Lack doesn't allow so much for meditation, forcing the listener to confront its continued presence through interjections of anxious vocal exercises and crashing echoes, industrial scrapes and human ululations. [Sep 2017, p.49]

Though they're written to sound simple on the surface, PG Six's songs reveal an unusually high level of artistry on closer inspection. [Sep 2011, p.62]

Unlike a lot of electronica, the music never lapses into mere tastefulness. [#235, p.75]

In lesser hands [it could have slipped into corny retro tropes], but In Dust is if anything even less indebted to past styles than last year's impressive self-titled debut. [Sep 2011, p.56]

Impossibly both epic and restrained; somebody call CERN. [Nov 2017, p.67]

Miniawy's trumpet makes an appearance over the moody reversed bass and Auto-Tune of "Reels In 360", while opener "I See The Stadium" pairs his agitated uvular Arabic with Aussel's hulking bass propulsions and the guttural snarls of Lord Spikeheart. [Apr 2026, p.62]

“Bounty” exalts the genre’s heritage with a lyrical pastiche of pop songs--Blondie’s “One Way Or Another” and James Brown’s “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” among them. “Flight 1235” acknowledges the shift in perspective and approach while insisting it’s his hard-earned right. [Aug 2018, p.52]

Just as David Tibet uses English folk to create his own apocalyptic mythos, so Wood takes the bare bones of Americana and makes something personal and timeless. [Oct 2008, p.58]

An upbeat yet ultimately wistful record about living, dying, youth, age, wasting time, but also trying not to waste time. [Oct 2017, p.59]

A record that urges you to lean closer to the speakers in order to fully hear everything that is being played and sung. [#216, p.63]

Almond just made one of his best records, completely out of the blue. [Mar 2015, p.49]

Zola Jesus is back to her dark roots, but enriched by intense layers of experience. [Oct 2017, p.55]

Shorn of vocals, Xen suffer the same fate as much beloved contemporary beat music, which is a kind of dazzling monotony. [Nov 2014, p.63]

The Footwork moves might be hard to master, nut there's every chance your brain will o a jig to this. [May 2012, p.66]

Her lyrics see human experience both on an intimate and an epic scale: such expansiveness is well complemented by her music, even if the dancefloor only exists within her home. [May 2013, p.56]

Climactic yet precisely controlled, it's a reminder of The Necks strengths, all of which are on display at different points throughout Open: their astute handling of pacing and momentum, finely honed collective sense of timing, and their shared ability to balance at length a group equilibrium, be it delicate or clamorous in register. [Oct 2013, p.50]

Something about the music's rhythmic flexibility, the paradoxical slippage between half-speed, double-speed and triplet grooves, allows almost anything to be folded in to its matrix without altering its essential character. [Oct 2013, p.57]

What’s exceptional about Novelist Guy is the ease with which he remakes grime in his own image, gifting it a breadth and charm and appeal others have struggled for over a decade to synthesize. [Jun 2018, p.62]

Patton and Vannier make a fine combination, vintage and modern, taking familiar sounds wonderfully elsewhere. [Oct 2019, p.58]

Oh Death snaps them back on track right from the opening, where drips saturated with fuzz and wah on the sizzling “Soon You Die” are flung forward by a swirling guitar solo. Meanwhile, the group’s vocalist becomes a proper mistress of ceremonies. ... The chiming piano and guitar licks of the closing “Passes Like Clouds” suggest that Goat have finally rediscovered their true selves. [Dec 2022, p.54]

A delightfully disorientating new missive from David Thomas and his band of talented reprobates. [Aug 2023, p.62]

The disc's closing one-two punch of "white Electric" and "Sundome," render Glass Drop a triumph, and a major evolutionary leap. [July 2011, p.44]

With its warm timbres and cushioning delays, sonically Captain Of None is Colleen's most approachable record yet. [Apr 2015, p.52]

