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]

Crazy, tender and occasionally corny, Rundgren remains defiantly unpredictable. [Jul 2017, p.60]

The first half is far more intriguing. [May 2012, p.72]

A few tracks don’t work, like “Murdergram Deux” where he fast raps alongside Eminem in a staccato bore. While LL can still flow, he doesn’t find pockets of rhythm with the same ease he once did. But there is magic. [Nov 2024, p.56]

Promises doesn’t always come across like a true meeting of equals. Laswell used the saxophonist as a plug-in element in the late 90s, Michael Mantler’s Jazz Composer’s Orchestra did the same on 1968’s Communications, and there’s a bit of that feel here. A player with as unique and instantly recognisable a voice as Sanders always risks becoming a gimmick, but his performance here is stunningly beautiful, and the album would be unimaginable without him. [Apr 2021, p.57]

The energy is impressive and it's hard to find technical fault but the stagnation is undeniable. [May 2012, p.73]

For most of the album, the core group explore Lewis’s own compositions, with the leader and Hoffman engaging in thoughtful conversation as Jaffe conveys pulse rather than time. [Apr 2023, p.56]

Choirboys sing the poems of Nils Christian Moe-Repstad over Eivind Aarset’s guitar, but as with the more expansive orchestral passages, it can come across as earnestly ecclesiastical. The most affecting pieces are those where Henriksen and Bang strip it down, such as on “The Swans Bend Their Necks Backward To See God”, where pitched down trumpet lows like foghorns over the Humber valley. [Nov 2018, p.68]

Darkthrone do pretty much what they please, divorced from scene politics and free to enthuse about Ron Hardy mixes or delivering the post. [Nov 2016, p.56]

What we get is Youngs in troubadour mode, singing over sine waves or accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, [Oct 2013, p.54]

Slightly rawer and more aggressive than the duo’s last couple, Fearn’s productions cleave towards the minimal and raw, stripped right back to choppy beats and lurking bass. ... Success has not diminished Williamson’s need to grind an axe, which may not be pretty or noble, but is at least honest and undeniably consistent with what came before. [Apr 2023, p.60]

There's less sense of puzzle and struggle than we're used to with Aphex Twin... but Chosen Lords is certainly meticulous and absorbing. [#266, p.51]

Her own voice breaks sometimes, and it’s in these moments – when she seems to drop the mask – that the album lands its most impactful blows. Tracks like “Cosmic Joke” and “Anthem Of Me” bring more dense, pressurised operatics. [May 2025, p.51]

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

Miniawy's trumpet makes an appearance over the moody reversed bass and Auto-Tune of "Reels In 360", while opener "I See The Stadium" pairs his agitated uvular Arabic with Aussel's hulking bass propulsions and the guttural snarls of Lord Spikeheart. [Apr 2026, p.62]

Sometimes Liars sounds like a group whose previous sonic journeying has inspired a fresh look at the familiar. All too often, however, it's as though, having stepped outside the confines of conventional song, they can never believe in it enough to return. [Sep 2007, p.56]

Loose Talk is an engaging listen. [May 2025, p.52]

A natural follow-up to his first solo outing. [#229, p.68]

Oui may lack songs as vivid as those found on the [Sam] Prekop and [Archer] Prewitt records, but it has enough charm of its own to recommend it. [#201, p.63]

The addition of Morgane Diet’s seraphic vocals provides an emotional access point, filtering a grand cosmic aesthetic into a relatable and human scale. [Nov 2021, p.64]

While Harris’s voice has become more manoeuvrable, the combination of echo, layering and breathy delivery push the literal meaning of her lyrics just out of reach. Instead the words are like a lure, drawing you further into the space between unfurling sequences of hesitant notes and quiet cries. [May 2018, p.49]

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]

The astonishing thing about Deap Lips is that it sounds nothing like either constituent band, though Troy’s nasal vocal sometimes gives it away. [Sep 2020, p.52]

The elegantly bruised production is so captivating that I'm left longing for Ripatti to once again sink the vocals intot he subliminal and the sublime, as he did on "Vocalcity." [Nov 2008, p.66]

