On The Orb's 18th album, Paterson and current sideman Michael Rendall continue wandering these new (old) avenues. [Nov 2025, p.56]

The album is a present, absorbing companion. Recorded in just three days, the album’s six tracks have that elusive quality of feeling both spontaneous and meticulous. [Aug 2025, p.46]

LSD is so concentrated, so packed with ideas, that on initial listenings, it's most efficacious when taken in moderate doses. .... Jim and co-producer Torabi have created a best fit from an abundance of available music, and this version of the band does Tim Smith proud, serving his singular vision with brio and love. [Oct 2025, p.61]

The album's seven winding tracks, inspired by 1980s country, fit squarely within the impressionistic ambient country movement. But while its influences loom large, the album finds its strongest footing when familiar structures dissolve. [Oct 2025, p.53]

The throttled mayhem that spits from the record is in keeping with the legacy of the aforementioned punks [Dead Kennedys and Misfits], as well as DC hardcore pioneers Bad Brains. [Oct 2025, p.54]

Broken Homes And Gardens is not his best record, but it is an absolutely pure statement of where he was at for the last few years, and is a sheer pleasure to hear. [Sep 2025, p.49]

The First Family isn't for Sly & The Family Stone beginners, but it gives aficionados a fascinating glimpse of their origin story. [Oct 2025, p.72]

They've come back very strong. [Oct 2025, p.65]

You know what you're getting with both artists, but they have created a sequel that surpasses its predecessor. [Oct 2025, p.65]

Here we have songs about pet dogs, home invasions by molluscs, and boxing documentaries, threaded together by moments of humour and a command of language that few other rappers can match. [Oct 2025, p.64]

A cheeky and addictive listen. [Oct 2025, p.64]

Abomination mostly tweaks the speedy punkoid templates minted by early Wire and Black Flag. It's a challenge to find novelty within this terrain, and one wishes Dwyer had tempered the yobbish bellowing. But "Sneaker" succeeds thanks to Hellman's exhilaratingly woozy bassline and Dwyer's florid synth solo, and after launching in a "Mr Suit"-like blur "Fight Simulator" shifts into a Can-like mantra with sped-up "Vitamin C" beats, guitar scree and warped synth. [Oct 2025, p.59]

Built around Richman's distinctive voice and guitar style, Only Frozen Sky Anyway is typically hook-laden and heartfelt. [Oct 2025, p.50]

Byrne's Who Is The Sky? has a similar foundation of strong songwriting, but with bigger production and instrumentation. [Oct 2025, p.50]

Sometimes being broad hits just as much as a sharp observation. Allbarone is a fun balance of the two. [Oct 2025, p.51]

A few guest vocalists pop up in vivid cameos. .... But the guests are mere added attractions. Some of the most compelling tracks, like "No Death No Danger", "Mala Sangre" and the closing "Covenstead Blues", are all her. .... She creates her own world of sound, and her own context, and we must enter cautiously, never sure what we'll find but ready for anything. [Sep 2025, p.50]

$ilkMoney's new album might well be his best to date. [Oct 2025, p.65]

Its comforting gloom draws you closer and closer, extending an invitation to lose yourself that could easily be mistaken for escapism. But this music is one of presence, not absence. [Sep 2025, p.61]

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]

Given the remit of this collection, you’d be forgiven for anticipating a jumble of two-bit Human League and Gary Numan rip-offs. Thankfully this unexpectedly odd compilation delivers a whole lot more. [Jul 2025, p.68]

The more we listen, as the images and phrases and grooves swim past, we're glimpsing pieces of a private puzzle, an exhilarating series of riddles with no answers. [Sep 2025, p.50]

Let God Sort Em Out, their first LP in 16 years, might be their richest to date. [Sep 2025, p.50]

Slikback pours the joy of a new marriage and baby into this collection of chaotic and innovative tunes. [Sep 2025, p.58]

Edging closer to the creation of a pop kingdom realised on her own terms. "1/17" is "Castles In The Sky" for the hyperpop generation, whose nostalgic weakness for Y2K club classics is well served here lyrics like "Poetry and nude selfies, love the way that you know me" hit hard. [Sep 2025, p.62]

