Throughout this solo effort--his fourth, for what it's worth--Callahan mumbles ever onward like a charmless, tranquillised version of Giant Sand's Howe Gelb. [Apr 2011, p.55]

While sparse guitar contortions made Both a melancholic record, the expanded palette here expresses a more nuanced but equally disarming range of emotions. [Dec 2022, p.58]

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

The presence of these co-conspirators empowers the songs, but some of the duets are more straightforwardly fun. [Apr 2021, p.64]

The set concentrates on one style and tends to accentuate the crossover aspects of its kinship with house and techno. [Aug 2015, p.55]

The feel... is more relaxed, more organic, more approachable. [#230, p.69]

Sample heavy numbers like "No Secrets No Surprises" would have been standards of Coldcut mixes ten years ago. [#219, p.77]

This mood of rocking-chair wistfulness becomes soporific, and there are times when, frankly, the mind, unjabbed by the sort of stimulus that was once Byrne & Eno's stock in trade, begins to wander. [Oct 2008, p.54]

There's something enchantingly nostalgic about Awe Natural. [May 2012, p.74]

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

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]

“Exactlyfourminutesofimprovisedmusic” is one of the highlights on Blow, not least because it toys so wittily with ideas of genre and song versus freedom. [Jan 2019, p.70]

Merging a sophisticated rhythm dynamism, often with an almost gamelan aspect (“Two Flames Burn”) with a Laibachian apocalyptic proclamatory element and 90s crossover rave-electronic-industrial urgency, Disturbance may not be entirely different from what Test Dept were doing a long time ago, but, then again, nor is the political context in which they’re doing it. [Mar 2019, p.60]

The bouncy yet deadpan Italo energy of first single “The Girls Are Chewing Gum” sets the tone, with cosmic blasts and ray gun bleeps lending variation to the subsequent tracks. [Jun 2019, p.49]

There’s a silliness and lightness to CEL that is often charming, but can stray into tweeness, and its lack of a deeper pull doesn’t necessarily warrant repeat listens. An interesting conceptual exercise but unlike a lot of the krautrock it is reminiscent of, nothing to stir the heart or body. [May 2020, p.50]

On Jinxed By Being, both Chasny and Shackleton find a collaborative meeting point where sound complements their respective aesthetics and bodies of work, while moving them towards something thrillingly new. [Aug 2024, p.59]

While opening track "Echo In The Field" evokes Laraaji's Day Of Radiance, Moran's compositions here, while still intricately crafted, are more prickly than expansive. Second track "Prism Drift" is tetchy clockwork sprung with piano bass strikes of doom.[Nov 2025, p.63]

Sadier's faith in the replenishing properties of silence has reactivated her production line of perfect pop miniatures. [Jul 2012, p.62]

McGuire creates a journey that will absorb and transport any listener willing to let its sincere warmth and good wishes into their hearts. [Feb 2014, p.54]

Back On Time does reek of that era (1990s) rather than more recent productions trying belatedly to push the same buttons. [Mar 2012, p.68]

A polished version of the group’s classic style propels this concept, but their invigorating eccentricity disintegrates as the album progresses. The opening title track feels familiar, with its quintessential electric riff, but this vibrancy quickly breaks down with songs like “Reduced Guilt”, whose tense harmonies drive a constant sense of unease. The record feels rote for the band, until it reaches its enigmatic conclusion. [Sep 2020, p.49]

Its stark, frosty textures recall the Metalheadz-influenced feel of Pinch's recent solo work, an aesthetic that occasionally, especially on "Precinct Of Sound," threatens to tip over into sluggish moodiness. At best it's just as deft and cosmically heavy as you'd hope. [Mar 2015, p.52]

There are signs of eclectism creeping in, but these are balanced by the group's tendency to consolidate its progression with a rearguard action of sheer brute force. [Jul 2010, p.56]

Sound stretches and stretches without ever threatening to crack, and you start to long for some crude and rude collisions; a belch, a digression, a protest, an accident... [Machine guns blasts in the second half come] too late, and too orderly. [Dec 2011, p. 63]

With her second full-length album MHYSA has curated a minimalist smorgasbord of experimental arrangements, classic R&B tropes and seductive melodies, blending to bring the raw, naked emotion of the artist to the fore. [Mar 2020, p.52]

Pioulard's work is a remarkably effortless cohabitation between bedroom electronics and wistful songwriting. [Dec 2008, p.64]

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

Most of SremmLife II’s successes are confined to its front half, but the brothers have a strong enough pop sensibility to reward your attention even when they’re on autopilot. [Oct 2016, p.65]

It's a pity that the albums is slight, with five songs, one of them a minute-long interlude, in just over half an hour, and settles for revisiting a sound Carlson knows rather than anything more daring. [May 2018, p.44]

Eno's striving nature and his ability to morph sounds, alter moods and conduct psychoacoustic experiments still yields weird and enjoyable fruits here. [Jan 2017, p.64]

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

A mid-1970s Tangerine Dream vibe is more apparent than on previous Noveller albums, albeit still further removed from the trappings of rock music per se, and it largely comes off as a soundtrack in waiting for a film in which a hard-up community of 19th century nomads travel slowly across an arid plain. [Aug 2020, p.64]

