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

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]

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]

Children's voices soften and lift the sound, not with nostalgia but with unvarnished purity. Even the darkest tracks have this sense of movement: "Endgames" trudges on a low, stubborn pulse until bowed strings and harp flourishes nudge it into tentative radiance. The album becomes a procession, carrying its own weight into a brighter place. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.88]

The production, courtesy of DJ Dahi, No ID and James Blake, spirals outward from the world this Long Beach native’s peers inhabit and into satisfyingly experimental territory. [Oct 2016, p.65]

Even the occasional instances of hypergloss cinematic texture and vaporwave mannerisms have their place, glueing together spikes of noise, luscious organ reverberations and feverish glitch pulses into a synthetic yet intensely human whole. [Aug 2022, p.50]

A striking collection of shadowy electronic soul. [Nov 2023, p.62]

It’s smooth and contemplative at times, punctuated by cinematic ruptures and ambient textures that trail behind El Shazly’s elastic vocal phrasing. Her voice, processed and layered with care, frequently emerges as the central narrative device and quickly slips between intimacy and distance. [Jun 2025, p.58]

If the album feels a little like it’s beginning to run out of ideas by the end of its 45 minutes, the audacity of its central aesthetic propels it to some dizzying heights along the way. [Oct 2018, p.62]

Young Thug has made a record about the agency public figures have over their own identities. In another, he’s made the year’s most bizarre, brilliant genre exercise. [Oct 016, p.65]

I’d say that the seething intransigence of Impossible Star is precisely what makes it so compelling. A release whose glittering details and dusty undertow can’t obscure how appalled it is. [Feb 2018, p.51]

It is a working through of grief and abuse, characterised by Nastasia’s deeply resonant songwriting. ... It would be tempting to liken the run of songs in between to a personal descent followed by an emergence into the outside world, but Nastasia shuns such easy linear interpretations. [Aug 2022, p.53]

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]

Gay’s latest is a deep dive into memory but emerges as a triumphant celebration of a past and future antilineage, uniquely conjured from the inner complexities of an artist not tortured by the past but possessed by it. [Dec 2021, p.50]

Sometimes the sensuousness of Serpent Music is missed, but Tumor’s drive to take this radically new music to audiences as big as Blake’s, Ocean’s or even Radiohead’s is exhilarating. [Oct 2018, p.63]

This is her most effective project to date. [Aug 2013, p.60]

Bores are in the minority and easily avoided, the exquisitely curated majority impress both in isolation and together as kaleidoscopic wonder. An unlikely joy. [Jul 2023, p.58]

More passionate and sophisticated than much of what passes for musical eclecticism these days, Dark Matter is a fusion of old and new, acoustic and electronic. [Feb 2020, p.42]

As with most of these tracks, the effect is cumulative, and if Co La's modus operandi at first appeared to be almost flippant, the resulting music is inescapably hypnotic. [Jan 2012, p. 52]

The oozing synths of “Umbra” slide deliciously in and out of phase to an ethereal keening. .... Elsewhere, she hacks and revolves samples into chittering humus – an overripe garden of imagination, bustling with enthusiasm, circuitry and life. [Jun 2025, p.64]

The music on Old Star is not black metal, stylistically speaking, but it nonetheless telegraphs Darkthrone’s cackling, sardonic grimness so as to transpose a blackened atmosphere into speed metal riff salad, epic/trad doom and frequent moments that call up Celtic Frost’s hallowed splicing of iron and velvet. [Aug 2019, p.64]

This is Irreversible Entanglements at their most accessible, their free jazz roots tightly folded into song form. While the tighter structures of such tracks leave less space for improvisation, the band find other ways to expand the sound, as on "Panamanian Fight Song" where an ambient piano intro recurs as a reverb-heavy apparition. [May 2026, p.53]

An album of sombre yet uplifting electronic music. ... If that [a requiem for a close friend and respected artist] wasn’t the original intent, one can hardly imagine a finer tribute. [Sep 2022, p.43]

