Every song on Fungus II aspires to soundtrack a twisted comic book or Hanna-Barbera cartoon about itself. Segall’s guitar and bass playing is wailing and distended while Chippendale lays down tight bursts of percussive fire. For the beetle-browed half hour this album lasts, these guys are here to party. [Apr 2020, p.63]

In Love With Oblivion is best when it's tough, primitive and direct. [Apr 2011, p.67]

Personal and political themes gestate within this gloss. They surface in full power on the giddy “Space Golf”, showering with sarcasm the absurd space escapism of xenophobic, misanthropic billionaires. [Dec 2020, p.62]

It's simultaneously the group's most successful integration of the various strands they've chased over the years and their most ambitious and expansive work to date. [#241, p.50]

Theirs is a terse music, but purposeful, and it's that quality which makes this a more engaging listen than the equally abstract cybernetic fusion of To Rococo Rot or Mapstation. [#247, p.62]

This playfulness – which tends to be overshadowed by Hendricks’s LOUD persona – continues to be one of the most rewarding aspects of listening to a JPEGMAFIA album. [Oct 2024, p.53]

Some might find the shit-fi recording (albeit aided by a keen producer’s ear), the relentless bleakness, or Del Rio’s blackened vocals to be dealbreakers. But it’s undeniable that Raspberry Bulbs are not only unencumbered by constraints of genre, they’ve forged a sound unique to themselves. [Mar 2020, p.54]

Although they stop the gap between higher profile releases, they also stand capably on their own. [Jul 2012, p.54]

The record makes you marinate in Francis' omni-loathing, and the effect is one of catharsis rather than exhaustion. [#254, p.57]

On the first, Williams engages each of Elkhorn’s members in turn. ... Williams switches to shahi baaja for the B side, casting effects-tinged tones like some cosmic fly fisherman wading into the confluence of two imaginary streams. [Mar 2020, p.47]

Darkly beautiful release. .... Halo's entropic instincts are a perfect fit for the film in question. [Mar 2026, p.50]

Thanks to Tune-Yards’ trademark genre splicing--demented nursery rhyme chanting, jerky rapping, tortured harmonising and stuttery 808 beats--Private Life shows there’s still space for playfulness amid the polemic. [Mar 218, p.55]

If there’s fun in her music, it’s somewhere between the anaesthetising effect of especially her more electric noises and the ecstatic release in her vocal, both too honest to be anything else but awkward. Fundamentally sociopathic. [Nov 2018, p.55]

Throughout, strings carry forward brief, carefully composed interludes, dipping into sound fields that recall early 2000s post-rock; pensive percussion and melodic guitars riffing in and out of focus. The compositions are painterly and precise, punctuated by chimes and deep piano tones. [Dec 2025, p.56]

Best Troubador is a joyous reclamation of song, gentle and true to Oldham’s personal, more delicate style. [Jun 2017, p.60]

Listening with a heart opened with affection kindled by Mascis's warm and defeated drawl, there's much to engage the latent Dinosaur fan looking for a still moment. [Mar 2011, p.52]

Tooth works brilliantly as a whole, each piece building up tension to breaking point and refusing to offer resolution. [Jun 2016, p.48]

It's an extraordinary and compelling celebration of a hardcore punk classic. [Oct 2007, p.71]

Hardly the stuff of revolution, Still Smiling nevertheless feels comfortable in all of its swollen riches. [Oct 2013, p.54]

Almond – who recorded his vocals while recovering from Covid – sounds audibly frail at times. But this works in the album’s favour, working humanity into the glossiness. The most effective tracks are those with sparse backing, such as “Polaroid” and the drolly misanthropic “I’m Not A Friend Of God”. [May 2022, p.53]

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]

If you value surehandedness, richness, immaculate timing and the occasional tilted eyebrow then there's a lot to enjoy on Tortoise's most assured set to date. [#204, p.65]

The album's primary emotion of disgust is cushioned by performances and production so luxurious as to be sinister. [Dec 2012, p.63]