The production is so delicate and the arrangements so well crafted that you can't help being utterly seduced by this open-ended, non-narrative yet elegant and accessible pop music. [#227, p.71]

Built around the usual sluggish grammar of instrumental hiphop, the tracks seems at times to collapse in on themselves, swollen with lugubrious 1970s jazz funk keyboards, strategically aimless organ vamps and miscellaneous concrete samples. [Jun 2016, p.60]

The Brian Eno collaboration “Here Come The Warm Dreads”, despite having the cheesiest, winking at the camera/self-referential title, coalesces around a regal brass melody and popping rhythm section to created a solidly funky slice of spaced out dub. “Rattling Bones And Crowns” is sharper, darker take on the Rainford cut “Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers”. [Dec 2019, p.52]

Nepenthe pushes the formula to [a] breaking point, where emotional manipulation crosses over into cloying, calculated and claustrophobic. [Aug 2013, p.53]

Baird's mixture of history-steeped elements keeps her songs from being tethered to any given time period, including the present, which makes them apt vehicles for words about relationships fraught with uncertainty. [Jun 2015, p.42]

The nine songs her give a reason for detractors to raise their voices and for devotees to hope for something a little more evolved. [Sep. 2007, p.49]

You Know What's It's Like presents the emotional cente of dal Forno's work with a clarity previously absent from either band. [Nov 2016, p.55]

Pig Destroyer explore transgression on their sixth album by creating a new narrative that begs for more careful introspection about who we are and the world we live in. [Oct 2018, p.60]

Thankfully, Underneath The Pine burns brightly at both ends. [Feb 2011, p.51]

There’s a sense of indecision to the overall sound of the album, which results in a fragmented listening experience. [Apr 2017, p.52]

Sprawling spaciness is absent from A Foul Form which marks a return to the California shredders’ punk roots. The vibe is set by opener “Funeral Solution”: blistering guitar fuzz, punch drunk double drums, stumbling basslines and ragged vocals. [Sep 2022, p.48]

This album eclipses their previous output and hits a consistent note of righteous force. [Jan 2008, p.69]

The percipients' more abstract visions allow much joyful engagement with sampled, electronic and acoustic sounds. [Feb 2013, p.52]

There is some extremely sophisticated signal processing going on here, resulting in complex subliminal sound patterns in the spaces between beat and the 303s’ scrolling and glooping. However each track is about relentless repetitions of one monolithic kick and one acid riff above all else. While the processing can occasionally resemble some of Tin Man and Cassegrain’s recent dismantlings of acid, which float in motionless seas of reverb, the primacy of the kick ’n’ riff lends the forward momentum of these tracks a glorious singlemindedness. [Sep 2018, p.52]

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]

An album both generous and balanced in its patient give and take, upbeat and open, full of enthusiasm and joy. [Nov 2017, p.67]

Recognising that electronica isn't bound to depict the future any longer has given Pritchard the key to his most consistent and enjoyable work yet. [May 2016, p.54]

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]

Though still harbouring a sense of fun, there’s a maturity felt throughout Dennis. [Jun 2024, p.61]

There's the sense that the group are holding back a little. Some tracks just don't quite work on a visceral level, as dance or as forcefields of conflicting elements. [Sep 2013, p.51]

Some Say I So I Say Light's uniformity can become a little wearing across 11 tracks. [May 2013, p.52]

The swelling, churchy ambient post-rock of Juliana Barwick’s latest could spill over into pomposity in heavier hands, but the freshly Los Angeles based artist exudes a modest air. [Aug 2020, p.64]

Tracks have potent moments, but they’re slapped together with little thought for overall flow. [Jun 2019, p.60]

Songs to shiver ’n’ shake to. [Apr 2023, p.64]

Hooky, featherlight and strange. [Jul 2018, p.55]

Earl Sweatshirt and billy woods, who kick off the proceedings with the intoxicatingly smooth “RIP Tracy”. MIKE and Sideshow offer up my personal favourite with “Bless”, and Boldy James teams up with TF on the moody “Trouble Man”. [Sep 2023, p.67]

