While perhaps not the triumphant return that many fans have hoped for, the murky and dystopic excursions of 8 Diagrams are uncompromising, visionary and unique. [Mar 2008, p.62]

The album then settles into a solid groove of high end electro pop with just enough dust to keep it grounded. [Apr 2017, p.62]

The song ["Yonder Blue"] is as intricately tied into pop and soundtrack tradition as the rest of the album, but it carries an immediacy that otherwise eludes The Catastrophist. [Jan 2016, p.72]

An interesting example of a performer getting more experimental and simultaneously more studio-savvy, Chenaux has produced his best work yet. [Mar 2012, p.51]

Surrender To The Fantasy showcases the latest stage yet of their oddly trad transformation, the unkempt electric savagery of their past domesticated to the point of extinction. [Nov 2013, p.56]

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

His melody lines never go where they should; there is pattern here, but not he expected resolution. [Nov 2015, p.56]

More Light is, on the whole, more of what made him great--songs with airhead titles like "Where'd You Go," which stretch glorious guitar solos over solid chopping riffs--but it's packed with too much filler. [#200, p.80]

Stands as a monument to punk rock action at its most intelligent. [#236, p.60]

Much of the music here is a return to past form, and a move away from the more polished recent albums. [Dec 2013, p.58]

Electric Trim is Lee Ranaldo’s 12th solo album but it sounds remarkably fresh. [Oct 2017, p.59]

The results are deceptively impressive. [Sep 2016, p.54]

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]

A return visit for these two tourists would be welcome. [Nov 2012, p.60]

His latest disc is only occasionally compelling. [Jun 2015, p.50]

Guardian Alien's music, which, driven by Greg Fox's questing, cyclical drumming, creates wide and wondrous vistas. [Feb 2014, p.54]

Gorgeous string arrangements, sax and synths give Birthmarks a palpable sense of encroaching mist. [Apr 2020]

It's a bit California slacker, a bit New York dive, a bit Delta blues, and so firs in well enough alongside Woodist alumni like Kurt Vile, Real Estate and Woods. [Jan 2016, p.71]

There's little to set the sombre half-tones of the Cave and Seed world alight with suspicous glimmers. [#228, p.59]

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]

“Dreamfear” sticks to the artist’s more conventional penchant for collage-style dance music. .... “Boy Sent From Above” is less convincing, clumsily layering Auto-Tuned vocals over the kind of schmaltzy synth one might hear in pop outfits like Yazoo. [Mar 2024, p.54]

Black Bubblegum is Copeland's most surprising release for a long time; it's also perhaps the most obviously approachable record he has ever been involved with. [Aug 2016, p.48]

Laced never stays still long enough to be pinned down. [Jun 2011, p.57]

Rather than confessional catharsis, Highway Songs has the diaristic, sketchbook feel of the compulsively creative. [Dec 2016, p.64]

Strange Passion's careful curation and lavish sleeve notes give a belated but generous and welcome salute to an overlooked epoch in musical history and the passions it provoked. [Aug 2012, p.52]

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

This is actually a joyful, bouncing album. [Oct 2018, p.68]

Each piece is sturdily constructed, but a loose leaf informality allows the 18 tracks to hang without necessarily hanging together. [Apr 2020, p.53]

This is Byrne at his best, as he calmly describes the impact of the object upon the victim’s history, feelings and anatomy that are being destroyed as a result of its violent intrusion. [May 2018, p.60]

Touching and beautiful. [#256, p.63]

Negotiate Steve Osborne's rather dated stadium Techno-rock production, and there's plenty to stimulate here... [#211, p.70]

A scattering of influences have been streamlined into tightly focused songs, with a keen sense of melody and an impressive grasp of agitated, Gang Of Four-style rhythms. [#247, p.70]

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

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

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]

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]

While as bracing as ever, this sound is less striking now, and the album sees Psutka creating solid but less remarkable grooves. [Feb 2015, p.56]

The lyrics are delivered just above speaking pace to empathise with the listener, with similes and wordplay that vivify and even try to explain the vagaries of love. [Nov 2016, p.58]

There are some satisfying rushes of buzzing sawtooth waves, and luminous passages that hail back to the Workshop’s glory days. But the most successful tracks let their beautiful and odd electronic timbres breathe on their own, rather than adding them as a dressing or a side dish for the piano melodies, or other attempts at constructing a more conventional pop backbone. [Jun 2017, p.65]

