The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

It’s the genuine connection of Bowles, Toll and McMurry that makes it all bounce, which is hardly what one might expect from a banjo fronted group. [Aug 2024, p.48]

What unites them is the boldness of the material and their treatment of it. [Jun 2014, p.48]

No one, really, has taken their precise marriage of classic rock 'n' roll moves and steely cybernetic deformity further than themselves. [Aug 2014, p.53]

This analogy of applying interdisciplinary approaches to uncover a certain reality carries through to several aspects of the album, where a folding over of electronic and acoustic space circles in on and augments a broader understanding of sound. [Aug 2018, p.67]

The eight pieces here function as a drummer’s showcase, certainly, but Contact’s wilful limitations conceal an eclectic approach. ... Time spent immersed in Contact will reap reward. [May 2020, p.52]

The ten tracks are built on foundations of looped percussion and tight bass sequences, usually based around short, sharp and undeclarative sounds – synthetic rimshots and damped hi-hats rather than snares or kicks. While this can run into staid territory, as on the triphop shuffle of “One Two”, for the most part its subdued hardness accents the drift of Milton’s vocals. His delivery often overwhelms the matter of his lyrics in the best way. [Apr 2021, p.54]

To these ears at least, Rundgren’s finest since 2008’s Arena. [Jan 2023, p.75]

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]

One of the chief sources of the album's power is the value it assigns to the act of witnessing, of seeing and taking account of the most vulnerable. [Apr 2016, p.47]

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]

Several tracks differ little from versions on their 1987 Flying Nun debut Brave Worlds, but the instrumental rarity "Moonlight On Flesh" brings a welcome expansiveness redolent of a more modest Echo And The Bunnyman. [Dec 2014, p.57]

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 desire of the group to progress feels palpable here. [Nov 2015, p.55]

Many of Mike’s verses lost me, but when it clicks, and you can follow a thought through a few mutating bars, the effect is astonishing. [Aug 2021, p.58]

A highlty nuanced album which is at once razor sharp, and rich in new openings and possibilities. [#206, p.60]

He rationalizes the darkness of Trauma with the breeze and bounce of 1998's Rhythmalism, and the results are often downright hilarious. [Jun 2011, p.60]

Somehow unconvincing, it's like beach bar escapism spliced with an incidental tune from the TV comedy show The Mighty Boosh. [Mar 2015, p.60]

Three years ago Eyes On The Lines marked the emergence of an important songwriting talent, a rebirth midwifed by a dozen years on the road. The Unseen In Between delivers the same impact, but deeper and more lasting. If you wanted to pinch a Chapman reference, you might say it acknowledges that those growing pains never actually stop. [Mar 2019, p.48]

An exciting record crawling with new ideas. [#243, p.74]

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]

One can absorb the enthusiasm while feeling somewhat repulsed by the taste. On occasion, it works. [Nov 2013, p.65]

No More Normal showcases UK talent proudly, but bringing so much of it together, loses some of the character that might attract new listeners to UK music. Reaching for the historical weight of Soul II Soul, it ends up with the easy going vibe of The Brand New Heavies. [Apr 2019, p.59]

You might not always know what they are saying but the wails in “Iron Maiden” and foreboding synths of “(Crystal Aura Redux)” don’t need translating. The bleak production and relentless beats should keep us dancing all the way through the apocalypse. [Jun 2023, p.54]

This compilation gives voice to many lesser known artists who sang of the elation and estrangement of moving from the dirt tracks to the streets. [Aug 2012, p.44]

It’s a satisfying--if rather safe--album. [Jul 2018, p.44]

The album’s 78 minutes include ample shimmering prettiness and strafing digital energy, with only minimal concessions to anyone who would prefer one or the other.

In spite of these brief missteps, Change is a welcome return, revealing the multifaceted artistry of a previously enigmatic performer. [Sep 2021, p.48]

Crescent’s first album in a decade is certainly a memoir, and one as evocative and impressionistic as you might expect, where the fall of sunlight on a window or a late-night touring mishap--“I’m opening up the van/And the cymbals crash/All across the street/In the clear night” (“I’m Not Awake”)--stay lodged in the heart and mind far longer than any 12" release. [Jun 2017, p.69]

The album embraces bittersweet moods and moulds them into gorgeously transportive but deceptive cuts. [Oct 2020, p.62]

Pieces Of Treasure is a moving album from an artist who knows these songs inside out and is smart enough to know when to set knowledge aside, to access each song’s elemental power. [Jun 2023, p.52]

At every turn it bubbles with the delight of discovery, and shows the alchemical reaction between the two studio personae coming along very nicely indeed. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Hellfire confidently establishes Black Midi as a distinct musical personality. [Jul 2022, p.44]

The album repeats and reiterates her major concerns--artistic, political--and renders them witty and endearing. [Oct 2013, p.51]

As the album progresses, uneasiness is subliminally incorporated into otherwise deceptively easy rockin’ tunes. [Oct 2016, p.60]

On the whole Ash Koosha aka Iranian composer Ashkan Kooshanejad's follow-up to Guud is a likable gem of an album. [Apr 2016, p.62]

