His most intimate work to date. [Jan 2015, p.68]

There is, in the end, something vaguely nauseating about a bunch of popular entertainers in middle age creating state-supported art inspired by the deaths of countless young men caused by an act of state-subsidised slaughter. [Jan 2015, p.61]

For the most part, the album makes a convincing argument for Sleater-Kinney's continued relevance. [Jan 2015, p.63]

If Wilco have deliberately stepped back from the brink in recent years, the quality has been maintained, and one feels the door is always open for their return. [Jan 2015, p.80]

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

The mish-mash of styles wouldn't be an issue if it sounded like Pateras and Patton were surrendering to something other than themselves, but what comes across instead is a desire to demonstrate mastery. [Jan 2015, p.70]

It scores over its predecessor with a refreshing spontaneity and an illustrious guest cast. [Jan 2015, p.65]

A Better Tomorrow feels trapped by history, an impotent reflection versus a proposed resurrection. [Jan 2015, p.65]

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

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]

A World Lit Only By Fire finds Godflesh on pleasingly resolute form. [Dec 2014, p.57]

The prevalent mood is restless and defiant, with the vulnerability found on earlier albums swept along by a sense that this time they're both lovers and fighters. [Dec 2014, p.57]

The tracks here, presented with the intention that other will use them as a creative starting pint, nevertheless feel fully realised, evoking a succession of fleeting states and ambiguous atmospheres. [Dec 2014, p.57]

This is the sound of two mature rap gentlemen throwing it up for one of hiphop's most enduring, if not always endearing, charms: utter immaturity. [Dec 2014, p.54]

It's not just Hertz's technical nous that makes Flatland so compelling, but his commitment to forging something lucid, plastic and expressive, music that blurs the line between hyper reality and the topsy-turvy world of imagination. [Dec 2014, p.51]

It's a startlingly consistent album--dazzling, baffling and sprawling in the same way that Russell and his work was. [Dec 2014, p.50]

Much of the album's faults are down to Smith. Rather than steering the collective ship, his voice, slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, barely connects with the others. [Dec 2014, p.48]

The result is streamlined and raw, but still with their customary flourishes of melodic invention woven in. [Dec 2014, p.48]

Unforced, almost conversational asides give the music an intensely focused off the cuff feel. [Dec 2014, p.46]

With Hell Can Wait, he inches logically towards a modernisation of the chaotic wall of noise formula that defined Public Enemy than immediately pulls back from it. [Nov 2014, p.76]

Nehru is essentially indistinguishable from any number of bedroom rappers clogging Soundcloud with their freestyles to Doom's decade old Special Herbs instrumentals. [Nov 2014, p.76]

The impression left by The Hums's buzzing, keys-assisted pseudo-punk is that of a heavier Clinic or even Scottish also-rans Magoo. [Nov 2014, p.72]

Singer's Grave feels like an exercise, something which never be said for the work released under the Palace banner in the 1990s. [Nov 2014, p.72]

It moves with a tighter, more mechanistic gait than 2012's similarly relentless Sagittarian Domain, but it's no less transfixing. [Nov 2014, p.72]

The results may not be especially unpredictable but they sure are fun, the trio milking the testosterone-fueled power-trio/supergroup set-up for all it's worth. [Nov 2014, p.72]

There is a mellowness to the album, underscored by Albini's older, deeper voice, that suggests their edge has been lost. [Nov 2014, p.68]

The music--hums, clangs and muffled booms--wields an ominous, oppressive power, especially on headphones, that can create a feeling of queasy horror even for those unaware of the record's backstory. [Nov 2014, p.68]

This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]

It's the most vibrant and vital he's sounded in a long while. [Nov 2014, p.64]

Every lick of synth, guitar or bass, let alone the vocal lines, is an earworm. [Nov 2014, p.63]

That the album works so well is less a testament of Twigs's charisma and talent--real as those may be--than it is the limitless possibilities of well-paid freelance teamwork. [Nov 2014, p.63]