While some will label these 12 pieces as evidence of Alex Paterson’s genius, the majority definitely won’t, and although it’s a well-produced work, it doesn’t bend or expand expectations. [Sep 2018, p.54]

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]

Droneflower is both the most persuasive release Nadler has put her name to since 2014’s July and one of Brodsky’s finest efforts outside of Cave In. It gestures at a beautiful future, should the duo choose to pursue it. [Jul 2019, p.52

It sounds like something struggling to be born, and probably not something you’d want to see grow up in your house. [Nov 2019, p.64]

Frisell, as always, plays for the group and for the song rather than reeling off solos. He has never shredded, but he doesn’t just shuck corn and whittle, either. Every Frisell performance is shaped with love and care, and with a near perfect balance between form and freedom. He just gets better and better. [Dec 2019, p.47]

The highlights are many, making the hour of its running time pass effortlessly. [Jul 2021, p.70]

Ping-ponging between krautrock, deep funk, free jazz and pre-techno synth workouts, they could have easily released it as three short, more coherent LPs; some credit, at least, ought to go to Soul Jazz for indulging them in these spartan times. [Jan 2022, p.72]

Modern Cosmology, which pairs Sadier with Brazilian band Mombojó, go some way to sating that desire on debut album What Will You Grow Now?, their second release following an EP released in 2016. Some way is the operative term, it should be said, with album opener “Making Something” as prime an example as anything. Stereolab acolytes will peg that bubbling bass tone in a trice, while the keys of Chiquinho Moreira are something more akin to jazz funk with tropicalia dusting. [Jun 2023, p.55]

“Airavata” falls into kitsch, with Atwood-Ferguson on electric guitar and violin/viola. The album’s often better than that, however. .... In all, a mixed picture. [Dec 2023, p.42]

These recent realisations of Ono’s scores by that flexible collective sound remarkably current and fresh. [May 2025, p.53]

Zu's first studio album since 2019 is not without moments of minimalism or subtlety, yet all told it makes for a draining 80 minutes. [Mar 2026, p.60]

Their debut album King Night defies genre tagging and, for once, lives up to the drooling media accolades already smeared on it. [Dec 2010, p.54]

Its best tracks suggest a similarly abrasive, exploratory and jammed on the fly approach to House music [as Jamal Moss].

There's a generous, sloppy fistful of day-glo power-pop in these songs. [Apr 2014, p.52]

Sounding at times as though someone had isolated the synth track from a classic Hawkwind record, the music here is familiar and invites associations. ... Regardless, On A Clear Day is a pleasant affair.

He still lacks emotional commitment as a rapper, offering weakly swaggy bars like “I’m gonna make a billie like I’m Eilish” on “Talk My Shit”. Honeyed melodic shadings like “Dadvocate” and the emo rock oriented “Lithonia” are more compelling. [Sep 2024, p.60]

Some tracks go on far longer than is comfortable, some peter out prematurely, some wander off in a direction that doesn’t immediately make sense. But even without the context of Troxler’s career, that’s fine. It’s obviously a personal record, with a distinctive sound palette, expressing some fairly profound and fun experiences. [Jun 2019, p.58]

Jeezy may have the most charismatic voice in rap now--a fierce but fine-gravel shout that hits your ears soft like a whisper--and his beat selection remains pitch perfect--but Jeezy still doesn't realise that selling drugs was good only for Jeezy. He's a cartoon, a proforma thug, and when he tries to relate he fails miserably. [Dec 2008, 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]

Clamber aboard and settle in for a very sweet ride. [Jul 2011, p.55]

I’d say that the seething intransigence of Impossible Star is precisely what makes it so compelling. A release whose glittering details and dusty undertow can’t obscure how appalled it is. [Feb 2018, p.51]

As per usual after listening to an Oh Sees release, I’m impressed by the execution but left cold and hollow by their studious style. [Oct 2020, p.59]

While the individual tracks prove undistinguished as a whole, the chiming microtonal piano contrasting with a constellation of gorgeous synth work on "Orbiting Meadows featuring Clark" is a haunting standout. [Apr 2026, p.61]

'Corporate Cannibal' is the exception, and Jones, a miracle of nature at Meltdown, proves more fallible on Hurricane. [Nov 2008, p.64]

Hiperasia offers a vivid, feverish soundworld of Auto-Tuned vocals, idyllic electronics and machine beats solid enough to stand alongside the best US R&B currently has to offer. [Apr 2016, p.60]

The production throughout is a heavy slurry of deep bass and wavering, churchical keys, and songs that are not explicitly about his medical troubles are about the perennial problems of untrue friends and false lovers. [Mar 2016, p.42]

