As a political manifesto, Rawar Style is somewhat vague, yet The Eternals' impulsive, improvising music has anger, zeal and humour in its very DNA. [#245, p.56]

While Clockwork Angels is energised and intense, it neither sounds nor feels like heritage rock or a return to first principles. [Sep 2012, p.70]

An agreeable mix of electro, retro-rave breaks and thumping party house. [Aug 2018, p.66]

Once the starpower dazzle fades, it’s not always obvious who he is, but the lack of easy answers makes him interesting enough for now.

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]

The tracks sung by Cafritz are more wired and garage punk, but these brief flashes provide contrast to Gordon's murkier shades. [July 2008, p.49]

Hegarty's eco-femism finds a much better ambassador in his songs. [Oct 2012, p.58]

The narrower focus, combined with the decision to return to Seattle’s Studio Soli, raises the thought that Earth might have, at last, orbited back to the roaring wastelands of their early 1990s work. Jump into the longer cuts here, though, and you find something that sounds less like a trip on Tibetan quaaludes, more a slow chug of whisky. [Jun 2019, p.56]

The results are pleasing and anticlimactic at once. [#240, p.57]

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]

A tight action trio who have screwed their collective anger and frustration into a balled musical fist and let fly. [Feb 2019, p.58]

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]

An album of authentic 80s nostalgia that followers of the filmmaker's canon are bound to treasure. [May 2016, p.46]

The deep funk veteran garlands Black Thought’s words with a heavy bottom, making for an experience that’s less psychedelic and decorative than Cheat Codes. Although Black Thought doesn’t stray from the tendencies that distinguish his solo material from his work with The Roots. [Apr 2023, p.68]

It’s hard to get with the tiresome self-deprecation of that album title, the way he hides his pain behind a smile and hides his smile behind a dope aesthetic on that artfully blurred cover. When Earl does choose to project beyond his navel he has a powerful, booming voice and an ear for novelty. Where his gaze shifts to the outside world he can be inspirational. [Feb 2019, p.56]

Across these tracks, the searching spirit of Virginia Wing is often challenged, its questions far from being answered – but the album feels more true to life because of it. [Feb 2021, p.56]

Her voice remains a beguiling instrument, but there's a sense that the attempt to ditch the kitsch and connect more directly is compromising the originality of her vision. [Oct 2010, p.60]

Recorded with a wilful lack of finesse, it’s nevertheless the production that gives Abyss much of its heft and intrigue. [Jun 2025, p.48]

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

Things get weird and heavy with “Gimme Bread”, tense orchestral gestures and disorienting delay effects almost completely obscuring Longstreth’s lyrical allusions to hunger and scarcity. When the arrangements breathe, as in the woodwind-kissed simplicity of “At Home” or the Mount Eerie-featuring “Twin Aspens”, the album achieves a fragile grace. [Jun 2025, p.50]

It might take you a few cuts to pick up on the gagaku thing. [Oct 2018, p.54]

Ultimately there's more to gnaw on here, and for all his admiration of astral jazz, the album title is apt. Ras may be gazing up at the stars, but there is solid ground beneath his feet. [Sep 2011, p.56]

Everything is warm and accessible, occasionally too much so. [Jul 2011, p.48]

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]

As the Crow flies has a folkier feel than previous advisory circle releases. [Sep 2011, p.50]

The Caretaker's music works best as a static pattern amidst digital flux. [Feb 2012, p.56]

Where French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott gained attention with her reinvention of the viola da gamba as a rhythmic instrument on 2015’s enchanting Captain Of None, this album is more ambient and interior. [Jun 2021, p.63]

The outcome is mostly a coruscating shot of tough nomadic blues, but here and there it skews into a self-indulgent liaison with a time-bound, well-worn rock sound. [Jul 2011, p.61]

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

Songs are short with a pop-punk punchiness. “Defendants” could be a relationship song encoded in the to and fro language of a courtroom and features a breezy guitar solo, as do several tracks that follow. [Dec 2024, p.47]

Kesto could have been improved with some judicious edits; but when they are at the top of their game, these Finns are undeniably great. [#244, p.59]

Their current music has that wobbly centre of gravity that makes it sound both proto and post-punk at once, something between the garage fog of the Nuggets era and the more art-damaged end of the 1980s hardcore spectrum. Imagine Hüsker Dü or Saccharine Trust after they had too much to dream last night. [Aug 2024, p.84]

He remains a fascinating and fearless artist. But one can’t help but miss the outre experiments of Terror Management, where he bombed away over noise rock flurries and sepulchral beat loops alike. [May 2022, p.54]