If it undeniably looks into a past long before any of the members were born, the actual results provide more welcome context, using the music of the 1960s to create a sound which, in toto, didn’t actually exist during that decade. [Nov 2024, p.62]

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 somewhat dated style and sound of Nextdoorland gives it a charm wholly unaffiliated with any current scene or trend. [#225, p.77]

Optometry is a success in terms of both sound and vision. [#221, p.53]

The Kadanes have created a collection of songs of which they can be proud. [#246, p.62]

But where Konoyo was a more visceral invocation of the electronic sublime, Anoyo stretches out and creates space for the reeds to be heard amid the splices, obstructions and reversals of the Los Angeles based producer’s typically stratified sonic design. [May 2019, p.67]

His murky but upbeat productions augment this sensation, giving Skelethon a sort of B-boy gothic feel, an old school park jam recreated by Tim Burton. [Sep 2012, p.74]

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]

The cleaner production of Half Free ups the anxiety. [Oct 2015, p.58]

What they sculpt is impressive if not entirely unfamiliar. [Oct 2020, p.65]

A smorgasbord of bittersweetness, with yearning pads providing a translucent bed for snatches of fragmentary counterpoint. [Sep 2023, p.50]

Clubbers might find Swanson's approach dilettantish.... In letting this set closer sprawl out, though, he happens on a spinning wormhole of spitting snares and abrasive Konono No 1-like melodies that's sulphuric in its intensity. [Mar 2013, p.60]

Its feel is psychedelic but strong. [Apr 2015, p.60]

The barbershop harmonies are, as always, impeccable, while the blend of acoustic and electronic textures is subtle and unforced. [Mar 2011, p.58]

The pursuit of risky and rigorous music-making continues to feel wiser and nobler for his prodigious, elevating presence. [Oct 2018, p.52]

As a collection, Psychedelic Pill is spotty and, at times, sleep-inducing.

With the addition of these elegant bent strings, it is as though perfumed air has been allowed to seep into what was formerly a hermetically sealed canister. This (now non-) trio's music is that much better for the enhancement. [May 2011, p.58]

Tokumaru seems to have poured his entire being, subconscious and all, into these compositions, which burst with vivacity and detail. [Apr 2013, p.57]

His sermons are always memorably provocative, but in playing to the crowd sometimes subtleties get lost. [Dec 2014, p.60]

Excitement, sure, but little surprise. [Oct 2015, p.67]

Only occasionally, as on the Daft Punk-ish disco of “Real Time” does it feel generic, and when it gets really sophisticated--as on “True” where How To Dress Well sheds his recent 1980s pop affectations to operate in pure (and not in any sense alt) R&B mode--its ambition is clear. [Apr 2017, p.56]

This is fierce, unpredictable music; her sounds ripple and explode, dropping in from above, rarely settling into a groove. It’s rare to encounter an electronic album that feels quite so specific and personal, despite the ego-dissolving intentions of its meditating creator. [Jun 2018, p.54]

Although The Canon is a late arrival its mood is consistent with that of its predecessors. The recording is sharper and more delineated, but Leon steers clear of modern sonics that might date it. ... Apart from the titles, there is no narrative as such to this collection, but it works as absolute music, in which Leon creates the impression of mysterious and open spaces. [May 2019, p.58]

Producer Gary Odlum builds an atmospheric, sunset glow version of the Tuareg sound that rolls and chugs with every conventional element in place, but has a widescreen stadium swagger few other groups have mastered. [Apr 2020]

It’s a much rougher around the edges effort than 2019’s GREY Area, but it works because Simz is an alum of the pirate radio days; this is her forte. Sonically it’s a dream. [Jul 2020, p.59]

The way Shadow Of Fear seems to drift between the influence of Kirk’s old dystopia and new surfaces weakens the impact of its first half particularly, where the early 80s industrial model reigns. It takes multiple listens to focus through to the subtler pleasures of the oddly lopsided grooves and how he manipulates the layers of texture that swallow them. [Dec 2020, p.47]

It’s powerful music for open roads and endless dreaming; once it’s turned on, time is suspended by the limitless layers of unbridled, electric sound. [Feb 2021, p.54]

The final few songs swap flash-saturated self-portrait for figure in landscape, brooding and blurred. Their hermetic sound is breached – their future more uncertain than ever – and all the better for it. [Feb 2022, p.47]

Marc’s production skills are impressive; he layers beautifully recorded organic instruments with synths and sampled vinyl crackle, adding just enough reverb and bass boom to bring it all to vivid life. [May 2022, p.50]

While the overt campiness on display in Laibach’s The Sound Of Music has been toned down here, the choice to pepper the set with familiar German showtunes (“Flieger, Grüß Mir Die Sonne” and “Das Lied Vom Einsamen Mädchen”) feels ominous when paired with the stomach-turning paintings by Gottfried Helnwein on the cover. [May 2022, p.48]

