The rave and kosmische elements converge in some ways and pull apart in others, and Blumenfantasie is at its weakest is where the vibes are simply too misaligned. The combined effect the rhythms surging forward and the melody luxuriating outwards feels like trying to drive a car in too low a gear. [Jun 2025, p.65]

This slippery set ends with Fras gazing into a void. The lyrics of "Das Göttliche Kind" were written using AI, and they find the singer chanting (in German) a strange messianic hymn. [Jun 2026, p.58]

Into Oblivion is fairly unalloyed, high octane trad-thrash/NWOBHM fare with robust riffs, galloping bass drum pedals and a mean streak deep enough to cut a planet in half. There is an audience for Into Oblivion that will gladly mainline it, well, into oblivion. [May 2026, p.58]

While the individual tracks prove undistinguished as a whole, the chiming microtonal piano contrasting with a constellation of gorgeous synth work on "Orbiting Meadows featuring Clark" is a haunting standout. [Apr 2026, p.61]

It's not that the album is bad per se. Like Venom, it delivers for an appreciative fanbase. It's just that they could do this shit in their sleep. [May 2026, p.58]

It feels like a self-conscious attempt to approximate jazz without ever quite committing to it, no doubt partly due to the fact that Flea's horn chops are somewhat rudimentary, favouring languid lines that could generously be seen as resembling Chet Baker at his most unbothered. .... It's hard not to feel the project lacks any of the liberatory qualities one would hope for from a genuine jazz statement. [Apr 26, p.50]

Although some of its best tracks are undeniable, PLAY ME's signs of the times are for established Gordon-heads only. [Mar 2026, p.50]

Zu's first studio album since 2019 is not without moments of minimalism or subtlety, yet all told it makes for a draining 80 minutes. [Mar 2026, p.60]

They're still worth rooting for just about but mileage -may vary. [Mar 2026, p.54]

His words remain relatively vivid but his voice is old, his stories nostalgic, occasionally tired. A baffling decision to sprinkle a handful of past recordings through the tracklist reveals he can't compete with his own 20 year old offcuts. .... Otherwise he's generally best when choice sparring partners inspire sparks of life. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.83]

Moments of levity arrive in "Cherry Blue", "DIS" and "Waterfalls" but overall the album's evenhanded pacing creates a strange unease. It seems governed by the temporal logic of its samples, as if Lopatin were intent on preserving their integrity rather than reshaping them. The emotional resonance that usually grounds Lopatin's work feels somewhat displaced by this formal precision. [Dec 2025, p.54]

Some will delight in her richly creative studio experiments, while others may find it too vague and discursive, despite several strong cuts like "Devotions" and "Think About It/What U Think?". [Dec 2025, p.63]

The Alchemist's patented gangster music soundtracks, full of moody textures and synths, can sound quite placid. It's up to Armand Hammer and co to bring rough tension and focus to an album that often feels overly atmospheric, despite standout cuts like "Dogeared" and "Super Nintendo". [Dec 2025, p.63]

Each turns in a fine performance, yielding some decent tracks, but they fail to generate the kind of frisson that would make this more than a historical curio. [Dec 2025, p.55]

Hitting (unintentionally?) a vein of 1990s retro, evoking Beth Orton/Andrew Weatherall/William Orbit and inventing Highlands Balearic. Campbell only really pushes the envelope on a couple of tracks scribbling fluorescent acid bass through "Weeping Roses" and stitching AFX escape velocity linear drum programming under "220Hz". [Sep 2025, p.63]

Lateral is far less remarkable than Luminal. .... It’s hard to discern Wolfe’s impact on what sounds like a typical Eno record. [Jul 2025, p.52]

Cultural cherrypicking goes with the territory of global pop stardom, but here the disappointment comes in the underutilised signature sounds of both lead producer Koreless and FKA Twigs herself. [Mar 2025, p.61]

The tracks succeed more where they move away from those compromises towards experiments, extremes of play, texture, tempo, density or sparseness. [Mar 2025, p.53]

It’s off to a shaky start – for this writer at least – with the lugubrious dirge of Procol Harum's “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” – and I wouldn’t mind never hearing The Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park”, which follows, again – but The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset", Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play” and Tomorrow’s “My White Bicycle” all receive tasteful, stripped back renditions. [Dec 2024, p.54]

