Once the starpower dazzle fades, it’s not always obvious who he is, but the lack of easy answers makes him interesting enough for now.

Koch feels like a merger of the two [Diversions 1994-1996 and Dutch Tvashar Plumes], backsliding into the dance timbres of yesteryear, and their hissy, ever moody dissolutions become predictable. [Oct 2014, p.63]

Its exploratory, playful, even mystical temper, slipping easily between the emotional zones the history of song traverses, suggests a boredom with eschatology. [Oct 2016, p.55]

The record crams a ton of sonic and thematic ideas into a small space and yet show almost no visible stitches. [Oct 2011, p.66]

Another stellar release by this persistently valuable band. [Jun 2018, p.57]

It is the slick heat of Gibbons’s liquid guitar groove, tempered by the equally blistering yet mysterious cool of his desert surroundings, that makes Hardware a deeper listening experience than initially expected. [Jun 2021, p.52]

The group’s take on their core material has never been overly reverent, but they are in masterful command of the style’s essence, and their previous excursions beyond the boundaries mean they can keep it fully upgraded for novel deployments on cuts like the razor-sharp “Çıt Çıt Çedene”. [Jun 2023, p.65]

It’s not a bad record--if nothing else it goes some way to atoning for the disappointment of AC/DC rather than Ghostface landing on the Iron Man 2 soundtrack--but it could have been so much more. [Apr 2018, p.50]

The ideas are better realised here than on [Why?'s] earlier material. [#258, p.67]

Fool is the stunning debut from a young Dutch producer. [Jun 2016, p.53]

The thrill of Fetch is in its precision, its Bachian joy in maths. [Dec 2013, p.54]

Future is one of the few true artist of Auto-Tune, and the emotional honesty lying behind trad-rap boasts bleeds from his words in a minor key and a pitch as subtly tremulous as a wobbling bottom lip. [Jun 2014, p.63]

This music reminds you how alone you are; it consoles you through its insolubility, comforts you by jabbing you in the chest and letting you know how complex the struggle is, how inaccessible we are to each other but just how universal our pain can be. [Dec 2016, p.63]

New York Noise is exemplary: the right mix of 'hits' and obscurities. [#233, p.71]

The guitar duels still give plenty of heat and smoke, but they're more smouldering and linear than Comets' intemperate explosions. [Mar 2016, p.46]

There’s a luxuriant impulse at work on this second album by the London-based keyboardist and producer. The strings in particular work beautifully on the soporific funk of tunes like “1989” or “Toulouse”, suggesting a Xanaxed Roy Ayers recording for CTI in the mid-70s. Aug 2020, p.68]

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]

It’s a startling new sound she has here, featuring voices of an unplaceable vintage, piano, bells and chains that carry centuries’ worth of dust and shadow, the songs a distorted and twisted take on gospel that’s sometimes slurred like a warped record, sometimes scarifyingly stark and always tightroping between redemptive faith and avant garde oddity. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.92]

This part of the past is not so much a source of rare metals to be strip-mined, but a seed bank of rare or lost varieties. [Jul 2012, p.63]

Deftly slice through seemingly disparate arenas--the fertile intersection of past and present, acknowledging both without succumbing to the whims of either. [Aug 2017, p.56]

The collaboration has had the effect of sharpening Oldham's focus and yielding one of the most gripping collections to bear one of his many pseudonyms. [#252, p.48]

Another Life captures the ecstacy and catharsis of bodies exchanging sweat and petrol, crushing each other in unison. [Oct 2018, p.48]

Susanna is backed by a quintet of musicians who move in perfect harmony with her slowly uncoiling vocal. Shifting between jazz, orchestral and synthesized sounds, her approach to the time-honoured love song format is a much needed breath of fresh air. [Oct 2024, p.62]

The songwriting is at times patchy....But the noise of Le Noise sets it above Young's last few albums. [Nov 2010, p.62]

The diversity of the record, it’s ability to flow from gnarly jazz to doomy funk of to peachily perfect quiet storm pop like “Conmigo”, never feels forced; and there’s a new wisdom and wonder to Muldrow’s voice that leaves things suggestive more than doctrinaire, open rather than sealed, playful rather than penetrative. Superb. [Dec 2018, p.63]

There's still plenty to enjoy on Tassilli, but desert blooms fade fast when overwatered. [Sep 2011, p.65]

