Like his collaborative music with Peverelist, it's these tracks' mesmerising qualities that give rise to their oblique emotional resonance, even if Utility as an album is relatively low on surprises for an artist whose history to date has been littered with them. [Apr 2016, p.55]

It's easy to imagine more time and effort infusing these tracks with more colour and variety. [Apr 2016, p.55]

It's a remarkably brutal record, gleefully stomping about with all the toys spread across the floor, and all the better for it. [Apr 2016, p.54]

There's nothing fake about the record itself, however, and any interpretations of irony will be largely rooted in the audience's prejudices about who and what certain styles of music are for. [Apr 2016, p.46]

With mute on, Smith can project a tender fragility through a single lingering note, reminiscent of Miles at his most thoughtful and noirish circa Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud. Smith's more strident statements convey an emotional rawness. [Apr 2016, p.65]

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 you prefer your African music to be more dancefloor-friendly, Batida's Portuguese take on Konono has plenty going on. [Apr 2016, p.54]

There are moments when the structure of this album fails to centre itself, and it is easy to get lost in the finer details of the arrangements. ... It is clear from Love Streams, with its increased manipulation of vocals and wider palette, that he is becoming braver. [Apr 2016, p.51]

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]

In spite of the road drill rhythms, punished percussion and damaged vocalising, though, the collaboration fails to fully connect. [Apr 2016, p.46]

The fact that Thug's voice can express plaintive, mournful sorrow is perhaps the most surprising aspect of this tape, even among all the astonishing vocal pirouettes and cries. [Apr 2016, p.64]

On Malibu, melody unifies and smooths over divisions: rap and R&B, black history and black modernity, spiritual uplift with the rough material of the everyman's everyday, all made cohesive by Paak's considerable songwriting talent. [Apr 2016, p.64]

The music is meditative and calm-inducing, though occasionally it leans a little too much towards Opal Records tropes, particularly the piano-led pieces. [Apr 2016, p.62]

Hiperasia offers a vivid, feverish soundworld of Auto-Tuned vocals, idyllic electronics and machine beats solid enough to stand alongside the best US R&B currently has to offer. [Apr 2016, p.60]

There is an alchemy at work here. [Apr 2016, p.57]

Pablo grips your attention through an attraction-repulsion effect: the attraction largely pertaining to the sonics, the repulsion manifesting almost entirely in the lyrics. [Apr 2016, p.52]

Despite the bloodlettting and reckless spending, Future just sounds bored. And occasionally lazy. [Apr 2016, p.50]

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

These collaborations have been performed live over the past few years and for all its pristine yet textured presentation Gensho succeeds in capturing the dynamics of those live actions. [Apr 2016, p.46]

No One Deserves Happiness alternates between bleak and industrialised grindcore and a powerful poetic presence that effectively conveys a sense of loss. [Apr 2016, p.46]

Anenon's third album represents a confident shift in gear. [Apr 2016, p.46]

The way Baird and Jones mix room tone with the intruding outdoors invites consideration of human impermanence, but the sweet affection that Jones's melodies impart wards off the blues. [Mar 2016, p.54]

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

Oldham's rewriting of his own songs sometimes turns into a queasy compulsion.... There are some stunning revisions in this collection. [Mar 2016, p.62]

The music works on its own--laser-sharp, energetic and gloriously fun. [Mar 2016, p.55]

Finland's anti-band continue their primal journey along intergalactic motorik highways, shifting toward more popular dimensions but without losing any intensity, energy or theatrics. [Mar 2016, p.55]

His long awaited first album polishes up the summer sounds for a new crowd and, even if it's not visionary, his electro-pop grooves still go somewhere. [Mar 2016, p.55]

It's only when that rhythm programming is either stripped right back or broken apart that you get a sense of overabundant glee in playing with the blurts and splurts of the synth timbres, and this feels like more than the generic, albeit impeccably executed IDM record that the title rightly suggests. [Mar 2016, p.53]

This is music for pleasure now. [Mar 2016, p.49]

Despite the unorthodox weaving of disparate threads of material in evidence, there is harmony and majesty here, commensurate with the awe-inspiring scale of Inarritu's film. [Mar 2016, p.48]

A poised and playful opus of 11 tracks dominated byt the sound of maxed-out 1980s 8-bit videogame soundtracks zapped 300 years into the future. [Mar 2016, p.47]

The momentum doesn't dip through the sunny but sinister celebration of "T-Shirt Weather In The Manor," Kano's rapid flow over electronic rowdiness on "new Banger" and the stunning dancefloor swagger of "3 Wheel Ups."... The album peters out after that. [Mar 2016, p.46]

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]

