A thrilling affair. [#252, p.63]

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

Pop itself is not a problem, it's just that in Tarwater's take on it nagging tunes and interesting textures are in short supply. [#253, p.65]

Imagine cLOUDDEAD jamming with Wilco, with David Lynch producing, and you're only halfway there. [#257, p.70]

If Brian Wilson had crashed a motorcycle and holed up to recuperate at Big Pink with The Band, this is how The Basement Tapes would have sounded. [#256, p.49]

Immaculately interwoven electronics and the care with which each beautifully recorded track unfolds recall Chicago post-rock. [#254, p.53]

The slippery polyrhythmic music is a difficult terrain for MCs to conquer. [#253, p.57]

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

[An] overstuffed sound hurricane. [#255, p.58]

The Earth Is Blue has a glorious, spacey innocence that inspires affection. [#253, p.57]

Tracks like "Huis Clos"... can drag... And the garage rock of "(I Wanna Be) Waiting For My Plane" is an unwieldy cross between early Sonic Youth and Two Lone Swordsmen's axe-men incarnation. [#253, p.69]

This level of gross hallucination could risk indulgence... But for straight-up bad vibes to the head, Fast Cars is compelling. [#252, p.67]

LCD Soundsystem's gift is to forge iron from irony, show that cleverness need not be enervating. [#252, p.46]

Ladd's eclectic and downbeat montage of samples creates a rootless soundscape, seemingly geographically transient, restless, impatient and unsettling. It is the perfect backdrop for Ladd's soul-searching reflexes and rants. [#251, p.54]

The record makes you marinate in Francis' omni-loathing, and the effect is one of catharsis rather than exhaustion. [#254, p.57]

This could have been camp on a Himalayan scale. Its strength is that it's anything but. [#255, p.51]

The five tracks penned and played on by PJ Harvey... reverberate with all the dark, elastic abrasion of PJ's best work. [#248, p.66]

The collaboration has had the effect of sharpening Oldham's focus and yielding one of the most gripping collections to bear one of his many pseudonyms. [#252, p.48]

Their most beautifully conceived and ambitiously extended work to date. [#252, p.59]

Lyrically, Mm.. Food is the best of the three albums released by Daniel Dumile this year. [#250, p.73]

Such unashamed prettiness in a production is rare, and it's rarer still to achieve this without sliding into a quagmire of tweeness or an insufferable knowing smugness. [#252, p.62]

In many ways this is his finest outing since The Boatman's Call. [#247, p.55]

Le Tigre make a convincing case for synthpop as an instrument of liberation theology. [#248, p.58]

This album does suffer a mysterious drop in its energy levels midway in. [#249, p.50]

Black's pleasure at rediscovering these old songs in new company is infectious and makes the exercise engaging and worthwhile. [#252, p.62]

The sound has a new depth. [#249, p.65]

A set of powerfully written and unfussily executed songs. [#248, p.50]

The best thing they've done since Stakes Is High. [#250, p.73]

Hovering somewhere between offbeat anti-folk and laptop noise terrorism, Kptmichigan falls short of achieving a genuine hybrid but trails some interesting sonic debris in the process. [#249, p.64]

A genuine sense of danger and trepidation stalks through these tracks. [#249, p.63]

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]

The music has an originality that sounds remarkable even now. [#248, p.52]

Another charming collection. [#248, p.51]

A defining album that should lift her out of the 'sounds like' territory. [#248, p.65]

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]

Hobo Sapiens is a confident and consistently rewarding record, and some of its songs rank alongside Cale's best. [#236, p.56]

Possibly the most daring record she's ever made... [but] Medulla is not a complete success. [#247, p.53]

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]

Theirs is a terse music, but purposeful, and it's that quality which makes this a more engaging listen than the equally abstract cybernetic fusion of To Rococo Rot or Mapstation. [#247, p.62]

Marks a return to the kind of intricately interleaved rhythms, seamless progressions and aching harmonies that characterise their earlier sound. [#245, p.69]

Soundtracking stellar deeps has become one of electronica's most overworked cliches, but in the easy intimacy audible in this encounter, these Ambienaut vets make it sound like a piece of cake. [#247, p.59]

Nostalgialator is exhilarating, eschewing rhetorical rap fury in favour of a satirical masqued ball of capitalist obsessions. [#246, p.52]

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

Very rewarding, although Blueberry Boat is perhaps too heavy a tome, lyrically, to be quite the right starting place for those new to the group. [#249, p.55]

[Forster] leans perilously close to airbrushed AOR when left too much to his own devices, but mostly the intoxicating richness and unashamed opulence of their epic space rock wins through. [#247, p.70]