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

The tracks are subject to strategies of sampling, distortion, cut-up and back masking, to a troubling point of excess, impurity, queasiness, and corrosion, unheard of in earlier releases. [Feb 2012, p.60]

The selections step sufficiently far from the territory established by their own songs to generate intrigue without stretching credulity. [Jul 2020, p.64]

The result is a kind of lo-fi dream music, sea-changed and composite, with whisper-core mbalax drifting in and out focus between vaporous synth washes, low-key beat programming, spoken teachings and lilting song. [Feb 2021, p.61]

Bozulich's gloom is top quality gloom, as far as that goes, but nothing here lights up the heart like [2008's] Voyager's blistering "Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space." [Sep 2011, p.51]

After long, lean years of straight edge piety and arthouse restraint, guitar solos that don't hold anything back are as refreshing as they are liberating. [#224, p.56]

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

Sonically, there is not much new ground to be found on Holograms On Metal Film as Stereolab are essentially revisiting the sonic pathways they carved out in the past. Yet the messaging in these songs is as timely as ever. [Jun 2025, p.49]

This is not a purely inert record, in the sense that it is still essentially rhythmic, its tracks built from an interplay of beats and circling melodic motifs. Instead, Statik more often brings to mind the approach Aphex Twin took circa the material on his first Selected Ambient Works collection – loops as unbroken circles, movement employed as a means of remaining in one place. [Jul 2024, p

Not surprisingly, given Marhaug’s presence during the time of global crisis when it was produced, this album has a harder edge than Owens’s previous releases. [Jun 2022, p.60]

Infinity Ultra keeps going with the introspective synth symphonies, but there are a couple of spots where it’s also up for a party, although maybe one where the dancefloor is full of blissed out narcoleptics. [Aug 2017, p.63]

Polyphonic chants mesh with distorted piano hits and percussive clatter in an ecstasy of derision and judgment, before turning into a righteous roar. [Oct 2021, p.58]

Love In Shadow, Sumac’s fourth studio album in three years, features four songs occupying a side of vinyl each and brushes territory you’d hardly associate with its members’ other projects. [Oct 2018, p.62]

In lesser hands [it could have slipped into corny retro tropes], but In Dust is if anything even less indebted to past styles than last year's impressive self-titled debut. [Sep 2011, p.56]

For much of the record he has opted for the middle ground of an unchallenging electronic music LP in the twinkly and tasteful tradition of Four Tet and Border Community, as ready for coffee table listening as a full AV show at London’s Barbican centre. ... At its most restrained Ephem:Era advances the sound of Signals in exciting directions. [Aug 2018, p.63]

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

The inconsistency here might grate but if you focus on Freddie’s spellbinding raps the story is cohesive and fearless. [Jun 2017, p.77]

There’s a mite more polish on Reason To Smile than some might favour. But there’s also a rich seam of dark humour and rage worthy of Kendrick Lamar or Silent Eclipse. [Jun 2022, p.62]

There’s a weighty sense of looking back and taking stock to Venus In Leo, while simultaneously navigating a present that’s growing increasingly alien to its protagonists. [Oct 2019, p.55]

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]

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]

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]

Rose Golden Doorways sits somewhere between grindcore and raga. Created in a consecrated place – a church in Stoke Newington lends volume and reverb – it moves relentlessly forward, a continuous 38 minutes that reaches an apogee with the alien blast of “Those Among Us”. [Apr. 2020, p.59]

Three years in the making, Dawson’s follow-up ditches the formula entirely, transporting the listener to the AngloSaxon kingdom of Bryneich. ... The big question is how seriously to take all the antique stuff. [Jul 2017, p.50]

Their debut album is even more extreme. [May 2012, p.57]

At first Songs And Other Things sounds simple to the point of throwaway, but gradually gives up its secrets after a number of plays. [#266, p.67]

A box set containing their first two LPs plus demos and live tracks, provides some help in cleansing the palette while providing context for the evolution of their massively cribbed style. [Jun 2021, p.67]

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]

Blank Project sounds like an empowered foundation stone for her next steps. [Feb 2014, p.44]

Brokeback's airier tendencies are always balanced against the hint of depth and punchiness behind the twin basses, and the bittersweet, reflective quality of the melodic lines. [#228, p.57]

This can be thrilling, unnerving and just occasionally tiresome. [#245, p.53]

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

Chenaux's mastery over his effects is remarkable, but occasionally off-putting. [Feb 2015, p.44]