They're wise enough to leave breathing space, such as the final minute of "The Hurt That Finds You First," which codas into a swishing corridor of guitar licks, or "The Last vigil," which brings the album wordlessly to rest on a pall of interleaved, echoing guitar chimes. [Mar 2012, p.56]

The 11 songs here are energised, chest beating anthems that are positively soul elevating. [Oct 2014, p.61]

For Ulver's three-part collaboration with Sunn))), the mood is equally holy, reverential and mysterious. [Feb 2014, p.52]

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]

Guitarists John and Michael Gibbons tar into riffs which, for all their power, articulate a cosmic loneliness, while Isobel Sollenberger intones troubled mantras with the benighted insistence of an unquiet spirit. [Oct 2013, p.55]

Toure's tone is richly sonorous, his vocal strength such that he actually buttresses and strengthens the tracks... It's a great shame that the sound quality falters on the later tracks. [Jul 2015, p.58]

The album primarily features solo guitar, harmonica and lap steel, all cloaked in gauzy atmospheres, and often conjuring mental images of a sprawling, rural America. The most compelling moments on the album make a hazy blend of guitar twang and swirling electronics, as on “Outskirts, Dreamlit” whose nostalgic melody tumbles almost without a sense of time. [May 2022, p.52]

A complex and challenging listen. [#257, p.61]

As well as these old school paeans to rock's cosmic moments, there are tracks fascinating through a percussive complexity that nods to minimalism. [Sep 2013, p.63]

If music is ever really going to change the world, it's going to need more vigour and vitality than this. [Jan 2014, p.66]

Yoshimi’s mesh of voices is sometimes overpowering, although, as with Björk, that feeling of overpowerment is part of the deal, constructed to bring the listener to a place that feels like the edge of something--the singer’s endurance; the listener’s understanding--only to push them over into somewhere else entirely. [Nov 2017, p.61]

The album works best when the trio downshift to embrace Kaur's vocals and rhythmical sitar twangs. [Mar 2011, p.61]

His final, posthumous recording isn’t exactly Norman Rockwell, but it does take The Night Tripper back to his country roots. This kind of twilight recording, with carefully staged surprises – see Johnny Cash’s sepulchral take on Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” – has become something of an industry cliche, but Dr John’s lifelong love for the music here is too well attested to seem like some kind of last minute A&R wheeze. [Oct 2022, p.41]

Almost overpowering in its anthemic positivity, Constant Future is unfashionably fearless, and all the better for it. [Apr 2011, p.58]

Its infusion of HipHop drum programs, Old Skool electronics, rabblerousing calls-to-arms and repetitive guitar riffs is highly addictive. [#213, p.58]

With Dodging Dues they’ve thrown up another seven tracks – it’s not a long album – that will sustain many a night on the road. It all feels pleasingly old-fashioned and familiar. [Jan 2022, p.64]

Will To Be Well has a vivid inner life. [Aug 2014, p.49]

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]

No Highs is a soundtrack for knotted stomachs – introverted, devoid of catharsis and all the more moving for its honesty and restraint. [Apr 2023, p.54]

Fading out, they leave the impression of an album too ambitious for its own good, but offering moments of real awe. [Apr 2021, p.52]

Isles offers multiple reboots of the “Glue” formula: chunky broken beats, keening voices in many languages, and duvet-warm basslines, as on lead singles “Atlas” and “Apricots”; the latter is based around a clip of the much sampled Bulgarian State Television choir. Guest vocalist Clara La San adds a femme-pop twist to “Saku” and a tight electro jam called “X” which is the best of the bunch. [Mar 2021, p.61]

If anything Quadra is even better [than 2017’s Machine Messiah], expertly filtering fresh textures (the fat synth that opens “Isolation” immediately raises an eyebrow, along with the Carl Orff-like chorale of “Last Time” and the Bollywood-ish orchestration of “Capital Enslavement”) into tightly coiled songs whose ferocity is comparable to Exhorder’s 2019 comeback Mourn The Southern Skies – albeit with a great deal more ambition and (effective) experimentation. [Feb 2020, p.56]

