hopeful record than you might think.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Fabriclive mix was much more than the sum of its parts, but to have some of its best tracks available in this way makes for both a solid album and a chance to wonder what you could build with them yourself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While it's called The Kid, the LP shows Smith has matured as an artist.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Colleen's most immediate and affecting LP to date.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    At a little under 40 minutes, Screen Memories is a concise LP with few faults. Its sequencing brings out the variety on offer.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Gamble has said that Mnestic Pressure is a response to our turbulent times, and an attempt to confront the world rather than offer escape from it. That intention comes through, but the key to the album's brilliance lies elsewhere: in the way it balances fun, challenge and surprise more deftly than anything he's made before.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Tenderness is exciting because of how simple and distilled it is, and how memorable its songs are even after just one or two listens.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Patience for Take Me Apart validates her audience who saw her as the future from the start. You won't soon break free of it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Though far from perfect, New Energy is one of Hebden's most intimate and personal albums, with all the idiosyncrasies that come with that.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    With each transition, you can tell Agius has taken the time to get the stitching just right, which allows him to cover a broad range of sounds and textures without derailing the flow.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On "Drop Down," Lunice's bass stabs align nicely with Le1f's vocal stabs. With a few more tracks like these, the LP would have made for an even more dramatic return to the spotlight.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love What Survives won't make Mount Kimbie household names, but it finds them in a new creative space that suits them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Lyrics like "I can't live in a world / that won't keep its shape," on "Through Your Atmosphere," sung by Faris Badwan of The Horrors, can be interpreted as a man taking a more clear-eyed view of everyday reality, rather than escaping into nightlife's transient peaks. Butler can still deliver those peaks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Despite falling somewhere on the noise music spectrum, there is an odd sense of calm throughout Lack. Daijing presents a dream, the plot of which, after waking, you can't quite piece together. Its walls of sound become etched onto your mind's surface. It's a vision that lingers in your psyche.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Speeed finds transcendence in loudness and distortion, making noise not so much to express frustration as to heal.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Bicep have never been afraid to go for broke, and their debut album is all the better for it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    LCD Soundsystem have made a better album than they've ever done.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It lacks the depth, intrigue and smirking beauty of the group's best work—a product, presumably, of Blunt and Copeland's peculiar chemistry—but doesn't replace it with anything fresh. For all that, it's not bad.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The music on Warmth is among the duo's most powerful, and several tracks from the LP could come alive in the right kind of DJ set.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aas Good Time shows, his skills have caught up with his ambition.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Rembo, a moreish and hedonistic album, shows an artist able to master many machines and styles.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A little less effects-led ebb and flow (and a touch more structure) might have made Square One more vibrant. The album's absorbing collection of mood pieces, though, are rewarding and evocative enough to make it worth your while.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Years into his Daphni project, Snaith can still make familiar dance music sound fun all over again.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Without a straight house or techno beat to be heard, fabric 94 is a meditative set from a DJ with more sides than most.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Theory Of Colours works equally well as a collection of chill-out jams or club tracks for DJs. It's a dance floor album that isn't all that concerned with the dance floor, which makes it a pleasure to listen to from front to back.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Halo's records have always posed tricky questions, and Dust features her most complex and engrossing yet.