Black Sun has a broader palette, even if it's not really any lighter. [Apr 2011, p.53]

There’s still no shortage of the epic thumps and crashes that made Lotic such an exciting prospect in their early days, except now they have more space. Instead of overwhelming a listener with the persistent high of audio ultraviolence, it allows for more subtle dynamics. [Aug 2018, p.57]

Despite the use of repetition and layering, Street Horrsing's sonic make-up is often unpredictable, which is where their strength stems from. [Apr 2008, p.57]

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

What emerges so strongly from this collection is evidence of gradual development over time--stumbling, erratic, silent and brilliant by turns--ultimately leading to a stage of maturity. [#200, p.68]

It's exhilarating and rare to hear such bruised raw performances as these. [#242, p.71]

Sum's bigger than the parts, though, and Double Demon delivers a whack of sound and a level of detail far in excess of anything on earlier ESO and Sound Is Delmarks. [Aug 2011, p.70]

The low end may not cause subterranean trolls to bang angrily on their ceilings as with 1993's Earth 2, but the rich textures and Carlson's expressive leads provide plenty to luxuriate in. [Sep 2014, p.54]

Their latest effort, All Tense Now Lax, impresses both for the nuances of its industrial abstractions as well as how vigorously it avoids recognisable styles. [Jul 2015, p.48]

The pair’s soundtrack is trippy and foreboding, swaying between melancholy cosmic laments on slo-mo keyboards (“Leaving Moomin Valley”), mysterious Middle Eastern whines (“Hobgoblin’s Hat”), extraterrestrial dream sequences on thumb piano and wooden glockenspiel (“Most Unusual”) and a giddy blast of what sounds like computerised rodents squeaking with speeded-up glee (“Party Time”). [Mar 2017, p.65]

The threat of salvation has never sounded more eerie. Wake In Fright is about the horror of being too much alive, the horror of all the things people do to escape life while forgetting that any attempt at running away from existence only results in a tightening of its shackles. [Apr 2017, p.

The strangely Middle Eastern funk they cook up in between their typical lunges and surges, the totally tuneless vocals that end up sounding like some kind of flagellant hiphop and the general sense of bass-heavy groove that locates SMTB closer to Helmet than Fugazi. [May 2019, p.65]

Torche’s engagingly awry blend of harmony and heaviosity finds full fruition on Admission, an album you might feel somewhat ashamed for enjoying so thoroughly. [Sep 2019, p.61]

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

How literally Allen wants us to take his nod towards Herman Melville’s whale is left tantalisingly openended, although this tapestry of ghoulishly misremembered tales has an obvious parallel with Melville’s patchwork of story and allusion. [Apr 2020, p.49]

Song Of Co-Aklan is a more than welcome return from a puckish master of social observation and surreal manifesto: “Let’s Flood The Fairground” indeed. It isn’t a consoling album and its humour is biting at best, but as a way of getting through a bruised and confused new spring, it’s the perfect companion. [Apr 2021, p.52]

The album encompasses a wide range of moods. [Sep 2021, p.55]

This release is less spooky than its predecessors, and more earthy. ... Phantom Orchid” pulses with the austerity of the botany lab, but in places, Entangled Routes is possibly the first Ghost Box release that sounds almost…sexual? [Dec 2021, p.61]

Continuance is one of the better examples of their prodigiousness, its delights ranging from the piano glissando of “Reese’s Cup” to the fuzzy jazz fusion keyboards of “Kool & The Gang”. [Apr 2022, p.59]

The album is warm and lush, mixed and engineered by David Darlington, who has worked with Eddie Pamieri and Wayne Shorter. It’s a different side of The Arkestra in a convincing, throwback fashion – to a time when new jazz albums came fast and each was an event. [Nov 2022, p.68]

Deeply scored with pitch-black humour, concrete riffs and the mucus rattling squalling of vocalist Zack Weil, Oozing Wound shift effortlessly from the piledriver bludgeoning that motivates “Hypnic Jerk” to the more sustained instrumental fury of “Crypto Fash”, without surrendering any of their creative firepower or ability to surprise. [May 2023, p.60]

Their stew of disparate aesthetics may be lumpy, but it’s never mushy, and the quartet’s stylistic mix-ups are consistently engaging. [Jun 2024, p.57]