Let It Come Down suffers just a little from Pierce's presumably healthier outlook. [#211, p.66]

Some of Out Of Season's lyrics are almost too impossibly idealistic and airy fairy to carry off. [#226, p.54]

There's no point chasing diminishing returns on a four-track, and the buffed-up West is a kick worth revisiting. [Aug 2011, p.63]

Effective, perhaps, as background music for adverts or TV vignettes... The second CD, Heim, is better. [Dec 2007, p.65]

The Blow excel at cold wave beats and detached machine pop. But much of this sounds a bit too defeated, or needs some more of their nicely weird online humour to offset the gloom. They sound stronger and more substantial on the souped up “Get Up” which embraces its own Debbie Downer side and promises “I want to come through, persist/ I’m going to form all my selves into the shape of a fist”. [Apr 2018, p.50]

There’s a food theme to this super light and easy but lushly layered 1970s and 80s themed reverie. [Aug 2019, p.66]

As ever, he works with a solid dub toolkit, but tracks like "The Well Is Poisoned" (co-written with Brian Eno) and "Hiroshima Dub Match" sound newly anxious. [Nov 2025, p.56]

If you listen to White Stuff and hear good time rock ’n’ roll then perhaps it’s time to check into the rock ’n’ roll nursing home. On the other hand if you hear avant garde brinksmanship, check your ears. It’s both, it’s neither. Does it matter? Does anything? Yes and no.

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]

The overall effect is that of a mutated being, inexplicably functional but undeniably alive, slowly making sense of the alien world in which it finds itself. [Dec 2021, p.44]

Snow Bound adheres to the template he has been carefully fine tuning over the years, a series of thoughtful, occasionally joyful, barbed pop rockers with masked sociopolitical references attached, all artfully designed to hook themselves into your memory and hold fast. [Oct 2018, p.64]

Dream A Garden only starts to sound radical when it breaks the bounds of its songforms and an eerie melancholy steals in. [Mar 2015, p.48]

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]

Across 13 brief sketches – some only a minute or two long – the groove is paramount. A hint of Afrobeat pops up a few times, here as a sludgy crawl, there as if Tonto’s Expanding Head Band had lugged their gear down to Fela’s shrine. [Jul 2024, p.66]

At best, the end result has an epic and ethereal sheen, though there are certainly moments where Araab succumbs to the tackier elements of his influences, like blind fist-pumping four on the floor or arpeggiated faux-bliss. [Aug 2011, p.69]

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]

With Primrose Green, Walker is in a larger collective setting and it works in his favour. A mixed bag of Chicago musicians concoct a pleasant, hazy feel to the proceedings. [Mar 2015, p.54]

Live In Cuxhaven 1976 may not dispel the impression that these live records are mainly for Can devotees, but it also confirms that the last word about their volatile processes has yet to be said. [Nov 2022, p.77]

Nostalgialator is exhilarating, eschewing rhetorical rap fury in favour of a satirical masqued ball of capitalist obsessions. [#246, p.52]

Brassy and direct, it looked north and west, toward the coastal Caribbean and into the forest. Kicking carimbó, bangué, siriá and other up-country sounds are ably documented on Jambú. [Aug 2019, p.67]

Lil B's slower, more ruminative delivery here feels far braver for being more exposed and vulnerable. [Dec 2010, p.50]

When the singing’s done the guitar returns, its tone so stretched and distorted that you can’t quite tell whether it’s purging or celebrating the lyric’s outcome. Are the voice and guitar together or not? It’s complicated.

Offend Maggie is the sound of a group mind at work, deep in spontaneous collective play--but a kind of play taken very very seriously. As it should be. [Dec 2008, p.58]

There's everything to like about this release, but nothing to grip or to enage the senses... Stereolab have now defined and refined themselves to a point where they are almost invisible. [#211, p.53]

As with all Venetian Snares records, it can feel a bit of an endurance test, every possible permutation of kick, snare and hat cycled through in a breakneck half-hour until the listener is battered into submission. But Lanois and Funk elevate each other’s sound, bringing a certain unlikely prettiness to the album’s general mood of freneticism. [Jun 2018, p.64]

This is digital music with great big jammy thumbprints smeared all over it. The little glitches that patter through any one of UNIEQAV’s 12 instrumentals present the human at the heart of the machine.