Every Open Mike Eagle solo album reliably unfolds like a tear-stained indie comedydrama. Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is no exception. .... “I dropped the cellphone, and it got ran over”, he says on “OK But I’m The Phone Screen”, just one of several nice twee bops. [Aug 2025, p.62]

The resulting blast of raw energy successfully sucks the air out of the room to leave a hard rock sound that has been stripped to the bone – in a studio performance that deserves to be lauded as the UK equivalent of The Stooges’ Metallic KO aftershock. [Jul 2025, p.61]

Channeling her raw, unflinching energy with the help of a host of collaborators, the album incorporates rap, live instrumentation and a range of bpms, murmurs and screams, forming an aural documentary of sorts. [Jul 2025, p.53]

The Fateful Symmetry is a fittingly freewheeling and bold final work from a singular artist and performer. As the songs swoop from industrial disco to piano balladry, Stewart is a steadfast, dramatic and charming grand dame – as commanding and provocative as he ever was as frontman of The Pop Group, and as sentimentally wounded as a torch singer. [Jul 2025, p.60]

A typically lightfooted zip through the ironies and anxieties of the modern world. If “Do Things My Own Way”, “JanSport Backpack” and “Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab” don’t become setlist staples, then I’ll eat my hat (and yours). [Aug 2025, p.59]

Through it all, Tutti’s voice hovers above the tempo, clear, cold and mysterious like northern lights over a rave. Mantras that resonate inwardly speak also to an exterior side. 2t2 holds its structure like a living system. [Aug 2025, p.58]

Small images ground these drifting, elusive, probing songs, providing moments of recognition and stillness, before they push off again into the mist. [Aug 2025, p.54]

Yowzers is Gay’s most cohesive work to date, while losing none of its predecessors’ spirit of adventure. [Jul 2025, p.59]

The sounds produced here move beyond music and closer to language. These machines seem to speak, generating a kind of emergent syntax. Osmium resist genre and resolution, channeling collapse into rhythm and rhythm into form. [Jul 2025, p.58]

Objects scraped, rubbed, manipulated and plucked from their natural environments for the richness of their attack, decay and luxurious resonance here produce a superbly rich, tuneful and intricately rhythmic music. [Jul 2025, p.56]

The oozing synths of “Umbra” slide deliciously in and out of phase to an ethereal keening. .... Elsewhere, she hacks and revolves samples into chittering humus – an overripe garden of imagination, bustling with enthusiasm, circuitry and life. [Jun 2025, p.64]

It’s smooth and contemplative at times, punctuated by cinematic ruptures and ambient textures that trail behind El Shazly’s elastic vocal phrasing. Her voice, processed and layered with care, frequently emerges as the central narrative device and quickly slips between intimacy and distance. [Jun 2025, p.58]

Luminal perhaps would have been more impactful as a release by itself – all but the most devoted Eno completists should prioritise it. [Jul 2025, p.52]

One thing that makes this music feel so good is the way it puts such skilled players through their paces. You can almost hear them rising to the challenge. [Jul 2025, p.52]

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]

Founding Melvins members Buzz Osborne and Mike Dillard join forces with electronic musicians Void Maines and Ni Maîtres (aka Gareth Turner) for a lively and experimental session. Both guests are let loose on “Vomit Of Clarity” where, by way of introduction, they squeeze out an involved synthesized sound collage – an effectively intriguing interval to herald in the main event. [Jul 2025, p.61]

Demilitarize was created in the wake of near-fatal illness – latent tuberculosis triggered by a brush with Covid – and is deeply reflective and personal. [Jul 2025, p.53]

An album that marries similarly weighty existential themes with a deft, almost playful sonic curiosity. Though its lyrics grapple with capitalism’s erosion of humanity and the psychic toll of modern life, the music itself is anything but oppressive, being loaded with irresistible hooks, kaleidoscopic colours and confident, warm, kinetic production. [Jun 2025, p.50]