Jain finds an inviting languidity via the shimmering vocals and fluttering flute of “Infinite Delight” and “You Are Irresistible”, which rise together in warm and expectant plateaus. [Jul 2024, p.56]

“The Seal” is busy in a different mode – it sounds like it would fit in with the jazzy shugs of Cobra And Phases era Stereolab, until Barrow’s wobbly vocal comes in, like the perpetually lachrymose Peter Jefferies given a bit of a speedy kick. [Sep 2024, p.58]

The accompanying booklet is richly illustrated with pulpy paperbacks and other artefacts of the shadow side of hippie spirituality. In his quirky accompanying essay, curator Martin Callomon assures the listener that there’s much more where this came from, in the form of a playlist on the accursed music streaming platform Spotify – undoubtedly the most unholy thing about this entire affair. [Sep 2024, p.65]

At times, as on “For Stars Of The Air”, they sound like an electronic post-punk project a la The Soft Moon. At others, they become the band in a spaghetti western saloon, soundtracking impending demise on “Last Resort Of The Gambling Man” with sun-drenched rock moves. [Oct 2024, p.52]

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]

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]

The way these four strong musical personalities making up the current quartet are moving forward while acknowledging their history gives Thirteen an extra dimension. [Apr 2026, p.56]

Triplicate’s greatest triumph is to strip cheap sentiment from the poetry by dimming the lacquer of the brass and muting the swagger of the singer, leaving the songs to crackle like revenant vignettes in the wireless of the mind. [May 2017, p.63]

A splendid piece of work; compelling even when shorn of its conceptual and procedural backdrop, and infinitely more invigorating when considered as one with its making. [#205, p.58]

The most interesting thing about this music isn't so much that it exists in 2013, more that there still seems to be a fundamental need for it. [Feb 2013, p.58]

Opener “Reverance” gives us a great deal--tremolo string flourishes and swirling synthesizers, filter gates as grand as castle keeps that slowly open up to reveal lush vegetation within--but of percussion it gives us none. From there on, the album offers up interplanetary R&B. [Jul 2017, p.62]

It’s no radical departure, but Gamble nonetheless conjures a new and unsettling sense of richness from differently focused materials. [Oct 2017, p.52]

Flamagra is still more accessible than either Quiet or Dead! and this is most likely due to Ellison’s choice of vocal collaborators. [Jul 2019, p.49]

The record’s surfaces are highly polished and glisten with a near futurist glow that’s only occasionally interrupted by percussion, most affecting when those pristine surfaces recede to emphasise the melodic lines that dance over them. “Vanity” lets ominous synths rumble while ornate electronics flourish above while the reverberating motif of “Tasakuba” is potent with longing and desire. [Jul 2021, p.69]

The whole album sounds less written, performed and recorded, more like it’s streaming directly from Thundercat’s brain to the listener’s. [Apr 2017, p.57]

This ambitious album deserves to be a crossover hit. [Jul 2017, p.46]

Rainford is a classic set of Scratch vocals: science fiction nursery rhymes, apocalyptic lullabies, their melodies light as air yet rocksteady. Scratch’s delivery at the age of 83 is like Dylan’s present-day rasp, no longer about hitting notes or even tone necessarily, but heavy with the weight of his personal and musical history. [May 2019, p.61]

1988 is full of these striking juxtapositions, placing tales of hustling and gunplay in smoothed out, soulful musical beds. [Jun 2020, p.50]

An expansive record that thoughtfully integrates electronic elements. It almost feels transmitted from a parallel past – a form of retrofuturism where science fiction meets folk. [Feb 2022, p.48]

The Future Never Waits (oh, that pesky future!) benefits from the addition of former Coil/Spiritualized/Waterboys keyboard player Thighpaulsandra, who appears to have opened up the band’s sound in such a way that seems almost effortless. [Jul 2023, p.52]

Avalon Emerson & The Charm will find favour with anyone into Cocteau Twins, dreamy bedroom synthpop and anything Balearic. “Entombed In Ice” feels nostalgic but fresh, Emerson’s vocals floating effortlessly overhead. [Jul 2023, p.63]

The impression left by The Hums's buzzing, keys-assisted pseudo-punk is that of a heavier Clinic or even Scottish also-rans Magoo. [Nov 2014, p.72]

O’Dwyer’s explorations of forgotten spaces, ways of listening and acoustic phenomena are as rich as ever, this haunted collection of subterranean sounds revealing even greater depths to her sprawling, strange work. [Nov 2017, p.61]