“Simon Says” and “Pimpin’” prove she works well with Juicy J as long as he stays away from the mic. But “Hood Rat Shit” is the real highlight, a moment where for all the gory details her glee is more Dennis The Menace than Lil Kim. [Aug 2019, p.68]

If you’re after period reproductions of 1970s rustic rock, will please you just fine. [Jun 2018, p.65

Pram find themselves in a rather difficult position, where it doesn’t seem as if they’ve much room to evolve without changing the atmosphere of the project completely. That said, Across The Meridian tentatively paws at a few new directions even as it remains mindful of the group’s palette to date. [Jul 2018, p.57]

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

Fans are unlikely to be disappointed, but if you're expecting a new direction, look somewhere else. [Nov 2010, p.52]

Sings Olivia Newton-John is an album nobody asked for but that’s partly what makes it special. Hatfield’s garage-bound arrangements scuff up the squeaky clean originals to likeable effect and she throws herself into the project with gusto. [Jun 2018, p.65]

The album’s strongest moments aren’t the existential musings of “Marathon” or “World Of Flaws” but the palpable joy when he reflects on his everyday life in the ebullient title track, and the problematic yet precious local pride of “Brixton Baby”. [Mar 2018, p.47]

A general choogle drives most of the songs, the production tends to suppress any heavy metal impulses, while the dense arrangements also neuter Dawson’s gnarled improvisational guitar style, so extremes are essentially cancelled. It’s the most normal sounding record I’ve heard from either party, but the singer can’t help but entertain even within these surprisingly prim surroundings. [Dec 2021, p.48]

Possibly the most daring record she's ever made... [but] Medulla is not a complete success. [#247, p.53]

Drift is thoughtfully and firmly wistful, an acoustic fireside plainsong with odd interference from a distant radio and neurotic strings (“Sleep”) or, in the vein of a Yankee Tindersticks, practising delicate odes to the simple pleasures of touch, free time and, perhaps, the timefree. [Mar 2018, p.50]

A powerful and evocative sound journey. [Jan. 2012, p.64]

The opening track and first single “Hide & Seek” is built around a hard charging, hooky punk riff that sounds more like The Offspring than the Lizard of old. Yow’s vocals, higher in the mix than they used to be, have a nasal, sneering quality that’s more actorly than unhinged. [Sep 2024, p.50]

There's a subtle psychedelic twist in these phony hits that somehow renders the best of them compulsively listenable. [Oct 2012, p.64]

Wiley is one of those rare double-threats, blessed with both production and MCing abilities. [Jan. 2012, p.64]

The music has the translucent character of Ishibashi’s soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, where its resonance and weight change depending on the attention you pay to them. Ishibashi’s vocals are airy, light, almost noncommittal, but this only adds another layer of enigma and malleability. [Apr 2024, p.54]

Remember Me lacks depth, being essentially a collection of keg party crowd pleasers, but its biggest singles are undeniable. [Jun 2014, p.63]

Tobacco’s beats sound like a mescaline trip through a haunted theme park from Scooby Doo, while the Def Jux legend in a different lifetime raps about an eagle snacking on a cat like a churro. Pretty standard stuff really. [Mar 2019, p.65]

There's little in the way of structural reinvention, but then Oldham has never really been a sonics man, and the success of this album rests on one's appreciation of his songwriting alone. [Oct 2008, p.52]

No album in hiphop history has been less in need of a padding. [Jun 2014, p.63]

Their music is an exercise in reductionism: how little does a tune need to be tune? Yet, somehow these non-tunes niggle away till they lodge firmly in the memory tissue. [Jan. 2012, p.66]

