In small doses this perpetual explosion is often magnificent. [Sep 2013, p.66]

Kaani is a tireless surging wave of uplifting music. [Sep 2013, p.65]

Listening in one session is like wolfing a hurried seven-course meal with post-dinner coffee and is roughly as messy. [Sep 2013, p.65]

To counter the straightforward songs there's a raucous stoop-start freakout on the likes of "Beat" and "Separate." [Sep 2013, p.63]

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]

Tracks like "Steel Drummer" shade between euphoric rave and freakout energy, while "Black And Blue" has a distinct rock edge with its dark riffs and darker mood. [Sep 2013, p.63]

This is a visionary coming into his own. [Sep 2013, p.56]

Now far from young, and sounding a little tired, his voice is still tender with yearning, and devotees will welcome a further installment in his emotionally ramshackle story. [Sep 2013, p.52]

This is resolutely a group effort, and freer and more fluid than, say, the proto-Americana of The Grateful Dead's American Beauty. [Sep 2013, p.52]

Some of the lesser tracks are near indistinguishable from other over-hyped post Hypnagogic Pop projects.... But such fumbles are rare. [Sep 2013, p.52]

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]

Armed Courage, while enjoyable, isn't really a record anyone's gotta hear. [Sep 2013, p.50]

EBM equals R Plus Seven. [Sep 2013, p.49]

Even though there are no drums, nothing here ever feels aimless. [Sep 2013, p.48]

His voice retains a high pitched vulnerability, but the urgency of his reports from the flipside of hippiedom have softened into the sound of someone more comfortable with their place in the universe. [Sep 2013, p.48]

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]

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

It's seven tracks whip by in a 35 minute blur, with only a dew isolated moments sticking out. [Aug 2013, p.57]

A series of one-dimensional tracks, produced by Dean Hurley, that at their best sound like a karaoke outsider artist running though some vocal exercises. [Aug 2013, p.54]

The result is an enriched soundworld, more ambitious than her much discussed debut, Tragedy. [Aug 2013, p.53]

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

In its favour, the album is immaculately realised, with a chromium production sheen that Lustmord imitators can only dream of. On the minus side: the fact that the album's polish makes it sound safe and predictable. [Jul 2013, p.69]

The Moths Are Real is a crisp and atmospheric set of idiosyncratic and finely crafted pop songs. [Mar 2013, p.60]

Some of street rap's brightest new talents appear--Chief Keef, Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan--and wear their Gucci Mane influence proudly, each in their own distinctively warped ways and yet all brimming with exactly the joy that their progenitor has generally lost to age. [Jul 2013, p.68]

Musically, the songs favor stripped-down and straight ahead garage rock production values, often driven by organ chords. [Jul 2013, p.65]

Glynnaestra feels like the project has moved beyond causal collaboration into something fully formed. [Jul 2013, p.56]

Songs like "Brainfreeze" and "The Red Wing" plod more than march, piling on so many competing keyboard layers that the melody blots itself out. Others seem oddly unfinished. Only the two closing ten minute tracks evoke the classic Fuck Buttons widescreen neon pomp. [Jul 2013, p.56]

The refreshing result being space music that is neither soporific nor dystopian. [July 2013, p.54]

Congo Natty always brings confrontational or cultural elements to set the context of the tracks. [Jun 2013, p.48]

It's far from perfect record--the guests are phoned in, the beats sometime out-cheese pre-breakdown Kanye at his cheesiest--but it has more than a few perfect moments. [Jul 2013, p.68]

Largely Chewed Corners has the sound of an artist at complete ease with a vocabulary built over 20 years and its parameters. [Jul 2013, p.67]

A whole album of these bolts would be nuts, in a good way. [Jul 2013, p.66]

It's the multilingual, mulch-direcctional, half sung, half spoken vocals that really make The Visitor though. [Jul 2013, p.66]

Crackle and hiss are still in evidence, but the effect is toned down, and less suggestive of sonic patina than of the hostile climate of a world far removed from the languid, sun-dappled pools and rolling vistas suggested by 2005's The Campfire Headphase. [Jul 2013, p.53]

This is perhaps the group's most straightforward release outside of their intermittent collaboration with late vocalist Ronnie James Dio. [Jul 2013, p.52]