Chasny’s vocals in particular, hushed and double-tracked, tend to sound like the performance of awed transport rather than awed transport itself. In that sense Threshold’s instrumental numbers--which on so many albums feel like interludes or filler--are standouts. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Delicacy replaces density here, but his capacity to unnerve remains on these sedately mournful chamber pieces. [#231, p.74]

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]

For the most part it works, weaving a dark atmosphere of foreboding and dread through the songs. [#240, p.68]

The outcome is a record you could forget you're even listening to. [Nov 2016, p.66]

No great leap forward, but with a sound this distinctive, that's not yet a problem. [#205, p.59]

It's as timeless in its own small way as the Chicago canon that inspired it. [Jun 2012, p.46]

Though not all the tracks are fully realised, Molina was clearly pushing into new territory: that he never got there is a tragedy. [Sep 2020, p.57]

The new songs continue to hold the line narrative of the last few Yo La Tengo records without adding much new. But at moments when the performance is so assured, the hairs stand up and you're reminded anew of how the group got you to care. [Aug 2015, p.56]

Sometimes the music lingers too long in the in-between places, as though it’s not sure where it’s going. It probably doesn’t make sense for music that deals in ambivalence to be settled in itself, but some listeners may require a tiny bit more to believe in. [Jul 2024, p.50]

Only time will tell which albums will ring out as genuine artefacts and which will be revealed as little more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. [Apr 2017, p.46]

It's on tracks like the ethereal, 15 minute "Oh Shadie" where the group's acid washed sound really takes off. [#232, p.74]

It's as arch, infuriating and entertaining as the duo's name would lead you to expect. [Jun 2012, p.46]

he duo of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan come closer than on any previous effort to reconciling the two halves of their musical personality. [Oct 2016, p.52]

The first few listens don’t disclose the full complexities of Simon’s work – it remains semi-horizontal and distant, like a tired shrug. But after several repeats, the circular motifs begin to, if not get under the skin, then at least claw at it a bit. [Mar 2018, p.44]

It’s a strange brew, some distance from the monumental party music that has tended to characterise the duo’s three previous albums. [Jul 2020, p.50]

It works enough to be a strangely enjoyable and admirable record. [Jun 2012, p.48]

If Atrocity Exhibition doesn’t connect with quite the same power, it’s not for lack of commitment or craft. [Oct 2016, p.53]

Dense, frustrating, perplexing and fun on record, Demdike's sound works best when bleeding osmotically into strange visuals. [Jan 2017, p.63]

Contact may be more consistent than earlier albums, but some of the edges have been filed down and some of the physical intimacy that had such an impact by virtue of being too close for comfort is dialled down. [Apr 2017, p.47]

The album suffers a little from its 14 song duration. The Mael wit works best when it’s tightly presented. [Jul 2020, p.52]

Most of what they play live here is more serene and thoughtful. Not that Pirog is incapable of letting the sparks fly, particularly on “The Inner Ocean” where he opens up with an electric guitar stormer worthy of Sonny Sharrock. “Crowds And Power” perhaps references Fugazi’s glory days. “The Weaver” subtly winds the album down with Pirog on acoustic guitar and an unexpected flurry of orchestral strings. [May 2018, p.60]

Ultravisitor feels like another work in progress, another messy, powerful, occasionally remarkable, sometimes infuriating attempt to create a true, detailed, authentically multifaceted musical autobiography. [#241, p.52]

It's good enough, in fact, for it not to matter much that it basically peaks at the start. [May 2026, p.52]

There are arrangements within this album that compel due to the precision and control exerted over the sound design. Lopatin creates earworm upon earworm that seem to spiral into each other. As always, however, it seems as though he is holding back – I wish he would give in more to the stupidity teased at the beginning of “Plastic Antique”, where he uses a delayed, plodding synth to introduce the track. This reticence permeates the release, adding a layer of alienation. [Oct 2023, p.50]

The album is ultimately defined by its ten minute centrepiece “American Dream” and the 14 minute closing title track. Both beatless, these two are painted in broad, expansive strokes by Martin and further shaded by some of the most mystifying motifs of Carlson’s career to date. [Apr 2017, p.49]

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]

I can’t recommend this as a great hiphop record or remotely the state of the art right now. But for fans it’s an essential, harrowing work – Gang Starr’s equivalent of Big Star’s Third. [Jan 2020, p.60]