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

It's ridiculous but oddly moving. [Nov 2014, p.62]

Too often though, and as is almost always the case with live sets, the album is cloistered and airless.... It doesn't so much scourge New York as embody the place it has become. [Nov 2014, p.71]

While it might be hard to hear this music as revolutionary now, there's no denying how commanding and demanding both the tuneful and flat out noisy sections are on modern ears. [Oct 2014, p.70]

So it's Ra the entertainer we get here.... On the second disc the first three tracks take matters further out. [Oct 2014, p.70]

This is warped, tactile and certainly druggy music. However, it's the duo's use of breathless double time flows that vividly replicate the mesmeric metal hum of psychedelics. [Oct 2014, p.64]

Punish, Honey is also a diverse and sonically surprising work, infectiously odd and encouragingly bold. [Oct 2014, p.63]

Koch feels like a merger of the two [Diversions 1994-1996 and Dutch Tvashar Plumes], backsliding into the dance timbres of yesteryear, and their hissy, ever moody dissolutions become predictable. [Oct 2014, p.63]

The intense volume and solemn pace of the music is given extra weight and dimension by Scheidt's extraordinary vocal. [Oct 2014, p.61]

A resplendent albeit slightly cloying selection of meticulously arranged songs, bloated with instrumental detail and performed in a way that makes the sound like a revived soundtrack for some old, forgotten art house movie. [Oct 2014, p.61]

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

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

It's pleasantly melodic post-punk pop-rock with a handful of less conventional moves thrown in. [Oct 2014, p.58]

Hold It In finds these crusty veterans meeting the threat of middle-age ennui with ingenuity and enthusiasm. [Oct 2014, p.57]

Syro feels like a perfected memory of 80s music. [Oct 2014, p.54]

This is the most elaborately arranged thing Gunn has ever done, jammed full of understated yet excellent guitar. [Oct 2014, p.54]

It's an almost-pitch-perfect progression of eight tracks across 39 minutes. [Oct 2014, p.54]

The result lack some of the swarming, piercing detail and vertiginous shifts that give so much drama to late Scott. At the same time, it mostly does away with that haunts latter-day songs. [Oct 2014, p.51]

This music never lacks for deep roots into Allen's background with Fela's Afrika 70, but it is also fresh in conception and execution. [Oct 2014, p.50]

Though it may not feel exactly pleasurable, it most definitely connects. [Sep 2014, p.72]

He's nowhere near as agile as he once was, but that slack is picked up on a handful of collaborations with sharp young rappers like Lil Herb and Vince Staples. [Sep 2014, p.65]

This new collaboration with London's Heliocentrics admirably recreates a smokey 70s atmosphere. [Sep 2014, p.64]

They sound somewhere between being tentative and caught in a frozen, allegorical state of sketchiness, turning the sleepy head of bedroom pop into a death's head. [Sep 2014, p.64]

Where the album works best is in the loose, mesmerising fluency of tracks where such odd structures loses its slight air of gimmickry. [Sep 2014, p.64]

Endgame is spacey and lush in the manner of Deppechord's roster or Donato Dozzy, solidly crafted and a bit of a drag at just over an hour. [Sep 2014, p.60]

Expectations are, as ever, moderate for Tricky's latest album, and he doesn't disappoint. [Sep 2014, p.60]

Deprived of the rushing, crescendoless highs of Glass Swords, the tracks often seem to struggle to articulate their fascination, or to find satisfying structures. [Sep 2014, p.60]

As a gesture of positive force, Commune is effective; as an instigator of evolution it falls somewhat short. [Sep 2014, p.59]

The production on Carnival OF Souls is particularly vivid. [Sep 2014, p.58]

It's spiritual chamber music, mythopoetically encrusted, captivating and terrifying at the same time. [Sep 2014, p.55]

The eccentricity of the group remains intact, with tightly structured songs. [Sep 2014, p.55]