The result is a predictable major label mixed bag, overburdened with string arrangements and backing vocals. Even so, it’s an enjoyable album, with standout tracks like “Outubro”, a melancholic Nascimento original with vocals by the leaders; the plaintive “Morro Velho” featuring Orquestra Ouro Preto; and “Get It By Now”, a composition with a wonderful unexpected harmonic reversal. [Nov 2024, p.65]

In spite of the album’s inconsistency, it ends on a high note with the sugary Eurotrance tropes and ear-popping lushness of “Love Me Off Earth”, where guest vocals from New York based vocalist Doss convey an otherworldly melancholic euphoria before being pitch-bent into the stratosphere. [Nov 2024, p.60]

With 16 short compositions across 40 minutes of running time, many of these pieces feel sketchy and structurally underdeveloped. Yet, there is a pleasing rawness to Bowness’s DIY production, which skews towards electronic pop, flavoured with post-punk and industrial. Bowness’s honeyed voice brings a measure of vulnerable gravitas. [Nov 24, p.55]

The title of “Raindrops Cast In Lead” offers a brutal, evocative image, but any horror it tries to convey seems to get waylaid somewhere down the line by a cheery motorik chug. NO TITLE’s music matches the blunt force of its name when it makes room for discomfort. On “Broken Spires At Dead Kapital” strings play the broken fragments of a melody over guttural bass drones and the effect is genuinely unsettling. [Nov 2024, p.52]

The fluttering modulations within the wordless, thrumming “AM/PM” and the panning wafts of fuzz in “Crucial Years” offer welcome variety, but much of Realistic IX feels like a diversion into territory ill-suited to the duo’s strengths. [Sep 2024, p.53]

He still lacks emotional commitment as a rapper, offering weakly swaggy bars like “I’m gonna make a billie like I’m Eilish” on “Talk My Shit”. Honeyed melodic shadings like “Dadvocate” and the emo rock oriented “Lithonia” are more compelling. [Sep 2024, p.60]

The second half of the album is centred on aqueous loverman grooves, albeit funnelled through his hard yet tender persona. “Plan B” is a decent R&B track. .... Too bad, then, that Ghost prefaces his lusty adventures with too many knuckleheaded cuts. [Jul 2024, p.54]

Despite their brevity, each track articulates a complete piece; they’re eventful miniatures, not sketches. But while they are sufficiently eventful to engage, the lack of someone to play off of deprives this music of the sense of an emotional stake that arises from White’s decisions to challenge or facilitate someone else. [Jun 2024, p.57]

“Dreamfear” sticks to the artist’s more conventional penchant for collage-style dance music. .... “Boy Sent From Above” is less convincing, clumsily layering Auto-Tuned vocals over the kind of schmaltzy synth one might hear in pop outfits like Yazoo. [Mar 2024, p.54]

The music is gentle but ominous, and it’s hard to be sure which impression they want to linger. “Read The Room” and “Teleharmonic” are more conventional rock songs; the former in particular could have come off any 21st century Radiohead album. [Mar 2024, p.52]

This is an overgrown jungle of music; ideas bury one another, making it all the more striking when a pure, clean line manages to weave its way through the tangle and rise, like a flower turning to face the sun. [Mar 2024., p.46]

“Airavata” falls into kitsch, with Atwood-Ferguson on electric guitar and violin/viola. The album’s often better than that, however. .... In all, a mixed picture. [Dec 2023, p.42]

Atlas is entirely ambient, a slipstream that moves in slow motion using dense atmospheres to confuse the listener, who is only momentarily permitted to take a specific position. The closing composition “Earthbound” guides us back towards the ground, but any sense of spatial awareness is already too skewed and you are left to wade your way through the remnants of sonic fog. [Sep 2023, p.56]

“Playing Chess” brings us to a smug, detached and ever so slightly creepy close. Big set pieces aside, however, there are gems aplenty amid the dross, from his rapport with Burna Boy on the menacing “Masculine” to a rare moment of meditative vulnerability wondering “Crazy how a murderer used to be a cuddler” on “Comeback”. [Oct 2023, p.60]

If narcoleptically bland neo-soul is your bag, you’re in luck. A parade of guest singers and rappers do nothing to inject any interest. [Sep 2023, p.69]

If Magic 2 reveals that Nas can definitely still rap, it also continues his unfortunate run of uninspiring production choices. There are enjoyable moments, like the 50 Cent assisted “Office Hours”, the ominous string driven force of “Motion”, and the mesmerizing penmanship on “Slow It Down”, but overall the album falls short for an artist of Nas’s stature. [Sep 2023, p.68]