On the tracks where Baha works with collaborators, he bends his production style to suit the vocal quirks of the artist featured alonside himself. [Jul 2018, p.59]

A natural follow-up to his first solo outing. [#229, p.68]

Abalanced, democratic collaboration, with neither unit dominating.... Ghost's faraway sound lends Damon & Naomi's straightahead arrangements a yearning, devotional air... [#199, p.56]

With unobtrusive, yet telling contributions from friends including Meg Baird, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, she conjures up a bittersweet sense of location and changing times through six pieces that are subtly complementary, in their character and impact, meriting comparison to the finely nuanced ambient soundtracks of Angelo Badalamenti. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.96]

This is a synth album of considerable finesse, a soundtrack to imaginary films. [Nov 2016, p.67]

Here as elsewhere, Hval manages to perfectly combine an eerie, folkish, ethereal pitch that even veers on yodelling at times, as if summoning an army of hidden folk, with an earthly sensuality that speaks of all kinds of lust, particularly the kinds that hint at lengthy afternoons in obscure cabins. [Jun 2018, p.58]

This intensity and force, despite the stillness, brings a new dimension to Low's sound and makes C'Mon an interesting addition to an already impressive body of work. [Apr 2011, p.60]

With Hell Can Wait, he inches logically towards a modernisation of the chaotic wall of noise formula that defined Public Enemy than immediately pulls back from it. [Nov 2014, p.76]

Sauna Youth are a tight unit, their constituent parts meshing into a formidable wall of sound, but it might be an idea to lose a member or two, subtract an element and make space for uncertainty. [Jun 2015, p.52]

Knowing the emotional background behind its recording makes it unbearably poignant but this crackly, lambently textured mix of treated piano, longwave static and vocals would move anyone who had a heart. Sublime art from horrible circumstances and Craig’s best work to date. [Apr 2020]

An unusual and unexpected triumph. [Jun 2011, p.44]

Harvey's new strategy has been successful although White Chalk might be something of a curio, it's certainly her most haunting work. [Oct 2007, p.60]

How Did I Find Myself Here? is the occasionally thrilling result. [Sep 2017, p.50]

This new collaboration with London's Heliocentrics admirably recreates a smokey 70s atmosphere. [Sep 2014, p.64]

Lyrically, Foster possesses both esoteric wisdom and an ascetic purity yet never wanders out of reach; she has the musical instinct of her troubadour sisterhood (Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Judee Sill et al) and in the spoken word moments, the cosmic gravitas of Eden Ahbez. [Dec 2018, p.48]

The music--hums, clangs and muffled booms--wields an ominous, oppressive power, especially on headphones, that can create a feeling of queasy horror even for those unaware of the record's backstory. [Nov 2014, p.68]

While Harris’s voice has become more manoeuvrable, the combination of echo, layering and breathy delivery push the literal meaning of her lyrics just out of reach. Instead the words are like a lure, drawing you further into the space between unfurling sequences of hesitant notes and quiet cries. [May 2018, p.49]

Gordon sings with a becalmed daydream-y satisfaction, mixing and matching phrases from different notebooks into a confident patchwork. [Nov 2019, p.54]

Walker's latest project effectively balances the saccharine with hovering fear, demonstrating his continued capacity for writing cinematic music invested with strange drama. [Sep 2016, p.57]

More substantial, positive and dynamic. [#225, p.58]

The comparison between [The Disco's of Imhotep] and Ancient Echoes revealing the absolutely consistency of Moss's vision over the years. [Aug 2016, p.50]

Code warms up as it winds down, as Malone is joined by frequent collaborator Ellen Arkbro for a trio of live recordings. [Sep 2019, p.56]

Whatever your take on Tibetan Buddhism, this is done with powerful sincerity and musical sensibility. The Albanian born Kodheli in particular does a remarkable job, and I defy anyone to listen to Anderson’s voice for an hour and not become a better person. [Oct 2019, p.48]

Though not all the tracks are fully realised, Molina was clearly pushing into new territory: that he never got there is a tragedy. [Sep 2020, p.57]

Some of these tracks have a stark, haunting beauty that marks them out as perfectly realised compositions in their own right. [#258, p.68]

The Sun's Tirade is a master class in restraint and pacing. [Nov 2016, p.64]