It's pervaded by numbness, claustrophobia, pain intensified to the point of dissociation. [Jun 2012, p.49]

It has a few surprises and sharp edges, but the structures are unstable. Like the post-rock improv of Aethenor, occasional bolts of energy strike and convulse the players. In its second half, however, 13 finally picks up momentum. [Oct 2016, p.60]

Part of Souleyman’s thing is upsetting delicate ears with his so-called vulgarity – it’s music for taxi drivers and party crashers. Likewise these swooning synth stabs may sound kitsch to discerning ravers, but the fun is heroically nonstop. [Jan 2020, p.69]

Sushi is more centred in the present, and more focused altogether. [Jan 2013, p.64

These half-asleep compositions inhabit the porous spaces between songform and atmosphere, the result being a remarkably relaxed album that is perhaps the strongest of the trilogy. [Nov 2025, p.52]

The album comes over as a political parable as much as an investigation into the spirit of place. [Jun 2012, p.56]

Throughout, strings carry forward brief, carefully composed interludes, dipping into sound fields that recall early 2000s post-rock; pensive percussion and melodic guitars riffing in and out of focus. The compositions are painterly and precise, punctuated by chimes and deep piano tones. [Dec 2025, p.56]

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

There’s a consistent low level sense of discomfort, or of familiar sounds or words taking on bizarro parallel forms. Lyrically, the album is enigmatic, full of personal mythologies, and swings between the divine (Jesus, Elvis) and the domestic (schools, peanut butter sandwiches). The song titles are a puzzle of repeated words and variations of phrases, like a secret language in plain sight. All over the album are sounds that can’t easily be identified, or that sit in between recognisable timbres. [Jul 2023, p.52]

Probably his most accessible work to date. [#269, p.45]

Less successful is “Turned To Stone”, a somewhat sluggish performance that indicates a temporary loss of direction, hobbled by formless vocal grunts that are accompanied by bouts of panic stricken death metal guitar noodling when the otherwise omnipresent grim mood falters. Mercifully Obituary swiftly regain their footing and kick back with “Straight To Hell.” [Apr 2017, p.52]

As stylistic cross-fertilising vanity projects by rock stars of pensionable age go, this one has bags of charm at least and is eminently listenable. [Jan 2013, p.65]

You are reminded that yes, this has all been done before, but Out Hud get by with the wistful innocence of well-intentioned brainiacs. [#225, p.71]

Something In The Room She Moves feels impossible to completely pin down. [May 2024, p.52]

As the album progresses, uneasiness is subliminally incorporated into otherwise deceptively easy rockin’ tunes. [Oct 2016, p.60]

There's Me And There's You, it turns out, a perfectly logical oddity. [Nov 2008, p.62]

The only problem with Politics of the Business is that there are too few of the loose ends and lateral leaps of, say, Three Feet High. [#232, p.69]

Some of these tracks have a stark, haunting beauty that marks them out as perfectly realised compositions in their own right. [#258, p.68]

On “Pure GreyCircle” Malliagh intensifies the mixture, introducing slabs of bass tone that flex and squeeze against elusive beats. There’s some weird subject matter, too; across polished surfaces and sharp corners, tracks such as “Sylph Fossil” and “Zones U Can’t See” smuggle cosmic lyrics inside voices that whisper or glide, always diving below the mix or spinning above. [Apr 2021, p.66]

While there's no doubting that Subtle can create, populate and soundtrack a world of their own, it's not always clear whether it was worth it. [May 2008, p.65]

The frenetic, almost no wave angularity of that track ["Camera"] calls to mind Last Exit or James Blood Ulmer's most punk-accented moments, while the contrast between hymnal vocal harmonies and brutalist sonics in "Scene 4" recalls Swans' "A Hanging". Early in the closing track "Scene 5: Breathing Fire" we hear one of the album's more conventionally structured post-hardcore movements along with an oblique ascension narrative about “basic instructions before leaving Earth” continuing, “but what do we return to?”.