Plunges deeper into Saami’s isolate sonic wisdom. [Oct 2020]

The album’s eight tracks meander, but they never get lost. “Basin” for example sounds like Brian Eno’s Music For Airports might if it were scaled down to be played in an apartment hallway instead of a spacious terminal. [May 2023, p.51]

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]

They [Born On A Gangster Star and Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines] can be appreciated either together or apart from each other. [Aug 2017, p.58]

There's an ineffable quality to No Joy's music that truly works. [Dec 2010, p.51]

The resulting heady musical cocktail that Portner serves up will be eagerly drained by his fan base, but the cloying bubble gum aftertaste may leave any newcomers feeling somewhat queasy. [May 2023, p.60]

Suavely assembled big band pop. [#220, p.66]

Far Side Virtual is a convincing evocation of the digital dreamtime. [Nov 2011, p.58]

His voice is better suited to confiding, but it's slapped on top rather than properly featured, and this seems symptomatic of the muddy arranging, But the aim is to swagger and excite, and the group's ragged fervour is not in doubt. [Jun 2015, p.50]

Virtuosity quickly shades into something inhuman, as every plectrum and drumstick lands inevitably – and thrillingly – on target. [Jun 2023, p.54]

Trees Outside The Academy is a relaxed, organic record that charms without really trying, and perhaps the closest Moore will ever come to the lost Moby Grape album. [Sep 2007, p.57]

he way the music suddenly jerks into life from stasis to movement is fine and the whole thing is beautiful and embracing and makes you think peaceful thoughts. By mid-afternoon though things get really ragged. ... Whatever made those earlier tracks sound so great is missing now. [Jan 2018, p.62]

Her taste--for beats at least--isn't that expensive, but is certainly sophisticated, perhaps pointedly so. [Jan 2015, p.74]

They feel energised with Keenan back in the fold, and while the pronounced riffs on the introduction of “Little Man” might hark back to their hardcore days, the emphasis here is on groove. [Feb 2018, p.46]

Nothing here sounds forced, and Bailiff's continued use of effects doesn't so much obscure as communicate the heartfelt content of her songs more effectively. [Nov 2012, p.70]

This is music with character. [Sep 2012, p.67]

Dear is pervaded by a deep melancholy, but of a sweet, lovelorn kind, a looking back and a bitter-sweet attitude. Who knows if it’ll be their last record. If this is the case, it’s certainly a fitting send-off. [Aug 2017, p.49]

This is crystalline and intoxicating: an album to return to repeatedly for inspiration. [Feb 2011, p.48]

The Silence are less pastoral and more raucous, from the sax-laden opener "Rituals Of The Sun" onwards. There's a healthy dose of early 1970s British prog throughout too.

Throughout, what’s so revelatory and gratifying is hearing Zedek pushed by others and pushing others in turn. [Dec 2016, p.58]

Topped off with signature twin guitar harmonies, the album is often a blast, if a bit unbalanced overall. [Oct 2021, p.58]

This album emerges as too tangled to be pulled into a simplistic linear narrative; throughout, innocence and trauma co-mingle both lyrically and sonically. Fawn/Brute is as complex and irresistible as its themes would suggest. [Apr 2023, p.54]

When he muses on ideal love it comes off like How To Dress Well with a bit of a John Mayer wink--Vulnicura this ain’t. Longstreth is a talented producer and arranger and it shows here. ... Shame about the lyrics. [May 2017, p.59]

The best cuts come courtesy of Chi-town's Soundtrakk, whose Native Tongues love knows no bound, while newcomers Chris & Drop provide notably solid beatwork for 'Gold Watch.' [Apr 2008, p.71]

The most anomalous thing about What the Brothers Sang, a collection of Everly Brothers covers, is how sincere it sounds. [Feb 2013, p.52]