On paper, it's a strange fit. On record, too. [Jul 2013, p.52]

These New Puritans feel better equipped than most to carry that mantle, a vision of English pastoral music heavy with stoicism and solitude; both steeped in, yet strangely unencumbered by history. [Jun 2013, p.55]

Half of the songs here are as good as the highs of the first two albums.... Much of the rest is the victim of Madlib's infuriating tendency to leave things in fragments. [Jun 2013, p.54]

Measurable, replicable perfection has never been Smith's raison d'etre and Re-Mit--their 30th studio album in 37 years--possesses all the eccentricity of the group in their early pomp. [Jun 2013, p.49]

Each compositional element is perfectly judged, not a note wasted, and it's very beautiful indeed. [Jun 2013, p.61]

Those expecting a return to the group's former electronic shock treatment will be sent reeling by the subtlety of this latest release, where ceaseless sonic bombardment has been replaced with a more studied and intricately forged set of almost-songs and mangled machine shop melodies. [Jun 2013, p.56]

False Idols could be seen as a retreat to his comfort zone, a style he's already mastered, But the terrain he staked out during his days in The Wild Bunch, and later with Massive Attack, was far more fertile than many give it credit for, and its influence resonates through a spectrum of subsequent subgenres. [Jun 2013, p.55]

Kavain Space's freaky beats are done with a logic that maintains a crucial connection with dancers, even as it bamboozles, tests and wrongfoots them. Still, the rigor is exhausting, even alienating. [Jun 2013, p.46]

Each track Nelson has tautly defined a geography of sound specific to that place, real or imagined. [May 2013, p.64]

Both J Dilla and the recently revived Oval come to mind at moments of Silver Wilkinson, but this is a sound as English as Virgina Astley. [May 2013, p.66]

Most of Raw Solutions is a working-through of moves from Chicago House from Juke to footwork to Ghetto House, and while well done, doesn't leave its own stamp as an outside interpretation. [May 2013, p.66]

There's a handful of new material, all displaying superb arranger's skill. His unusual voice has improved too, broadening and mellowing from that nervous tenor of old. [May 2013, p.58]

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]

Self-reflective and conceptually probing, it demands and sustains repeated listenings. [May 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]

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

The Redeemer, despite its pinpoint sonics, doesn't take the logical next step of offering a moment of reflection or clarity. [May 2013, p.50]

PSB celebrate an idea of fusty Britishness but lack the imagination, intelligence or inclination to interrogate it or in fact add anything at all to the discourse. [May 2013, p.59]

Volume 3, produced by Ben Frost, shades closer to songwriting in places, as Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and other guest on harmony vocals. [Apr 2013, p.57]

The rest of the album makes the distance between now and (Berlin) then of "Where Are We Now?" painfully evident, a pain heightened by Visconti's failure to convert this collection of session muso workouts into anything memorable. [May 2013, p.55]

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]

Ready To Die, in essence, a solid hard rock album, with all the good and bad that implies. [May 2013, p.59]

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]

Supermigration never quite brings these directions--Air, Lindstrom, Neu!--together though; instead of fermenting their own sound, Solar Bears end up falling into the space in between them. [May 2013, p.66]

He just keeps getting better at writhing around in this narrow space of homage and usually lands somewhere just between endearing and brilliant. [May 2013, p.67]

There is no shortage of bad ideas on the second installment.... But this ugliness is anchored by a series of largely curatorial successes. [May 2013, p.68]

This is a collection of songs that the group genuinely love and it shows. [Apr 2013, p.61]

This particular experiment has left a formerly unpredictable group sounding as though they've been replaced by a bunch of tired retromaniacs. [Apr 2013, p.61]

Another big fat splat of technicolour vomit from Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo project. [Apr 2013, p.51]

When dealing with the more fully formed of the original songs, the album is extremely strong. [Apr 2013, p.58]

With no lyrics to anchor their meaning, many songs here are infused with pathos and awe. [Apr 2013, p.57]

Tokumaru seems to have poured his entire being, subconscious and all, into these compositions, which burst with vivacity and detail. [Apr 2013, p.57]

Rat Farm has only the occasional flash of brilliance. [Apr 2013, p.53]