It's hardly an essential record; more a reminder of past possibilities, really, than something that points toward the future. [Jul 2012, p.60]

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

Without a doubt these are good songs, and Osborne's vocal is always ear grabbing. But I'd love to hear the full band versions they deserve. [Jun 2014, p.55]

What the album lacks in innovation, it more than makes up for with its sheer edginess. [#228, p.59]

It radiates with a confidence fuelled by acolytes and its fun is infectious. But... the angry cynicism coursing through the album creates a distance between its maker and the listener. [#237, p.53]

The songs' parts don't always transition as smoothly as the listener might like, making them feel like a long sequence of moments rather than a single, shifting musical experience. ... Still, when Pack and Pendleton are gliding above the battlefield, voices and violins arcing slowly around one another, there's a real beauty here. [Sep 2016, p.56]

The Silence are less pastoral and more raucous, from the sax-laden opener "Rituals Of The Sun" onwards. There's a healthy dose of early 1970s British prog throughout too.

The results are overwhelmingly chirpy, but there's a frisson between his uniquely crusty voice and the shimmering digital surfaces. He sounds comfortable, but he doesn't blend in. [Dec 2025, p.63]

Pissing Stars sees his songwriting separate more fully from the motherships of Silver Mt Zion and GY!BE, skirting new fringes only a solo artist could reach. [Mar 2018, p.52]

It’s a startling new sound she has here, featuring voices of an unplaceable vintage, piano, bells and chains that carry centuries’ worth of dust and shadow, the songs a distorted and twisted take on gospel that’s sometimes slurred like a warped record, sometimes scarifyingly stark and always tightroping between redemptive faith and avant garde oddity. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.92]

Only occasionally, as on the Daft Punk-ish disco of “Real Time” does it feel generic, and when it gets really sophisticated--as on “True” where How To Dress Well sheds his recent 1980s pop affectations to operate in pure (and not in any sense alt) R&B mode--its ambition is clear. [Apr 2017, p.56]

Wiggs’s music works best when it sets out its melodic ideas, then takes its time subtracting elements until you’re left with a filament of what you started with, as on the stunning penultimate track “The Soft Stars That Shine”. [Jul 2019, p.58]

The acoustic guitar led instrumental “Underwater City” being an exemplary diversion into acid folk. Elsewhere “Re-generate” and “The Black Sea” are a couple of highly enjoyable (albeit slight) space jams, and exit track “Stargazers” regrettably bails out just when it starts to take off. [May 2024, p.60]

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]

Woptober, his second album as a free man, returns to the knotty, impenetrable rabbit holes of his storied mixtape run. [Jan 2017, p.77]

Now more than ever, political songs need engagement and direct prescription. In that respect Spirit rarely cuts it. But as with many DM albums, it can still resonate in quieter moments such as “Cover Me”, and the group’s continued existence is one of the great love affairs between man and machine in modern music. [Apr 2017, p.56]

Gane forgoes the intensifying momentum found elsewhere in his work for a more conventionally cinematic arc. [Aug 2020, p.52]

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]

The ideas are better realised here than on [Why?'s] earlier material. [#258, p.67]

Isles offers multiple reboots of the “Glue” formula: chunky broken beats, keening voices in many languages, and duvet-warm basslines, as on lead singles “Atlas” and “Apricots”; the latter is based around a clip of the much sampled Bulgarian State Television choir. Guest vocalist Clara La San adds a femme-pop twist to “Saku” and a tight electro jam called “X” which is the best of the bunch. [Mar 2021, 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]

It always feels uncomfortably like being trapped in someone's else's headspace. [Jul 2012, p.68]

There’s no denying that braggadocio has always been a key component of the genre but after a while it does become wearing when little more is on offer to elevate the tunes. What rescues the whole affair is Daniel Boyle’s dedication to the task at hand and his skills in bringing the rhythms and end mixes together, though with session input from the great but unsung UK reggae sessioneer Hughie Izachaar on guitar and bass plus old Upsetter Robbie Lyn on keyboards it’s enough to infuse any session with confidence. [Nov 2018, p.62]

Their second album feels more palatable. [Jul 2012, p.68]

The first two tracks showcase the oddity of the album’s moods. ... The tension grows to breaking point on the two vocal numbers, “Play The Ghost” and “Canyon Walls”, in which the barest suggestion of melodic form, coalescing out of scatters of organ drone and faded, looping instruments has to provide a support for Davachi’s Grouper-like laryngeal ectoplasm.[Oct 2020, p.52]