The production throughout is a heavy slurry of deep bass and wavering, churchical keys, and songs that are not explicitly about his medical troubles are about the perennial problems of untrue friends and false lovers. [Mar 2016, p.42]

There are moments of serene beauty, like "Oubliette" and the seductive gondola romance of "Fragmentation," but the album's action scenes feel glossy and detached, picturesque rather than visceral. [Mar 2016, p.42]

These eight tracks feel like a consolidation of his practices, interspersing sombre classical suites with footwork-indebted rhythms that flicker like distant pulsars. [Jan 2016, p.69]

An album remarkable only for just how bland it gets, despite every effort to the contrary. [Feb 2016, p.60]

Sometimes he might repeat tricks, but his is a freedom few will ever know. [Feb 2016, p.60]

A lovely collection full of ethereal evocations of the past. [Feb 2016, p.60]

Likeable but fairly forgettable listen. [Feb 2016, p.57]

The expanded bag of references and methods that he draws from on The Rarity Of Experience indicates that Forsyth and company aren't settling for what they know they can do, but using it as a starting point to figure out where to go next. [Feb 2016, p.50]

On The Gospel, they're at their weirdest and best. [Feb 2016, p.48]

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

Is it fun? Well, yes, even if it does end up sounding like 15 different musical assemblages from an equal number of historical periods playing at once. [Feb 2016, p.59]

On the third album by Bishop's trio with drummer Chris Corsano and guitarist Ben Chasny, the [Middle Eastern] influence is more explicit than ever.... "Spiro Agnew" brings the intercultural connection full circle, with an extravagant strut that calls to mind the grand drama that Turkish guitar hero and pioneer of saz rock Erkin Koray brought to his fuzzed out interpretations of lachrymose Arabesque ballads. [Feb 2016, p.58]

It's an unlikely triumph of personality, a glacially slow decay of his icy facade revealing an earnest dedication to his craft, in its own way every bit as spiritual as his brother's more orthodox practice. [Feb 2016, p.56]

Phase One impresses more on first listen [than Phase Two].... But it wears thin quickly. [Feb 2016, p.54]

Even in the midst of the fairly wretched Phase Two there are gems but you sure have to dig for them. [Feb 2016, p.54]

It is a fine, unnerving album. [Mar 2016, p.45]

The fact that Ultimate Care II is also, in its flexible extremes of danceability and post GRM meditation, one of the most purely enjoyable albums I've heard recently. [Feb 2016, p.55]

Daze's exhilarating intensity is tempered by an undercurrent of grim pleasure in physical discomfort, worming under your skin like Tri Angle labelmate Rabit's similarly caustic "Pandemic." [Feb 2016, p.53]

For all of its constant activity, [the album] feels stale. It does next to nothing new to build on previous releases, and from song to song there's so little variation that its ultimate effect is numbing. [Feb 2016, p.50]

This is a good record. It's probably the best record by a group named after a situationist art installation you'll hear all year. But I'd be surprised if it came [on] top of any other list. [Feb 2016, p.48]

M:FANS sounds way too much of its moment: it sounds just how you expect right now to sound. Worse, maybe: it actually sounds like a few years back. [Jan 2016, p.84]

The song ["Yonder Blue"] is as intricately tied into pop and soundtrack tradition as the rest of the album, but it carries an immediacy that otherwise eludes The Catastrophist. [Jan 2016, p.72]

It's a bit California slacker, a bit New York dive, a bit Delta blues, and so firs in well enough alongside Woodist alumni like Kurt Vile, Real Estate and Woods. [Jan 2016, p.71]

To Those of Earth & Other Worlds miss some of the cosmic darkness of Sun Ra. Instead it's a fulsome celebration of the most joyous heights of his work. [Nov 2015, p.66]

There's not much going on texturally. [Nov 2015, p.56]

It's a Mark McGuire record in the way he plunges into all his personal enthusiasms and arrives somewhere more interesting when he comes up for air. [Nov 2015, p.56]

His melody lines never go where they should; there is pattern here, but not he expected resolution. [Nov 2015, p.56]

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

Every gesture feels bold and assured. [Nov 2015, p.53]

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

Nothing has afforded him unlimited space to recalibrate after a period of upheaval and loss. [Nov 2015, p.45]

Despite its recourse to sentimentality, this is appealing, historic and culturally important music. [Dec 2015, p.68]

It's a tribute to Dilla's imagination that every track here has at least a spark of some interest, but ultimately Dillatronic is, like so many exhaustive archival box sets, a dry reminder that brilliance is usually the result of a drafting process. [Dec 2015, p.66]

The album retains a taste for annihilation. [Dec 2015, p.56]