Shorn of its images, Carpenter’s score for David Gordon Green’s reboot of the Halloween franchise is oddly aimless. There’s the instant jolt of recognition: that simple piano phrase is resurrected, and given a steroidal boost, its famous 5/4 rhythm now underpinned with a sturdy kickdrum. But after that the music hardly seems to build in intensity, or riff off each other; there are certainly no new hooks or textures that sear the listening ear like the first. [Nov 2018, p.53]

It's a shame that the the young skate rat seems to be so caught up in his own hype, as beneath the bluster and amped-up angst, there is something interesting going on. [Jul 2011, p.54]

If the Wu-Tang Clan's A Better Tomorrow was a shoddy attempt at cinematic audio in a Hollywood blockbuster sense, this is the arthouse variety show alternative with caricature Ghost as compere. [Sep 2015, p.57]

The first part of this milary-concrete triptych is mostly vague interference and Radiophonic Workshop-style wibbling about that towards the end, has developed into discomforting BBC Ceefax music. The middle section is sonically richer... Part three is illbient comedown. [Jun 2013, p.51]

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

Jenssen can't maintain the balancing act throughout Departed Glories and only really pulls it off intermittently. But when he does it casts a lovely autumnal light somewhere between Folke Rabe’s pastoral minimalism, Andrew Chalk’s haunted pools of tone, or even the lambent string arrangements of Debussy’s Jeux. [Oct 2016, p.48]

The music still nods to Broadcast in its gothic otherness, and the basic format of analogue synth driving the bass, drums and vocals is unchanged. But the sound is more structured, more--gasp!--song-like. Unfortunately the production is imbalanced, rough and thin. [Dec 2018, p.59]

It’s definitely a mixed bag, but pays off with “The Dawn” in which Lipstate’s guitar exhales in tandem with a spoken admission of small hours frailty. [Dec 2019, p.53]

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

Compact but effective EP release. “Mandrill” buzzes with metallic heft and 8-bit zips; “Capuchin” breaks into a melody that practically bounces. Gore is obviously having fun here. [Mar 2021, p.63]

While he operates in similar sonic territory to Ariel Pink, Mondanile is as disarmingly gentle as Pink is strutting and cocky. [Nov 2017, p.67]

For every track that delivers the expected, another does something quite extraordinary. [Oct 2008, p.72]

Has a lot more of SF's itchy electro-Techno fizz than it does 'proper' HipHop beats. [#231, p.75]

It has that out-of-time, sketchbook privacy of so much current home-recorded memoradelia, but it also has a grit or grain to it--cheap Xerox rather than woozy VHS wobble--which is strangely refreshing. [May 2011, p.53]

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

On tracks with genuine maverick talents like E-40, his fundamental lack of character appears (or disappears) in sharp relief. [Apr 2015, p.65]

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]

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]

Attention Please is more of a shuffle than a giant leap forward, leaving the feeling that we've been here before. [Jul 2011, p.44]

There are many beautiful instants here, but their relentless abstraction also harbours a lingering sense of decorative indulgence. [Feb 2011, p.54]

Ghettoville feels dead, finished, hopeless. If this is, as the publicity hints, an end to the Actress project, then it is a dramatic one. [Feb 2014, p.44]

Youngs’s knack of picking resonant phrases is at peak levels. [Dec 2016, p.66]

The results isn't always compelling; at times the trio lean on cliched sounds--ominous synth tones, for example, or whirring stock effects--that have also crept into previous release. But more often, the pieces on Rainbow Mirror avoid banality through forced patience. The extended track lengths greatly benefit Fernow’s chosen range of sounds and moods. Given the room to stretch and develop, he and his colleagues maintain a level of subtlety throughout. [Dec 2017, p.56]

This may be the first solo Eno work that is entirely without interest. It is bafflingly below par. [Dec 2010, p.45]

Initially sounds nothing special but gradually crawls into your subconscious and sets up home. [#233, p.72]

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

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]

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

Bright, booming and unhinged in its musical complexity, Big Mama is electronic music pushed to its most futuristic and utopian possibilities. [Apr 2026, p.58]

A highly enjoyable and entertaining album. [Jan 2020, p.74

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]

A lot of All Worlds could be bundled onto daytime radio playlists without standing out too starkly. .... Echoes of these acts’ more severe youthful excursions shines through on “Akkadian” – an audacious combo of jungle breaks and coldwave verses – and “Dummy”. [Apr 2025, p.55]

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]