Strongly guitar based, their music alternates from being dreamily subdued one second to full on, hair flailing freak out the next. [Jun 2016, p.58]

The unit sound tight and integrated. [May 2012, p.62]

The group's love and knowledge of folk and psychedelia is really to the fore on this collection, as they unravel both and knit them back together in bolder, even wiggier patterns. [Jun 2011, p.57]

It is a record suited to headphone listening, but demands too much visceral engagement to be truly ambient. [Feb 2014, p.51]

Bardo Pond's most focused work to date. Who knows whether the group would take that as a compliment? [#206, p.61]

It's carefully constructed music that makes few demands but rewards close attention. [#244, p.69]

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

Adult. proves that there need be nothing fey or even particularly cheeky about synthesizer music. [#231, p.75]

He rationalizes the darkness of Trauma with the breeze and bounce of 1998's Rhythmalism, and the results are often downright hilarious. [Jun 2011, p.60]

["LDN Shuffle" is] the most obviously exciting track of the set, but the more representative things are slower and more measured. [Jun 2018, p.64]

Built around the usual sluggish grammar of instrumental hiphop, the tracks seems at times to collapse in on themselves, swollen with lugubrious 1970s jazz funk keyboards, strategically aimless organ vamps and miscellaneous concrete samples. [Jun 2016, p.60]

Baker's style is physical, thick, dense: woozy bass, murky keys and drums that kick hard enough to stir up dust and gleam in the dim light coming in through the basement windows. [Jun 2011, p.60]

As with For You And I, the awkwardness of these beats seems dictated less by technical nuance and more by the idiosyncratic rhythms of the human body. ... Even more so than its predecessor, the album is maybe most striking when this idiosyncrasy explicitly reflects James’s lived experience as a Londoner, channelling the steppy rhythms of the hardcore continuum. [Jul 2021, p.60

For all the homemade, quirky charm on show here -- and the album has plenty of wide open, lyrical moments -- Ether Teeth leaves behind a lingering, moody, melancholy aftertaste. [#231, p.60]

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]

A confused but compulsive listen. [Feb 2017, p.60]

The songs with less specific and less contemporary references hit harder. [Jul 2016, p.46]

Think of Young Prayer as the demos deemed too spectral, too elusive, to be revisited for [Brian] Wilson's new take on Smile. [#249, p.61]

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

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]

There’s a strong sense on Children Of Alice of each member of the trio’s strengths--Cargill’s ear for synth sounds and eerie melodies; Roj’s rippling tone patterns and rhythmic momentum; House’s collages glued together from the subconscious--both coexisting and combining into a greater whole. Yet its threefold approach to listeners’ minds--as, simultaneously, musique concrète sonic buffet, richly nostalgic hotpot of beloved reference points, and hieroglyphic recipe book--is less cohesive. [Mar 2017, p.47]

anyone who buys this with the idea of getting significantly reworked material will be disappointed. [May 2015, p.63]

Porras here maps a liminal space with a fine balance of spontaneity and judgement, building towards a revelation which occurs--so as to preserve the mystery--just out of view. [May 2012, p.70]

There’s a lot to wrap your ears and brain around, and it can make a strange load of sense if you allow yourself to be carried away by its relentless stream. [Nov 2021, p.52]

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

Those accustomed to the aggro, politically charged jazz rock of Brooklyn's Sunwatchers might be taken aback by this second solo outing from their saxophonist. Tobias titles what he concocts here "anti-imperialist pop", which shows there is still a kind-hearted intent behind the music even if its bubbly beats and dreamy vocals might sound like a mad stab at the mainstream. [Oct 2025, p.62]

A beautifully realised collection, Around is remarkably ego-free -- perhaps too much so. [#266, p.67]

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]

There's nothing fake about the record itself, however, and any interpretations of irony will be largely rooted in the audience's prejudices about who and what certain styles of music are for. [Apr 2016, p.46]

Oh Me Oh My is at its strongest when exhibiting an everyman quality comparable to that of his street level sculptures. [Mar 2023, p.52]

Each song on Universe Room offers up a unique aural sensation that becomes more acute with repeated hearings. While some of the material takes several playbacks to fully tune into, other songs such as the opening “Driving Time” (with its crackling night-time cricket chorus intro), the mysterious “I Will Be A Monk”, the Pixies sounding “Elfin Flower With Knees” and hit single (surely!) “Fly Religion” become instant ear worms burrowing their way into your brain. [Mar 2025, p.59]