Map Of A Blue City is the closest Ribot has gotten to a singer-songwriter album. It suits him. [Jun 2025, p.53]

Thanks undoubtedly to their established friendship and chemistry, With Trampled By Turtles sees Sparhawk and the band bring an effortlessness and consistency to material of varied origin, from old songs never recorded with Low, to newer compositions. [Jun 2025, p.59]

Sonically, there is not much new ground to be found on Holograms On Metal Film as Stereolab are essentially revisiting the sonic pathways they carved out in the past. Yet the messaging in these songs is as timely as ever. [Jun 2025, p.49]

An impeccably crafted sonic exploration of environmental destruction and renewal, whose haunting soundscapes evoke the textures of fire and ash. Many tracks work with rhythmic, noise shaping filters, lending a throbbing, breathing, convulsive quality. [May 2025, p.66]

It feels a little overstuffed, though the effect on the listener isn’t boredom – more enjoyment at an impressive speaker taking up a little more time than expected. [Jun 2025, p.61]

In truth, what World most resembles is Mclusky circa 2002 – the same explosive energy, the same alarming imagery and sarcastic tone, but directing their exasperations in different directions. [May 2025, p.56]

Chrystia Cabral follows up her 2021 prog meets chamber pop album The Turning Wheel with an unexpected but delightful mash-up of late 1990s radio sounds. [Jun 2025, p.60]

An immensely satisfying album which repays multiple listens. [Jun 2025, p.53]

“I don’t know why I’m up here”, Hval ponders amid ebullient synths on “A Ballad”. “Lay Down” envelops her voice in a fluttering of strings and muted pads as it sifts through painful memories: “By the bed in palliative care/You had bled through your jeans” . Elsewhere, “The Artist Is Absent” paraphrases Marina Abramović, transforming presence into absence while juxtaposing low key ontological devastation with banging beats. [Jun 2025, p.52]

Things get weird and heavy with “Gimme Bread”, tense orchestral gestures and disorienting delay effects almost completely obscuring Longstreth’s lyrical allusions to hunger and scarcity. When the arrangements breathe, as in the woodwind-kissed simplicity of “At Home” or the Mount Eerie-featuring “Twin Aspens”, the album achieves a fragile grace. [Jun 2025, p.50]

Recorded with a wilful lack of finesse, it’s nevertheless the production that gives Abyss much of its heft and intrigue. [Jun 2025, p.48]

Shell~Wave is as sharp and incisive as any of Surgeon’s recordings of the last 30 years. Like the best techno, while it resonates with many rhythms, it never forgets what it is or what it does best. [Jun 2025, p.60]

The signature sounds of each ensemble have been stirred together, so that Cooper Crane’s organ, Dan Quinlivan’s electronics and Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium pulse as one, and synths and woodwinds entwine like multiple species of ivy that have grown together on the same wall. [May 2025, p.58]

Accompanied by dohool drum, Heydarian plays with harsh and montane clarity; motif and pattern emerge within a matrix of rapidly and continuously strummed chords, giving the six tracks a drone-carved, severe beauty. [May 2025, p.66]

Dance Music 4 Bad People features some of his headiest and most luscious productions, which conjure imagery of bodies glistening with sweat while moving in unison within the dusty confines of some basement club. [May 2025, p.54]

Time Indefinite feels closer to a documentary soundtrack than a regular solo album. And it tells a poignant story. [May 2025, p.63]

Deerhoof are as playful, inventive and delightful as ever. [May 2025, p.63]

The frenetic, almost no wave angularity of that track ["Camera"] calls to mind Last Exit or James Blood Ulmer's most punk-accented moments, while the contrast between hymnal vocal harmonies and brutalist sonics in "Scene 4" recalls Swans' "A Hanging". Early in the closing track "Scene 5: Breathing Fire" we hear one of the album's more conventionally structured post-hardcore movements along with an oblique ascension narrative about “basic instructions before leaving Earth” continuing, “but what do we return to?”.