Musically and lyrically, A Ghost Is Born is translucent, weightless, supernatural, capable of drifting back and forth across rock'n'roll's state lines at will. [#246, p.61]

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

The emphasis this time around is on poppier melodies, but for all its attention to song form, Sonic Nurse feels more like a collection of exercises than a cohesive album. [#244, p.63]

Voyeurs of the disintegration of the human condition will be able to gorge on vicarious thrills to their black heart's content. [#246, p.62]

There probably isn't a track here you won't be hearing in some club, park or block party throughout the summer, so you might as well start now. [#245, p.51]

It feels rough and raw and sketchy. [#245, p.69]

Laced with a shot of self-doubt that has it coming on almost like an electroclash Exile On Main Street. [#244, p.69]

The best stuff views the world through the sunkissed psychedelic lens of Brazilian psych-troupe Os Mutantes; the lesser material just sounds like lite Brian Wilson. [#243, p.59]

Pleasantly ear friendly and leaves no unpleasant odour or lingering aftertaste. [#243, p.74]

The Kadanes have created a collection of songs of which they can be proud. [#246, p.62]

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]

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]

Sadly their rather airless space rock doesn't really lift off beyond a certain Ambient politeness. [#244, p.66]

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

Banhart mixes a relaxed bearing and a tense vocal delivery in a fascinating manner. [#245, p.51]

The album glows white-hot with fury and energy, familiar yet fresh. [#243, p.66]

A dull, clunky, unjustifiably smug AOR rock album: no more, no less. [#243, p.71]

A streamlined combination of motorik rhythms, electronic textures and tuneful choruses. [#242, p.72]

Although there are no new dimensions here,... this still feels like musical fresh mint. [#242, p.67]

A rewarding new departure. [#242, p.72]

Beautifully performed, but otherwise unadventurous. [#243, p.69]

There's at once a sense that Venice is weightier and more purposeful than its predecessor. [#243, p.56]

Ten is forever on the point of falling apart but somehow doesn't. [#241, p.55]

A worthy addition to Byrne's sprawling oeuvre, while never reaching the heights of his greatest work. [#242, p.57]

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

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]

An exciting record crawling with new ideas. [#243, p.74]

Both totally entertaining and instantly accessible to both avant rap devotees and curious passers-by. [#246, p.66]

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

If nothing else, these [political] elements give Liberation a darker hue. [#240, p.67]

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

It's exhilarating and rare to hear such bruised raw performances as these. [#242, p.71]

Rather than fetishing these sound sources, Neubaten vacuum-pack the lot inside a hermetic and constricting production that is immensely disturbing. [#241, p.57]

It's simultaneously the group's most successful integration of the various strands they've chased over the years and their most ambitious and expansive work to date. [#241, p.50]

There are occasions when vocal inadequacy can be more emotionally fetching than full-throated virtuosity.... This, however, is not one of them. [#239, p.57]

One of the year's best releases, remix or not. [#241, p.71]

There is no fake authenticity in this musical exploration, and Herren's musical palette is impressively wide ranging. [#241, p.63]

Continues along lines that Stereolab have been laying down since the late 1990s: motorik drumming and a swish of keyboards tarversing a linear landscape, with the emphasis on Sadier's laconic, dewy vocals. [#239, p.65]

Evokes the same stark, road weary melancholy as Ry Cooder's score for Paris, Texas, but with a far more extensive sonic toolbox. [#240, p.57]

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

Closer works best instrumentally, as a sonic depiction of the mind, as a dark voyage into inner space. [#236, p.64]

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

The album becomes more experimental and confident as it progresses. [#236, p.59]

While the album is pleasant, it takes a long time to open up. And once opened, it's nice, but hardly revolutionary. [#236, p.61]

A quietly masterful concoction. [#236, p.62]

Some of Out Of Season's lyrics are almost too impossibly idealistic and airy fairy to carry off. [#226, p.54]

It's all been very 'civil,' but still no sign of that dang war. [#235, p.63]

It's clear that Bell retains a sure grasp of form and dynamics. Hard to shake off, however, is the nagging feeling that you've heard all this before. [#236, p.62]

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]

Contrasting epic, experimental freakouts with concise chamber music, 5 is a diverse album, full of gems bleeding with icy brilliance. [#235, p.69]

Coomes and Weiss' compact set up maintans an awkward dynamic balancing natural elegance with barbed experiment to sustain the music's flux of design and accident. [#235, p.64]

Byrne has done a tidy, if not terribly exciting job on the soundtrack. [#235, p.57]

This is drivel inflated to whole new levels of bombast. [#235, p.72]