Garden Of Delete feels more like an audio showreel than a traditional album. [Nov 2015, p.51]

The result is, even more than Blunt's previous work, an enigmatic emotional tenor. [Nov 2014, p.62]

There's no bullshit and no nonsense here, but listening to this album,, you might end up wishing that there was. [Dec 2011, p.68]

The R&B tropes are part of a reassuring past, and the half-there vocals don't add enigma so much as leave the music unchallenged and stick in its old ways. [Oct 2013, p.47]

Callaghan has served up an album that, interestingly for his fractured vocals and streaming lyrics, is unusually coherent. [#230, p.61]

Byrne has done a tidy, if not terribly exciting job on the soundtrack. [#235, p.57]

The bold accessibility and nostalgic tone of Bermuda Drain is a surprise. [Jul 2011, p.60]

Gengras's sublime drones--layers and layers of modular synth--evoke the spectacle and tragic history of his native California's wilderness. [Jun 2014, p.62]

Contact may be more consistent than earlier albums, but some of the edges have been filed down and some of the physical intimacy that had such an impact by virtue of being too close for comfort is dialled down. [Apr 2017, p.47]

This 17 track album is the perfect embodiment of the sound and ethos the label has been pushing over the last nine years. [May 2019, p.66]

It Should Be Us returns to the lunging bass distortion and nauseous slowed down beats of his instrumentals – the only voices to speak of rising from the churning depths as eerily pitched-down house vocal moans. [Jan 2020, p.73]

We Have Amnesia Sometimes proves that Yo La Tengo should leave their comfort zone more often. [Sep 2020, p.61]

This batch is a collection of film and advertising themes that stretch the limits of library music. “See The Cheetah”, credited to The Big Game Hunters, would have had all the kids frugging at a 1990s easy listening club. Best of all is “Moon Journey”, Garson’s symphony of tootling chugs, zaps, bloops and blasts that scored the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing on CBS News. [Sep 2023, p.66]

Some of the tracks are dead ringers for math rock, but in Bishop and Chasny's hands that ornate form attains gut-level thrust. [Sep 2012, p.64]

Such unashamed prettiness in a production is rare, and it's rarer still to achieve this without sliding into a quagmire of tweeness or an insufferable knowing smugness. [#252, p.62]

This meld of savoury-sweet singing, moreish melody, glistening texture, strange space and surprises galore makes I, Gemini the best pop-not-pop album since Micachu & The Shapes' Jewellery. [Jun 2016, p.47]

The elegantly bruised production is so captivating that I'm left longing for Ripatti to once again sink the vocals intot he subliminal and the sublime, as he did on "Vocalcity." [Nov 2008, p.66]

The laser-like concentration on groove and gorgeous textural flutterings just about keep them away from pastiche; the result is like having honey poured in your ear for 50 minutes. [Oct 2016, p.64]

There are still hints of Gnod's more psychedelic aspect, but these tracks feel lean, stripped back and sharp-eyed. [May 2017, p.46]

On Bioprodukt, his fourth album for Planet Mu, Edwards’s prolific nature again benefits from the honed ear of label boss Mike Paradinas, who curates a neat ten track journey through recent material. [Jul 2017, p.50]

A record that awakens mysteries and meaning from sparse elements; a masterful ritual. [Jan 2019, p.67]

More than just a treat for both bands' fans, this is a genuinely surprising and brilliant collaboration. [Apr 2026, p.51]

This is his second essential album of 2012. [Sep 2012, p.70]

He's tightened his flow ever so slightly, but the brutal artlessness of his writing and character remains. [Jan 2012, p.69]

They make it sound easy, and there are moments where that ease works in their favour. “Exalted” has the same gliding grace as the best moments on Moore’s last album of songs, The Best Day; conversely the way Shelley and Googe bear down on “Aphrodite” is quite satisfying. Still, the record could have used a more contrarian filter. [Jun 2017, p.67]