These recent realisations of Ono’s scores by that flexible collective sound remarkably current and fresh. [May 2025, p.53]

The music has the translucent character of Ishibashi’s soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, where its resonance and weight change depending on the attention you pay to them. Ishibashi’s vocals are airy, light, almost noncommittal, but this only adds another layer of enigma and malleability. [Apr 2024, p.54]

Loose Talk is an engaging listen. [May 2025, p.52]

Her own voice breaks sometimes, and it’s in these moments – when she seems to drop the mask – that the album lands its most impactful blows. Tracks like “Cosmic Joke” and “Anthem Of Me” bring more dense, pressurised operatics. [May 2025, p.51]

Albums like this serve as a stark reminder of the UK scene’s capacity for reinvention in place of stagnation. With a start as strong as this who knows what direction Glacier will take next? Whichever way she goes, we should gladly follow. [May 2025, p.67]

Whatever The Weather II showcases James’s creativity and technical mastery as much as her capacity for emotional subtlety, depth and warmth. [May 2025, p.62]

Hersh’s lyrics are pithy character portraits (“Nola nobility/And you her superhero in drugstore plastic”) peopled with lovers and wanderers (“Where are you walking?/Can I join you?”). Her lyrical brevity matches the straightforwardness of the musical set-up, as well as a well-honed confidence and swagger. [May 2025, p.60]

After The Flood is a great spin, and should be revelatory to the many folks who’ve not been able to keep up with Kuepper’s Australian-only output. [May 2025, p.57]

It has an ethereal, cosmic beauty that in less accomplished hands could be mawkish, but here feels almost miraculous. The whole album feels like an invitation to think alongside it about the end of life – and in these moments typically characterised by fear and isolation, to feel accompanied by anything at all is an unusual and precious thing. [May 2025, p.62]

A lot of All Worlds could be bundled onto daytime radio playlists without standing out too starkly. .... Echoes of these acts’ more severe youthful excursions shines through on “Akkadian” – an audacious combo of jungle breaks and coldwave verses – and “Dummy”. [Apr 2025, p.55]

It’s an abstract, often harsh, sometimes silly listening experience. [Apr 2025, p.56]

The Beach Boys and Merseybeat stylings are still present, only without a single note wasted; every gesture, shaker, blurp of synth, bubble of spring reverb feels deliberate and functional. The songwriting benefits from this directness, striking an effective balance between chipper pop hooks and more introspective, often sombre lyricism. [Apr 2025, p.56]

Ultimately, the album aligns more closely with the 1990s power pop and alt rock of Sugar – and those influenced by them, such as The Thermals and Ted Leo – than the posthardcore of Hüsker Dü, but easily bests all of Mould’s previous releases that did the same. [Apr 2025, p.55]

The music is smooth, the message is simple and the demands aren’t easy, but they’re vital. [Mar 2025, p.51]

Wonder at the natural world has been an inspiration for musicians for as long as there has been music, but the mournful, realist shade to Park’s work makes that wonder all the more resonant and poignant now. [Mar 2025, p.52]

While it was surely a blast to see Styles hoofing it in person, the busy clatter of the tap shoes translates to an audio recording with only limited success. .... The seven Monk tunes presented are well chosen favourites, tackled with wit, verve and a subtle sense of invention that never strays too far from their origins. [Mar 2025, p.45]

Like Eye Of I and The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis, it seeks to engage a larger audience while remaining true to the musical values that Lewis has affirmed throughout his career. [Mar 2025, p.51]

The net result is pure expression, where themes and narratives matter less than how he speaks and twists his words into sound art. [Mar 2025, p.63]

Each song on Universe Room offers up a unique aural sensation that becomes more acute with repeated hearings. While some of the material takes several playbacks to fully tune into, other songs such as the opening “Driving Time” (with its crackling night-time cricket chorus intro), the mysterious “I Will Be A Monk”, the Pixies sounding “Elfin Flower With Knees” and hit single (surely!) “Fly Religion” become instant ear worms burrowing their way into your brain. [Mar 2025, p.59]