The production from DJ Mustard hits like a cannonball dive into chlorinated waters, as Greedo croons his mystical pain salves, channelling Soulja Slim and Boosie if they grew up on Grape Street. But he shows his depth on the gorgeous anthem to his wife “Gettin’ Ready”. [Jun 2019, p.69]

Hunn achieves an impressive balance between stylistic coherency and jazzy beat maximalism--it's never really as light or as heavy as it first seems--that other producers of his ilk struggle to pull off. [Mar 2014, p.65]

Blood Oaths Of The New Blues is a compelling argument for the virtues of grasping what's within your reach rather than grabbing vainly for the stars. [May 2013, p.60]

Together, these two collections add up to a desolate statement that is naked enough to make listening feel like a act of voyeurism. [Sep 2010, p.62]

It's more letdown than meltdown, as veteran drummer Steve Reid runs out steam about halfway through disc two. [Dec 2011, p.70]

This album is not afraid of discord or rhythmic slippage, but it's delivered with an assurance that his experience and discography allows. [Jun 2014, p.51]

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

From the vantage point of 2019, the Braindance sound has dated slightly--that splattery, all the drums at once style has been rinsed to death by the breakcore hordes. But there’s a sense of homespun whimsy to Raczynski’s music--a sense of the maker behind the machine--and a track like “329 15h”, a simple but artful blend of scalpel-sharp pseudo-junglism and music box melody, proves this music still has an energising effect. [May 2019, p.51]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

Heavy with lurid and dazzling detail, seeking to put drum ’n’ bass-like textures and hyperkinetic beats against the gruff distortion of rock, it recalls Pitchshifter and Asian Dub Foundation in its genreless aggravation and futurist push. [May 2022, p.55]

It's one earthquake/windstorm after another for an hour, possibly the group's best release since 2009's Bag It! [Nov 2013, p.55]

Strange and seductive. [Oct 2024, p.48]

Wildest Dreams despite its unapologetic retro stance, is a wild wide. [Aug 2014, p.58]

The whole album seems to be incandescent with anger. You would have to travel a long way to hear an acoustic guitar album as tough as this. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.82]

Plushly layered drones and percolating beats nearly bury some of the hardest, saddest words they’ve ever sung. [Apr 2018, p.63]

It’s just possible that, nearly three decades into her recording career, It’s Real is Ex Hex frontwoman Mary Timony’s strongest release to date. [Mar 2019, p.62]

Rather than concocting rich strata from the guitar of Reine Fiske or Johan Holmegard’s percussion, these pieces are mainly stripped back and sprightly, propelled by the dazzling vocals of Ejstes. ... Where previously these atonal chords and odd tempos would have been subsumed into the heavy mixture, they appear here open and light, forming something that’s less earthy and far more fantastical. [Nov 2022, p.60]

These guys mean well. [June 2008, p.63]

The gauzy textures that she creates on New Decade do capture something of crystalline stasis. It’s only the rhythmical structure of the “Snow And Pollen” – two electronic pulses that sound, one, two, one, two – that connotes a diffuse sense of menace. [Nov 2021, p.57]

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]

Frankly, the guy defies you not to be impressed by what he's got. [#234, p.53]

The emphasis this time around is on poppier melodies, but for all its attention to song form, Sonic Nurse feels more like a collection of exercises than a cohesive album. [#244, p.63]

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

It's clever stuff, but if it's sweat you want, you're probably better off going for a run. [Mar 2011, p.48]

The payoff comes about a third of the way in, when the spirit of Foghat makes an unexpected appearance and everything goes boogie. [Oct 2013, p.55]

Almost by definition it's a mixed bag, but Grime 2.0 intrigues because it suggests this music was never strictly codified. [May 2013, p.54]

There's some seriously accomplished musicianship here. [Aug 2014, p.55]

Pieces Of A Man is coherent, marrying the raw energy of trap with jazz-funk inspired beats. Black Milk’s instrumentals “Stress Fracture” and “Gwendolynn’s Apprehension” are remarkably complex both melodically and rhythmically. [Jan 2019, p.80]