The bookending tracks from Ulf Lohmann, "Sicht" and "PCC," play seductively with auras of overloaded guitar and synth, cyclical patterns accruing intensity, but an unfortunate saccharine edge remains. [Feb 2014, p.57]

Third Avenue is less approachable, more problematic [than Dave's Psychodrama]. ... But overall he shows a range Dave should take note of. [May 2019, p.50]

Minimal Rock N Roll is at its best when hinting at former glories. [Apr 2014, p.63]

It's ["Ghost Net" is] the uneasiest thing that The Necks have done in years, and its duration of 74 minutes is long enough to wear down both resistance and acceptance. .... The other disc-long performance, "Rapid Eye Movement", is far more approachable.

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

I Shall Die Here's meeting of stark electronic textures and rhythms with monstrous guitars evokes Godflesh's Pure. [Apr 2014, 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]

Slug Guts embrace their destiny as swaggering, bar-destroying dirtbags, and we're all better for it. [Oct 2012, p.68]

Though there's something inevitably ghoulish about the reception afforded these piano and vocal pieces--released for the first time on vinyl in 2013--it would be perverse to deny that they serve as a curious prologue to Drake the younger's brief but brilliant career. [Feb 2014, p.61]

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

The rest offer artful and discerning combinations of a number of genre hallmarks, making for a smooth and modern drive. [Oct 2012, p.74]

With the Jicks now sharing the spotlight, sees Malkmus's familiar tangled lyricism and meandering tendencies offset by some tremendous group performances. [Mar 2008, p.57]

Whether the listener feels it succeeds will depend on their willingness to accept its surface passivity. ... Shall We Go On Sinning is most persuasive on the second side. [May 2020, p.60]

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 a rich mix, and though parts of this album consists of pumped-up club anthems, plus the notorious, raw, 'Club Action,' from thier debut "Yo EP," there is enough grit in the polish to keep it interesting. [Oct 2008, p.66]

Closer works best instrumentally, as a sonic depiction of the mind, as a dark voyage into inner space. [#236, p.64]

A further cover from that era, Corrosion Of Conformity’s “Loss For Words”, features alongside three previously unheard songs by the teenage group: “Methematics” stands out as a twisty prog-thrasher with shades of Voivod. It still amounts to a bit of a frippery, and one doesn’t have to look far to find a fan of the band cheesed off at Mr Bungle doing this rather than writing a follow-up to 1999’s California, but they don’t owe anyone anything. [Dec 2020, p.52]

Lyrically it is all shamelessly hollow, but Ross's album is seductively swish, its production sophisticated and strings and saxophone abound. [Oct 2012, p.75]

What makes Knuckleball Express slightly different from previous Hex albums is that the songs seem slightly straighter, though it’s a matter of moments before the apple cart is upset and a whole packet of noodles is scattered over the mix. [May 2020, p.52]

Ancestral Star occasionally sounds so close to that group's 2005 Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method that it sometimes feels like a magnificently constructed reworking. [Nov 2010, p.64]

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]

A modest effort of just over half an hour. [Mar 2019, p.62]

At times it takes an effort to differentiate Hive1 from many other of the gentle experimental works involving modular synthesizers across the decades, despite its unique origins. But there are subtle--and again, intensive--surprises scattered throughout, both in sounds and forms. [May 2015, p.47]

When things do coalesce, and the absurd merges with the moving, Tonight You Look Like A Spider plays some mart, unpredictable tricks. [Aug 2013, p.60]

Bob Mould is not pulling up stylistic roots on Sunshine Rock, but it’s still breezier than his average, thanks in part to the use of an 18-piece string section on much of the album. [Mar 2019, p.62]

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]

While he operates in similar sonic territory to Ariel Pink, Mondanile is as disarmingly gentle as Pink is strutting and cocky. [Nov 2017, p.67]

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]

Fortunately, aside from this piece “Let Me Sleep”], the banal Clark-adjacent string spiccatos of “The Horror” and certain sections that drag on and on, this is compelling, bodymoving and occasionally inspired music. [Dec 2021, p.