MIKE is a charismatic voice who excels at the art of humblebragging: “They tellin’ me I’m big, I’m shorter inside/But the remainder what I give when I’m recording these lines”, he raps on “Lost Scribe”. But one wishes he’d offer a few actual choruses instead of modest refrains. [Mar 2025, p.63]

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]

Cope’s wit and poetic skills remain as sharp as his playing, all of which is further illuminated with swathes of nostalgic Mellotron and tenderly plucked acoustic guitar. [Mar 2025, p.59]

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]

With nowhere to hide, her voice is revealed as an equally fine instrument, informed by previous interpreters such as Sandy Denny, Anne Briggs and Jacqui McShee, but with an earthier, softer edged quality. [Mar 2025, p.48]

As the work progresses, the architectural aspects of English’s music become apparent and alive, with the aural suggestion of fluid movement within rigid structures, frames that can hold and refract spatial mysteries. By “V” and “VI” the movement of amorphous sonic forms becomes magisterial, the air, increasingly heavenly. [Mar 2025, p.48]

Closing track “Alone Together” is the exception, with its laidback 70s groove. Otherwise there is a rich sense of eerie detachment, more Eno than disco. Not a desolate one but a widescreen richness of field recordings, sweetly echoing synth tones, spoken word interludes, plaintive wheepling of birds and clarinets, ghostly acousmatic sounds and layered vocal harmonies. [Mar 2025, p.46]

Those arrangements, many drawn from Ra’s own vintage charts but others assembled by Allen, have an urbane lushness, the 24-piece ensemble swinging hard in tight formation, only occasionally letting their freak flags fly. [Mar 2025, p.44]

The various elements at work on these five finely etched pieces rarely settle into any single pattern or vibe, but they also never feel like pastiche. It’s all music for the trumpeter – whose playing has never sounded more mature and exploratory – and every component of the music is as rigorous and evolved as his own vision. [Mar 2025, p.44]

For this project, Bakorta’s vocals are left at the studio door, which initially struck me as a shame, but a few listens reveal how much stronger the album is for being entirely instrumental. .... It’s clear enough what the remixes set out to achieve and, on their own merits they sound good. But in the context of the album as a whole they feel slightly tacked on; worth listening to, but maybe in a separate sitting. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.92]

It’s melodic, often strikingly beautiful and consistently daring. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.98]

There’s no real sense of ebb and flow in concession to the album format, but Active Agents & House Boys ruts away enthusiastically throughout its 58 minute running time without any hint of flag. [Jun 2024, p.48]

There’s real delight in these waters – and some shadows too. [Dec 2024, p.45]

The material from Antibes and Paris is similar – standards, plus modal compositions such as “So What” and “All Blues” that first appeared on Kind Of Blue. The difference – and it’s huge – lies in the freedom with which these are explored. This excellent set brings out that difference in all its aspects. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.102]

Afrikan Alien consolidates renewed supremacy with casual swagger, epic statements like “Afrikan Di Alien” and “YGF” sandwich more routine slices of virtuosity from the flex of “Big Smile” to the earnest romance of “Round & Round”, normality victorious against a hostile world. Strutting victorious on “Ya Zee”, he’s aspirational, iconic. .... He’s still in a league of his own. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.97]

Fine Art is a consistently uplifting experience even if on record Kneecap’s excesses don’t always convince. The banging “Rhino Ket” feels like Poisonous Poets doing Slowthai impressions with Bad Boy Chiller Crew. But more often it works. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.96]

The themes may change, but draped around catchy and crisp melodic motifs, the textures remain as gorgeous as ever. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.95]

Most of the 18 cuts clock under two minutes, long enough to showcase just how fresh and creative Raczynski still is, yet short enough to feel as concentrated jolts of energy. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.88]

GNX plays like a extended victory lap. None of the year’s singles are included, references to the beef are scattershot and subliminal but its embers suffuse every preening boast and putdown. There’s no need for big conceptual flourishes of previous albums. This time around Kendrick is the concept, his creative intensity manifested as weaponised normality. .... From thereon [“Wacced Out Murals”] it’s a rap masterclass. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.86]