The acoustic guitar led instrumental “Underwater City” being an exemplary diversion into acid folk. Elsewhere “Re-generate” and “The Black Sea” are a couple of highly enjoyable (albeit slight) space jams, and exit track “Stargazers” regrettably bails out just when it starts to take off. [May 2024, p.60]

Sharp inhalations between melodic figures are given a multidimensional presence by the reverb, grounding the sound in an embodied ethereality. As track titles like “The Cosmic Spheres Of Being Human” and “Everything Is Hidden In You” make clear, the circular rhythms of this embodied presence are identical with those of the universe. [Sep 2024, p.49]

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

Drake has certainly mastered the art of making Drake records. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Nite Jewel sounds like a latter-day Prince protégé, with a beatific calm to her tone. [Jul 2017, p.56]

Davachi’s early love of Bach pervades the initial section of “Perfumes I-III”. [Aug 2019, p.54]

Refusing facsimile, Galás’s music attains its weight and power not from its oddity but from its humanity. [Apr 2017, p.53]

Their newest struts and froths like the wild-eyed offspring of Deerhoof and Thundercat, raised in the swamps on little but No New York and toadstools. At turns, it’s impossibly upbeat--something like a Martian single parent’s go-to motivational album--and spasmodically funky, in the best tradition of Bernie Worrell-era Talking Heads, flipped on 45. [Nov 2018, p.54]

Drift Code may not be as bold an artistic statement as Spirit Of Eden, nor as interesting a sideline as .O.Rang, nor in all likelihood be as celebrated 17 years hence as Out Of Season. But Webb proves himself just as skilled as his former collaborator Gibbons in his ability to build worlds whose orbits brush against the heart while always staying at arm’s length. [Feb 2019, p.49]

A definite return to form, Shook is the sound of a serious group equipped with the gravitas and shades of expression to carry their many ideas. [Feb 2023, p.44]

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]

White noise is the most versatile tool in Brighton producer Alan Myson’s kit: he deploys it as a gloss on everything, to either mind-quieting effect on tracks like “Angel In Ruin” and “Oblivion Theme”, or as an anxiety accelerant as on the fuzzed out battle-pitch “Bladed Terrain” where static hisses behind stomping, crunching thwacks and arpeggios. [Jun 2020, p.60]

A roaring return to a full band sound featuring twin drums, electric bass and keyboards. The secret ingredient that makes it such a blast, though, is an unabashed injection of prog pomposity. [Nov 2018, p.62]

This album is his confident and impressive soundtrack debut. [Apr 2016, p.48]

Falkner's presence helps tighten up Moore's game with out diluting his essential weirdness, while Moore encourages the usually perfectionist Falkner to cut loose and re-engage with the taste for lo-fi leakage. [Mar 2017, p.50]

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]

Melnyk could use a bit more genuine mystery and less self-importance. [Dec 2015, p.52]

It’s not often that an album comes along that feels this loaded with transformative potential. [Jul 2021, p.66]

Prepare to be enchanted. [Oct 2014, p.61]

Farrell’s production is funky and deep throughout, but it’s sometimes a touch too downbeat; Kidjo is imperious on the chemically propelled “Dombolo”, Nneka spits controlled fire on the dubby “La Dame Et Ses Valises”, but tracks like “Wedding” and “Nebao” are sonic tar pits from which their stars struggle to escape. [Jun 2017, p.76]

It's [Neil Fallon's} witty, intelligent, lusty lyrics that elevate Book Of Bad Decisions from good to great. [Oct 2018, p.50]

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]

For the most part this album is unadulterated joy, and even in the instances where things feel a little more serious, it’s still entertaining as hell. [Aug 2021, p.69]

Though he's lacking some in terms of identity and he'll probably never be a technical monster, he benefits from the same instinctive ability to ride a beat's pocket that rapping producer predecessors like Large Professor and, yes, Dilla himself possessed. [Nov. 2010, p. 66]

It is mixed heavy in the low mids, blanketed by chorus effects, yet somehow misses warmth. Its ambitions are little short of symphonic. [Jul 2017, p.62]

They have a certain beauty, but it all feels sterile, airless. [Sep 2011, p.59]

Arcology is dense, detailed and melodic. [Mar 2016, p.51]

The songs' parts don't always transition as smoothly as the listener might like, making them feel like a long sequence of moments rather than a single, shifting musical experience. ... Still, when Pack and Pendleton are gliding above the battlefield, voices and violins arcing slowly around one another, there's a real beauty here. [Sep 2016, p.56]

[An] excellently focused overview. [Nov 2016, p.70]

In Arbouretum’s case the song remains much the same, but its continuation is more than welcome. [Apr 2017, p.60]

Each piece might be filled with personal meaning to the artist, but they all leave enough space for listeners to reflect on their own worries. The transition between the noisy, illusory interlude “[ A Backlit Door]” and the understated beauty of “Haruspex” is an especially poignant moment on an album rich with them. [Dec 2023, p.54]

More than any other Gas album Rausch captures the exhilaration one can feel deep in the woods, walking for far too long, marching ever forward without ever looking back. [Jun 2018, p.56]