A definite mixed bag, Pink Bikini is best when its songs feel fully formed in their own right, rather than semi-scripts set to music. [Aug 2023, p.56]

The results are a little underwhelming. Lyrical themes are repeated throughout the album and the feeling that something is missing compared to the projects that came before is hard to ignore. This might be due to having become accustomed to hearing Mike as part of a duo; but also that since 2012 he has been rapping over El-P's beats, which are a big part of RTJ's appeal and an effective platform for his vocals. [Aug 2023, p.54]

This is pleasant but forgettable music, dissolving the instant it hits the eardrum. [Jul 2023, p.52]

The closing title track is a full ten minutes of ethereal synth drift. Tucked between these are a couple of neat facsimiles of the kind of mellow handclap bounce heard on Dance Floor Corporation’s scene-setting 1990 Ambient House compilation. But there are some clunkers too. [May 2023, p.54]

Let’s Start Here has a middlebrow sensibility, with plenty of grooves Calvin Harris would approve of. Its best moments come when he unleashes his oddball trill, an evocative sound that bland sentiments like “So surreal, the vibes I feel” can’t quite diminish. [Apr 2023, p.68]

Optical Delusion’s seven different guest vocalists yield wildly differing results, ranging from hits to misses. [Apr 2023, p.67]

93696 is their sixth to date and, in many ways, it still sounds like music made to illustrate a theory. [Apr 2023, p.56]

The pattern repeats elsewhere: the big showcase tracks like “Never Forget” and “Let Me Be Great” sag a little under the weight of their pomposity, where deep cuts “Imposter Syndrome” and “IDGAF” just get on with showcasing her untouchable cool. [Nov 2022, p.73]

He raps in a stereotypically ‘white’ voice shorn of regional inflections, and the contrast between his deadpan vocals and the beats ranges from startlingly imaginative (the hammering blapper “Fundrazors”) to anodyne (“Indifferent”). [Sep 2022, p.57]

Best not to think too deeply about it. [Sep 2022, p.57]

It’s a shame the tracks are so short – after a while it all starts to feel frustratingly sketchy and cramped. [Sep 2022, p.56]

Danger Mouse constructs decorative, melodic beats that don’t really bang, resulting in a hazy, slightly funky and psychedelic quality reminiscent of late 1960s pop. ... It’s frustrating to see him [Black Thought] shut off that aspect of his creativity in favour of “bars as hard as Angola’s”. ... Cheat Codes is compelling enough, but one wonders where it’s all going. [Sep 2022, p.42]

The long germination period of the project is an indication of the duo’s perfectionism, which unfortunately results in songs that are overworked to the point of blandness. [Aug 2022, p.57]

Introspective, emotionally charged pieces such as “Father Time”, “We Cry Together” and “Savior” provide high – or jarring – points on the record, but elsewhere there are periods of lull absent on previous efforts. ... As sonically impressive as his latest album may be, his approach to the topics under discussion doesn’t feel sufficiently thought out. [Jul 2022, p.48]

The issue with Pusha’s fourth solo album isn’t his insistence on portraying a heartless American striver as if he’s the rap game Al Pacino – it’s that he’s unable to consistently conjure the menacing intensity that enlivened his work with with twin brother Malice as Clipse. [Jun 2022, p.52]

While 2016’s Painting With was a jumble of interesting ideas lacking direction, Time Skiffs is the opposite: a paint by numbers indie pop affair completed using a quirky palette. While paring down to a more focused format is welcome, the music is suffocated by anachronisms, both within AC’s own and wider pop contexts. [Feb 2022, p.46]

Ping-ponging between krautrock, deep funk, free jazz and pre-techno synth workouts, they could have easily released it as three short, more coherent LPs; some credit, at least, ought to go to Soul Jazz for indulging them in these spartan times. [Jan 2022, p.72]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

They have edited a tightly bound collection of six monstrously loud tracks with titles like “Cuts On Your Hands”, “Starres” and “Dark Inclusions” that read like they have been torn from some eldritch book of spellcraft but are in fact informed by the cosmos and attempts to make contact with alien intelligence. Unfortunately any insight regarding this is hidden behind the pleasingly crushing avalanche of guitar shrapnel, thundering bass and percussion that muzzle Baker’s already clouded vocal. [Jun 2021, p.54]

At times this soundtrack feels like a library music album with umpteen variations of the same cue, at different speeds and edit times – but the piano-led “Strodes At The Hospital”, the guitar solos and growling synth bass of “Hallway Madness” and the many moods of “It Needs To Die” are moments of fresh interest. [Dec 2021, p.61]