As on their first album, he [Jim Jarmusch] blows gusts of electric noise through the open spaces in van Wissem's patiently articulated structures. [Nov 2012, p.67]

The song structures have clearly absorbed a fair amount from EDM, but the formula of walloping percussion and synthesizers purloined from Depeche Mode's and New Order's darker moments, juxtaposed with lyrics that have the rung of obscure slogans, remains in place. [Mar 2014, p.58]

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]

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]

On his fourth album, he seems to be wrestling with how to modernise his signature blues and roots foundation without minimising its traditional elements. Parts that would work better with stripped down production are overproduced with the layering of background vocals, keyboards and added sound effects, making the music too rich for the message. [Jul 2018, p.48]

“Casino High” has all the makings of a future garage summer banger. It’s skippy and infectiously danceable, employing vocal samples in a thoughtful way. The first of three collaborations on the album, “Real Hot N Naughty” (featuring actor and performer Felix Mufti) is a love letter to queer dancefloors. Flirting between trance and less chaotic hard house, it injects a tongue in cheek dose of fun into proceedings. [Jun 2024, p.61]

H-p1 is a slightly more adventurous outing than usual, due to the recruitment of synth player Shazzula, but the additional textures, pleasing as they are, fail to revolutionize what is essentially record collection rock. [Jul 2011, p.58]

Mess is more immediate than the past couple of albums, and in context, more baffling. [Mar 2014, p.63]

The sound is crisp without sacrificing any of Chesnutt’s trademark grit. By adding a little glean, Cody Chesnutt gives you the best of both sonic worlds. [Aug 2017, p.48]

This Valley is deeper and wider, thanks in no small part to Gelb’s voice, which has matured beautifully over the decades while retaining its waywardness. It’s exceedingly rare that a Gelb/Sand release is a waste of time, and Returns doesn’t buck that trend. [Sep 2018, p.63]

The most successful moments come when the supernatural energy of Rimbaud’s work are palpable in their musical translation. [Jan 202, p.69]

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]

Breezy, disorientated, unhurried, its content seeks an instant surface rapport through a bold display of clips and cuts. [#245, p.69]

A fitful and languishing affair whose best moments will have you yearning for more, while the worst may leave some listeners wondering what they were doing here in the first place. [#248, p.59]

While some tracks here showcase his incredible touch, others are straightforward hiphop loops that might have been built using a Tony Allen sample kit, and the album as a whole lacks conceptual or thematic unity. [Jul 2021, p.60]

Cutting through the tedium reveals a moderately engaging narrative of low level criminality with solid insights ranging from the cloying to mildly provocative. [Feb 2017, p.59]

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

The aforementioned “Carpathian Darkness” is an archetype for the album as a whole, thoroughly captivating despite (or because) of its familiarity. [Feb 2021, p.46]

Again and again the same transition is repeated, as the album slips between the utopian and the real. [Jul 2015, p.49]

This is music strapped for battle, the beats tooled up and live-sounding, the loops and details kept to a brute minimum by Doom so that the lines, and guest spots from Vinnie Paz and Open Mike Eagle, can really punch through. [May 2018, p.63]

The album’s just out of reach quality is genuinely affecting, its impressionism charged with tension. [Aug 2018, p.52]

The Wire agenda stays constant in a changing world. [Apr 2015, p.63]

There’s far more US punk in this music (you’re often reminded of The Descendents and The Dictators) than UK punk and, considering we live in the age of Bob Vylan, much of the album sounds too retrograde. I would have loved more of the angriness, and some quality control on the inherent defeatism/smirk of band name and album title. [Aug 2021, p.65]

Joyful, heart-warming, brain-fizzing stuff. [Jul 2022, p.50]

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]

There’s a telling lack of conviction when he uses the past tense saying “I used to feel so devastated… now we on our way to greatness”. It’s a shame because when he settles for articulating rage from a less lofty position at the centre of a crowd he’s rejuvenated, alongside Schoolboy Q, J Cole, Styles P and Kirk Knight admitting a burn in his gut and boasting of how he’s “flowing religiously... Amerikkka’s worst nightmare, the super predator”. [May 2017, p.62]

The core line-up of guitarist Buzz Osbourne and drummer Dale Crover, along with the recent addition of Steven McDonald from Redd Kross on bass, attack the vast catalogue of songs with great zeal while making sure to confound the masses in the way we somehow expect. [Oct 2021, p.51]

The payoff is worth the effort. Those who’ve typecast Lombardo as strictly a metal/punk sticksman will be surprised by Rites Of Percussion. [Jun 2023, p.53]

Ultimately, though, one crucial element is missing: El-P's voice. His desperate, throbbing-forehead-vein rapping is as vital as his sound as the synths or the beats, and this disc would have been vastly improved by even one bilious verse. [Aug 2010, p.61]

To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]

A slippery, shape-shifting quality is one of the great strengths of Amon Tobin's sixth album. Plainly put, Out From Out Where is impossible to pin down. [#226, p.67]

A very nice slab of pan-generic, lof-fi, yearn-pop. [#231, p.59]

It's cleaner sounding for a start--each track gleams like a freshly sharpened butcher's knife--and the sense of dynamics is rather more acute. [Nov 2012, p.70]

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

Risveglio seems keen to be accepted on its own terms rather than a simple curio. This it warrants, and rewards patient listening.