One moment she comes on like a pure music box turnaround MC, the next like a spitting cat, her delivery sits perfectly on the fucked up thud and South London hissing spherics conjured up in the mix. [Jul 2018, p.61]

A conceptually intriguing and emotionally powerful masterpiece based around the antihero of the title. [Feb 2016, p.59]

The overall effect is fresh and forward thinking throughout. [Jul 2017, p.53]

With Return To Archive, the balance is just right – this gets nearer to sound art. [Nov 2023, p.52]

It's ruling mood of detachment might appeal more to listeners who never went out in the first place and who prefer to experience physical release and emotional engagement through the filer of files, screens and headphones instead. [Jul 2011, p.50]

25 years down the line, Wire are still pulling off coups as daring and deadly as This Heat's debut. [#224, p.73]

A worthy addition to Byrne's sprawling oeuvre, while never reaching the heights of his greatest work. [#242, p.57]

A quietly masterful concoction. [#236, p.62]

The outcome is mostly a coruscating shot of tough nomadic blues, but here and there it skews into a self-indulgent liaison with a time-bound, well-worn rock sound. [Jul 2011, p.61]

Stripped of the visuals, the seemingly endless succession of minor variations (75 tracks between the two collections) on the same sets of glossy and pleasant synth arpeggios can be at once bitty and overwhelming. [Oct 2016, p.63]

All the more powerful for jumping from comic invocations of Ric Flair and Friday The 13th to casual and viciously flippant references to Xanax and other addictions. [Jan 2018, p.78]

It's the lighter, trickier touches that stick in the head. [Sep 2012, p.56]

[Foxx's] legacy has come to be revered, with his influence on electronic music recognised by the likes of The Orb and LFO. Evidence, Foxx's third album in 3 years with The Maths, provides plenty of evidence why. The tracks and crafted and atmospheric. [Mar 2013, p.55]

Everyone Was A Bird is a lot more than a pictorial guide set to music. [Jun 2015, p.46]

20 years of silence have created an even more authoritative tone to the declamatory rhymes here, the fury undimmed but increasingly replaced by a more simmering sense of foreboding and dread. [Aug 2018, p.69]

One Eleven Heavy have an uncanny knack for sucking in the charms of rock heroes of yesteryear and expelling them with contemporary fancy, with the best results being the hazy drag of “Hot Potato Soup” and the dizzying Allman Brothers-like closer “Three Poisons”. [Nov 2019, p.62]

The music they make is as quirky, infectious and amusing as the theme that powers it along, and Memorial Waterslides turns out to be a work of inspired joy. [Oct 2024, p.62]

It could all, of course, be unbearably mannered, but the duo's constant striving for layered perfection, contrasted with the very human qualities of the vocals, keep it grounded in some sort of feeling. [Sep 2008, p.61]

At times flush with the meditative air of Alice Coltrane, elsewhere like some whispered about 80s new age obscurity, this album both requires and justifies extensive attention. [Mar 2019, p.62]

Twelve Reasons deals in broad strokes rather than the collection of synapse-sparking details we've come to expect from this consummate trickster. But even in two dimensions, Ghostface is a phantom force to be reckoned with. [May 2013, p.57]

Love In Shadow, Sumac’s fourth studio album in three years, features four songs occupying a side of vinyl each and brushes territory you’d hardly associate with its members’ other projects. [Oct 2018, p.62]

Far from being derivative, Demolished Thoughts remains uniquely Moore's own. [Jun 2011, p.51]

These days, addressing race and gender in doom metal is considered extreme in itself; with Gas Lit, the duo demonstrate that extremity is not just found through deftly executed blastbeats and downtuned riffs, but within the decision to create music that defies categorisation. [Feb 2021, p.46]

The closing track "Temptation" proves that electronic producers who refuse to be typecast are the ones who keep the music exciting. [Aug 2012, p.44]