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

Hallucinogen moulds diverse influences together into a perplexing whole. [Dec 2015, p.51]

The sonic immensity and detail of the album, an extended paean to the power of the imagination, with the feel of a dark fairy tale, rivals the most ostentatious of Bob Ezrin's productions for Alice Cooper, Kiss and Lou Reed. [Dec 2015, p.50]

DJ Paypal's take on footwork does to R&B, disco and 1980s adult contemporary smoothness what sometime collaborators AG Cook and SOPHIE of PC Music do to bubblegum ad teeny pop. [Dec 2015, p.47]

Invite The Light is determinedly adventurous. [Dec 2015, p.46]

Almost every track has a fearsome radiance to its high end and even in those parts without drums or squared off structures, the surges of sound recall collective dancefloor ecstasies. [Dec 2015, p.44]

There are moments when the insights of Newsom's improvised mythology fall into pseudo-profundity... But still it easily stands with this year's entrancing reinventions of song--Julia Holter's Have You In My Wilderness, Jim O'Rourke's Simple Songs--and the high points of her own catalogue so far. [Nov 2015, p.46]

Science Fiction Dancehall Classics is a more than serviceable as an On-U sound primer, yet may throw even those who think they know the label. [Oct 2015, p.70]

It carries with it the expressivity of darker electronic take on popular forms, and exchanges the cliches of this UK habit for new and complex alien intimacies. [Oct 2015, p.49]

While the intellectual territory is familiar, it's explored with similar playfulness and ear for inventive juxtaposition as Papaich's fellow city dwellers Matmos. [Oct 2015, p.50]

["f=(2.5)"] has a nice queasy seasick vibe, but feels over-egged, with too many ideas thrown at it too quickly. Other tracks repeat this formula with diminishing returns and cut 'n' paste fatigue sets in.... "f=(2.6)" is a lot more fun. [Oct 2015, p.48]

The Loud Silence builds tracks up from small, wiry gestures. [Oct 2015, p.62]

Sounds at times as much like an audio documentary of Cameron's Britain as a collection of electronic songs. [Oct 2015, p.62]

What drives each track home is the tight focus of the playing, riffs and ideas, each one the clockwork fuse on a ticking time bomb. [Oct 2015, p.60]

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

What makes this set so compelling is its mapping of the rapid shifts in Davis's music within shorter periods. [Oct 2015, p.68]

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

The neo-soul influenced beats Jenkins raps and sings over often sounding submerged in a fog of reverb effects and filtration. Jenkins lyrics, too, are dense, containing their own murky depths, but his intense intelligence and formidable talent is never less than crystal clear. [Oct 2015, p.63]

The intelligence and emotions of the lyrics also capture the accidental complexities of the pop of yesteryear when light entertainment could find itself the place for heavy themes. [Oct 2015, p.60]

Production wise, [Have] You In Wilderness is a touch too diaphanous and gauzy, a few tracks in, you start craving something solid to hold on to amid the clouds of billowing strings.... It's a testament to Holter's songwriting ability that this doesn't fatally mar the album, but it would be appreciated if her future work demonstrated a greater sense of its own physicality. [Oct 2015, p.54]

A minor pleasure of the album is the beautiful way it's edited together, a gently manipulated impression of random accidents. [Sep 2015, p.47]

While King may not be quite as adept a riff craftman as his late partner, the headbanging intensity and shout-along choruses that have always marked their best material are still present. [Sep 2015, p.51]

If the Wu-Tang Clan's A Better Tomorrow was a shoddy attempt at cinematic audio in a Hollywood blockbuster sense, this is the arthouse variety show alternative with caricature Ghost as compere. [Sep 2015, p.57]

Those who lost interest after Tha Carter III may want to start paying attention again. [Sep 2015, p.57]

Their current incarnation has an almost puppyish energy and optimism which makes the album's 34-minutes seem even shorter and more repeatable. [Sep 2015, p.54]

St. Catherine departs from the lo-fi meditations of earlier releases to explore a fuller bodied sound environment where structures are tighter and colours less smeared. [Sep 2015, p.54]

Her latest iteration that limited palette of vintage machines feels trapped in the past; evocative but ossified. [Sep 2015, p.45]

The new sound is taut and spare.[Sep 2015, p.50]

The cumulative effect of these strange patchwork songs as in the end ambivalent. [Sep 2015, p.48]

The Light In You is palpably charged with love of music and gratitude for its redemptive powers. [Sep 2015, p.48]

One And Sixes brings a welcome edge... Unusually for Low, the lyrics are where One And Sixes falls down, frequently dealing less in acutely felt emotions than in questions and negotiations. [Sep 2015, p.47]