Topped off with signature twin guitar harmonies, the album is often a blast, if a bit unbalanced overall. [Oct 2021, p.58]

There’s far more US punk in this music (you’re often reminded of The Descendents and The Dictators) than UK punk and, considering we live in the age of Bob Vylan, much of the album sounds too retrograde. I would have loved more of the angriness, and some quality control on the inherent defeatism/smirk of band name and album title. [Aug 2021, p.65]

Colors II is musically all over the shop, offering an experience that’s akin to being on a sonic rollercoaster that’s scarily still under construction. But for all that it’s still one hell of a ride! [Sep 2021, p.62]

In classic Simz style the journey’s more fulfilling a little further down the rabbit hole. ... But ultimately it’s hard to escape the comedy of such grand ambition also spawning the corniest voiceover since Prince invited Kirstie Alley to vandalise his symbolically titled 1992 album, and a cringe so intense it threatens to undermine everything.

While Gunn gets in some liquid licks, they’re brief asides, never trips that’ll take you somewhere on their own, and they’re often folded into gleaming layers of keyboards and harp. While the drums occupy considerable sonic space, they are frustratingly unemphatic. ... He has never sung better. However, every time he solos, one wishes he’d keep going a bit longer. Here’s hoping that Gunn can figure out how to showcase his voice without doing so at the expense of his instrumental gifts. [Sep 2021, p.52]

While some tracks here showcase his incredible touch, others are straightforward hiphop loops that might have been built using a Tony Allen sample kit, and the album as a whole lacks conceptual or thematic unity. [Jul 2021, p.60]

Most of the songs here work in pairs, or groups of three, as if Elfman couldn’t decide where to finish an idea and instead offers a few variations on a theme, diluting the punch of each individual track. ... The best tracks here are the ones where Elfman acknowledges his own limits and fears, without hedging or flippancy. [Jul 2021, p.59]

A curious lack of urgency pervades. [Jun 2021, p.66]

At her best she lives up to the statement of intent on “This Sound” where her style is pitched as physical, literal but metaphysical, mystical and medicinal. ... But by the time she implores us to “do yourself a favour and eat some shrooms”, she sounds dangerously like just another hippy with too much faith in her medicine. [Jun 2021, p.

The speech modelling software used to articulate the narrative generates a somewhat grittier, odder voice than your average online speech synthesizer, but that doesn’t keep the album’s expository moments from being momentum killers. The passages where artificial voice gets fed into some typically squelchy MOM electro beats are considerably more fun to listen to. [Feb 2021, p.52]

Boiling down the complexities and contradictions of the countryside to a succession of stiff choral hymns, a chance to understand and connect is lost. [Apr 2021, p.55]

Fading out, they leave the impression of an album too ambitious for its own good, but offering moments of real awe. [Apr 2021, p.52]

Vol 3 finds Sean C at the helm, resulting in a batch which sounds clunky at times, but works perfectly at others. [Dec 2020, p.66]

There’s a silliness and lightness to CEL that is often charming, but can stray into tweeness, and its lack of a deeper pull doesn’t necessarily warrant repeat listens. An interesting conceptual exercise but unlike a lot of the krautrock it is reminiscent of, nothing to stir the heart or body. [May 2020, p.50]

It pains me to think they’d record something so vacant and unneeded. Maybe 30 years ago this would have been a different album. But here and now, Two To One is a case of too little, too late. [Jan 21, p.82]

Things heat up a bit on “Misanthrope Gets Lunch” and “Oblivion Sigil”, when the shrill bursts from Kyp Malone’s synthesizer and Marcos Rodriguez’s guitar face off against one another like Irmin Schmidt and Michael Karoli of Can did on Delay 1968, but sadly, those are the only flashes of excitement to be found on the release. [Oct 2020, p.59]

As per usual after listening to an Oh Sees release, I’m impressed by the execution but left cold and hollow by their studious style. [Oct 2020, p.59]

Where the jazz content is foregrounded however, the music is less convincing. ... Garcia’s tone bears more than a passing resemblance to Kamasi Washington’s, with a similar paucity of harmonic complexity and grandstanding solos conveying an earnest seriousness that mistakes widescreen emoting for genuine emotional content. [Sep 2020, p.52]