Ultimately the album's strength lies in the way its civil facade barely masks Trim's enduring unresolved issues, its portrait of an MC looking to simultaneously escape, dominate and earn the acknowledgement of a scene he transcended a long way back. [Sep 2016, p.62]

What emerges is a futuristic and dystopian vision, but it’s also something primal. There’s a human pulse, trapped in the heart of all the noise. You hold your breath and wait for it to collapse, and for the carbine rifles to come. [Sep 2018, p.57]

Embracing several facets of Lafawndah’s incredible virtuosic vocal abilities, every track on The Fifth Season leaves you immediately wanting more. [Oct 2020, p.56]

There are, unsurprisingly, great contrasts in material and quality. [#254, p.54]

One imagines Blue Eyed In The Red Room might serve as an alternative soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. [#252, p.47]

The sound is persistently visceral even as the succession of surfaces and interventions belies a planned set of juxtapositions. [Dec 2010, p.52]

Smalhans is something of a palate cleanser, but a satisfying one nonetheless. [Nov 2012, p.62]

As jazz-inflected triphop goes, it's not even anywhere near as inventive or risky as DJ Spooky's Optometry sounded back in 2002. [Mar 2014, p.60]

Ultimately Plantasia is often hard to love for the music itself. It was released several years after more evocative pieces for the Moog had already been released – from Perrey and Kingsley, Dick Hyman and even Garson himself – but it remains beloved as an amusing curiosity first and foremost, and for good reason. [Dec 2019, p.66]

Lacking the eldritch weirdness of Actress's music, their faded grandeur somehow feels strangely mundane, despite their inherent beauty. [Oct 2012, p.62]

This new collaboration with Christian Beaulieu isn't quite as flamboyant as previous projects, but its an energising jolt all the same. [Mar 2014, p.63]

Carti’s voice here sounds rough and occasionally hoarse. His famed knack for repeating phrases ad infinitum seems to lead into cul-de-sacs, and the rumbling PC beats don’t float as easily as his earlier work. But there’s plenty to appreciate on Whole Lotta Red. [Feb 2021, p.61]

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

It's the wealth of unexpected production touches crammed into its 25 minutes that really bring Maryland Mansions to life. [#240, p.72]

Mosaic Thump lives up to its name only too well, displaying a fragmentary mess of rhyming schemes, contributing artists and leaden beats. [#199, p.45]

Satisfying proof that pop remain pop however thoroughly digested. [Feb 2014, p.54]

State Of Ruin is a typically pristine offering from Planet Mu’s UK roster of trap and grime inspired producers, at once displaying high definition composition of dynamic bass pressure without really producing anything hugely exciting. [Apr 2019, p.50]

Here’s a Kool Keith album you don’t need to take in 20 minute doses. Lap it up. [Dec 2016, p.71]

His music, which radiates humour, tenderness, frustration and audacity, remains seductively mysterious. [Dec 2018, p.54]

It's a fair reminder that innovation in hiphop shouldn't be judged by the standards of less journalistic musical forms. [Mar 2015, p.59]

The Body’s central drive focuses on heaviness, both as a sonic and emotional motif, and while their creative apex I Shall Die Here demonstrates a logical conclusion of the former, I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer sees the band explore dramatic terror, to limited success. [Jul 2018, p.44]

It's all elegantly executed and often beguiling, but just too clean and predictable to be really involving. [#228, p.62]

More choppy and scattered than its predecessor but equally compelling. [#241, p.61]

Its utter ahistoricity is one of its more charming dimensions, in a "why not?" sort of way. [Sep 2011, p.52]

"STP3/The Killer," "Silent Witness," and "I Come By Night" are exceptions, however--somewhere along the line a spark's been snuffed out. [Oct 2012, p.67]

Though heavier than ever, Jesu shares a bittersweet longing with the best of Mould's oeuvre, a sense of innocence on the cusp of corruption. [Oct 2013, p.55]

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 not so much a return to first principals as a 3D reboot of the homicidal stoner aesthetic established between 1991-1995 with Cypress Hill, Black Sunday and Temples Of Boom. [Nov 2018, p.52]

“Myopia For The Future” and “No Body” present similar augmentations that make the voice and its simulations indistinguishable from one another in their respective waves of swagger and cheery melody. Meanwhile, warped tones and looping bass melodies lift into the clatter of keys that almost – but not quite – resemble a rhythm in “Swordmanship”. [May 2019, p.59]

Real world concerns – motherhood, self-growth, the responsibilities of adult life – are transformed into brightly synthesised fantasias. ... For a small scale project, Bamboo’s vision of pop feels pristine, a little utopia realised. [Jul 2019, p.57]

Boiling down the complexities and contradictions of the countryside to a succession of stiff choral hymns, a chance to understand and connect is lost. [Apr 2021, p.55]