The low end may not cause subterranean trolls to bang angrily on their ceilings as with 1993's Earth 2, but the rich textures and Carlson's expressive leads provide plenty to luxuriate in. [Sep 2014, p.54]

This music is rebarbative glitch-puke, circuit-bent footwork with the joy scorched out, every now and then blitzed by what could be described as intelligent gabba. [Sep 2014, p.54]

It's a firm and deliberate withdrawal from the spotlight but one tinged with sharp self-awareness and the humane intelligence that governs all of Bunyan's work. [Sep 2014, p.52]

Despite the celebratory atmosphere, the group's air of menace remains intact. [Sep 2014, p.54]

Brooks builds eight neat instrumentals from gradually layer guitar, playing in a closed circle with himself, a dialogue that is sometimes affecting but more often banal. [Aug 2014, p.59]

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

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]

On Angels & devils, The Bug crystallises a vision of low end and lower urges that feels dangerously universal. [Aug 2014, p.48]

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

The skill and charisma of Mosaic sometimes goes too far.

As awkwardly beautiful as much of dark Comedy is, it's such a tricky album that it is a difficult to warm to. [Aug 2014, p.62]

While this collection of songs is indeed tremendously soft, too many vibrations are swept under the rug of Taylor's voice. [Aug 2014, p.58]

EX is flawed yet enjoyable. [Aug 2014, p.56]

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

It's a much quieter album than its predecessor, more interested in fingering the tears and rips in its luxurious, ambient textures than Black Up's intergalactic boom-bap. It pulses and shimmers like light bouncing off gold, burnishing Palaceer's radiant visions. [Aug 2014, p.51]

The finished product proves too studied and reverent of its sources. [Jul 2014, p.64]

Occasionally it threatens to work. [Jul 2014, p.63]

Celestite cannot simply be characterised as pastiche, however, as the Weaver brothers and Dunn have constructed dramatic instrumentals using the material of previous compositions, ensuring a thematic and sonic continuity with their own past. [Jul 2014, p.61]

It's elegant and pristine, a febrile flutter of rhythms, glinting sequences and pale, shimmering backdrops. [Jul 2014, p.51]

While PTSD is sometimes a slog, it's always substantial. [Jun 2014, p.63]

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

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

Future is one of the few true artist of Auto-Tune, and the emotional honesty lying behind trad-rap boasts bleeds from his words in a minor key and a pitch as subtly tremulous as a wobbling bottom lip. [Jun 2014, p.63]

Martyn is very good at what he does: the record radiates maturity, technical chops and a cool, sometimes poignant emotionality. [Jun 2014, p.62]

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]

It's certainly big, but it's less clear if it's clever. [Jun 2014, p.60]

Nikki Nack is a terrific album with charm and invention to spare. [Jun 2014, p.58]

Only one track matches the flaming cannonball energy of their single, "Politicians In My Eyes"; the herky-jerky "North Street," which is as much funk as punk. [May 2014, p.77]

It's only unfortunate that such a master of making Rick Ross albums must live in a world where there are already five other Rick Ross albums. [May 2014, p.74]

The new Infamous is good enough, another in the sting of solid but unremarkable rehashes of the original formula that both members have been trickling out for years now. [May 2014, p.74]

The pleasures of Reachy Prints are deceptively complicated, and it's another masterclass in how lightness needn't be thin or naive. [May 2014, p.72]

Volume X [is] their best album since 200's The Red Line. [May 2014, p.70]

Despite the dubious company he keeps, McMahon's ambient folk pop remains beguiling. [May 2014, p.70]

This is not the Wand record to spin while you do the chores, but it is, the one you might spin when you're looking for reasons to keep on living. [May 2014, p.69]

Most intriguing are the hi-tech elements that flicker past, adding a hint of touch screen technology to the contemporary urban space. And the snatches of pirate radio speech--now Wen's signature--are engrossing. [May 2014, p.69]