It's inscrutable and inspired, and this time mystique has nothing to do with it. [Apr 2013, p.51]

The posthumous tracks that have emerged are among the best of Hendrix's late work. [Apr 2013, p.50]

Krlic combines a flexible approach with an impressive deftness of touch, and Excavation sees him feeling out new ways through the shadows. [Apr 2013, p.50]

This is classic David Grubbs--which is to say a joy, but also that it's unbashedly disparate. [Apr 2013, p.50]

There's a much larger keyboard profile on this new album.... Whether this is a positive or negative shift depends on where you're sitting. [Apr 2013, p.48]

Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst sings over roughly half the album, but his melodies are about as memorable as weak tea. [Mar 2013, p.64]

Mogwai eschew their trademark squall and fuzz for measured and clenched guitar chords, echoed piano notes and eerie arpeggios of guitar that stalk unresolved through a stark, naked soundscape. [Mar 2013, p.62]

The effect of these new elements is to bring a new solemnity and calm to Pioulard's already gentle brand of blissed out songwriting. [Mar 2013, p.62]

Clubbers might find Swanson's approach dilettantish.... In letting this set closer sprawl out, though, he happens on a spinning wormhole of spitting snares and abrasive Konono No 1-like melodies that's sulphuric in its intensity. [Mar 2013, p.60]

An album whose fragmentary and ephemeral structure is mirrored in its often ethereal, distant sound. [Mar 2013, p.54]

The album doesn't wear so well over time. [Mar 2013, p.50]

It's a dated sound but they stick to it with the tenacity of musicians who can't do anything else. [Mar 2013, p.50]

Off The Record's off the cuff feel would probably appall his former comrades but it lends the music an appealing immediacy. [Mar 2013, p.48]

The Invisible Way has Wilco's Jeff Tweedy behind the faders, and he superbly captures the concentrated simplicity of Low's aesthetic. But sometimes the restricted palettes can be a little cloying,[Mar 2013, p.56]

It's an engaging excursion and a good aesthetic fit for the Blackest Ever Black label, but not really a definitive Prurient release, and ultimately Through The Window leaves the impression of the closing of a chapter, a passage to someplace new. [Feb 2013, p.54]

The results are at times brazenly brilliant. [Mar 2013, p.65]

With Exai they've created a work which reveals renewed faith in their own identity and which should act as compass in years to come. [Mar 2013, p.57]

The tracks are curiously undramatic, punching elements in and out like a demonstration reel. [Mar 2013, p.54].

Moore runs the risk of seeming absorbed in some kind of midlife episode, but he gets away with it by deploying punk spunk as just one of an arsenal of countercultural referents rather than as a means to regain or revisit his youth. [Mar 2013, p.50]

Long Island may be their heaviest album--some songs introduce enough distortion to qualify as Stoner Metal in the vein of Fu Manchu or Nebula, But for the most part, they do exactly what their name says, grinding along like 1975 will never come. [Feb 2013, p.50]

MBV is a successful return. [Mar 2013, p.49]

Keef [has] formidable talent for writing hooks (and tracks) that are both naggingly catchy and strangely joyless. [Feb 2013, p.61]

Rocky synthesises the cutting edge experiments of his peers into a more commercially polished product that lacks the eccentricity of its influences but is uniquely out there when compared to most mainstream fare. [Feb 2013, p.61]

Its balance of electronic, acoustic and vocal elements, while initially impressive, is soon revealed to be a product of the lack of any forceful musical or textual elements at all. [Feb 2013, p.60]

His arch over-emoting robs his songs of any sense of genuine feeling. [Feb 2013, p.60]

Ashin, in giving so much of himself away, leaves little scope for the kind of mystery that might enable his musical settings to transcend their functional pop status. [Feb 2013, p.60]

Most of this material has a tense, enervating effect, despite the haziness of the sonic palette Field-Pickering favours. [Feb 2013, p.60]

As interesting for what it carries over from the past as for the future it foreshadows. [Feb 2013, p.47]

In spite of daft moments, the chilly shimmer of Push The Sky Away works its magic. [Feb 2013, p.45]

The Twigs sound tough and robust, ready to take on the whole world rather than cultivate one small part of it. [Feb 2013, p.45]