A polished version of the group’s classic style propels this concept, but their invigorating eccentricity disintegrates as the album progresses. The opening title track feels familiar, with its quintessential electric riff, but this vibrancy quickly breaks down with songs like “Reduced Guilt”, whose tense harmonies drive a constant sense of unease. The record feels rote for the band, until it reaches its enigmatic conclusion. [Sep 2020, p.49]

Far from being some utopian unity of the opposites her work has summoned – beyond binaries – she’s still clearly experimenting and sometimes failing. [Aug 2020, p.48]

There’s a kind of manic, excessive inventiveness here, as if the song needs just one more bridge or a doubling of the refrain to sustain its ideas. Yet on closer inspection they are often internally samey. [May 2020, p.53]

Apart from a few works for chamber instruments, which have a similar pleasing air of fakeness to Michael Nyman’s faux baroque cues for Peter Greenaway, these sketches all have uncertain origins and textures. [May 2020, p.66]

The too brief, purely instrumental “Sensational” is the best track, with suggestions of Weather Report’s jazz rock expansiveness. But the general impression is gimmicky and lightweight – effects without causes. [May 2020, p.66]

The production is flawless. ... But the obvious big tunes fall flat.

It’s hard to tell if there’s irony in all the anachronism but the record’s nostalgic to the point of kitsch aesthetic feels out of touch. [Apr 2020, p.67]

Grave Of A Dog presents a challenges to the listener because although it succeeds as a well-executed project, there is a disjunction between form and content. Hayter in particular seems to gesture at a narrative, but its precise nature is left unclear. [Apr 2020, p.60]

It seems telling for an album about self-discovery that the most convincing tracks are those where he’s openly panicking over his identity rather than those where he’s found an uneasy peace. [Mar 2020, p.61]

There Is No Year is a mixed bag of disparate musical styles, played out as an intelligently composed accompaniment for Fisher’s complex political rhetoric. [Mar 2020, p.58]

Wire’s music is characterised by unusual structures and perspectives, an approach largely absent from Mind Hive, the post-punk group’s 17th studio album. The most prominent themes here are political, with mixed results. [Mar 2020, p.57

Musically the project is weighed down by Haigh’s hugely uninteresting and one-dimensional piano playing. ... Haigh’s ear for electronic texture does do some of the heavy lifting for which his piano playing is not equipped. [Feb 2020, p.47]

I’m always holding out hope for more of the genius heard on Doris but it’s unfortunately absent on Feet Of Clay. [Jan 2020, p.74]

Ultimately Plantasia is often hard to love for the music itself. It was released several years after more evocative pieces for the Moog had already been released – from Perrey and Kingsley, Dick Hyman and even Garson himself – but it remains beloved as an amusing curiosity first and foremost, and for good reason. [Dec 2019, p.66]

The result is an often awkward assemblage of trial and error decisions that either allow the tracks to keep their era’s verve or attempt to punch things up in a modern sense, where the cut-off date is the mid-90s. ... All is not lost, though. It’s insightful to hear where Davis was heading with sleek arrangements such as “Give It Up” and “Maze”. [Dec 2019, p.65]

He’s hung up on Jesus rather than pneumatic women. It’s hard to tell if that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t seem like a regression either. ... An album with zero fat, dense in at least three senses, two of them positive. [Dec 2019, p.60]

Leaving Meaning has all of the reassuring turgidity and tortured self-importance devotees have come to expect plus a cast of name contributors (The Necks, Ben Frost, Baby Dee, Anna von Hausswolff among others) for that vital essence of “Well, if they’re working with him, he’s probably OK, right?” [Dec 2019, p.57]

It’s definitely a mixed bag, but pays off with “The Dawn” in which Lipstate’s guitar exhales in tandem with a spoken admission of small hours frailty. [Dec 2019, p.53]

There’s a lot to unpack, endless fun to be had cataloguing his references from Three 6 Mafia to Octavia Butler, his consummate brilliance as a wordsmith and architect of flow. ... But it gets monotonous quickly. [Nov 2019, p.52]

Somebody’s Knocking is marginally more rockin’ than 2017’s uninspired Gargoyle – due to a slightly increased emphasis on guitar – but it doesn’t measure up to 2014’s Phantom Radio (or its EP companion No Bells On Sunday). [Oct 2019, p.63]

This album finds itself wandering far too into pop territory, without the accompanying substance and adventure that made his preceding releases so refreshing. [Oct 2019, p.67]

Not hating the LP, but not liking it much either, seeing it as a mid-level release covering all bases; political interludes, references to reparations and racism, interspersed with rap-frat boy antics. [Sep 2019, p.58]