The album never quite wallows in gross out carnage or tragedy or blame (though these are here, for sure), but spins these yarns, perverse detail at a time, with the laconic humour of a short story by Richard Brautigan or Thomas Pynchon, stopping just short of mockery. [May 2017, p.53]

The voice of singer Rolynne provides a fluency and depth missing elsewhere; her emotional precision and expression cut right through the ornament of this otherwise rather forgettable album. [Nov 2017, p.66]

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

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

The mirth on offer here is thin fare, for the most part. [May 2014, p.63]

PC Music Volume 1 resembles the soundtrack to a posh private schooler's teen sleepover--glossy, giddy, sparkly and shallow. [Aug 2015, p.55]

Debut album Labyrinth is Kanda’s most sophisticated solo effort to date, swaying through 13 tracks of gorgeous melodies and electroacoustic layers that skip and skitter between beats and material states. [Dec 2019, p.48]

Remember Me lacks depth, being essentially a collection of keg party crowd pleasers, but its biggest singles are undeniable. [Jun 2014, p.63]

New material is conspicuous by its absence, and several shambolic passages indicate that the band barely managed to rehearse, let alone write songs. [Jul 2017, p.58]

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]

An album remarkable only for just how bland it gets, despite every effort to the contrary. [Feb 2016, p.60]

Nomad is well-name--but what's most striking is not its diversity, but its coherence. [Dec 2008, p.73]

Bongo Hotheads distils the feverish street feel of Dar Es Salaam. [Jul 2012, p.71]

Many of these tracks barely scrape two and a half minutes. Crazed voices talk about “hair” and a “super-weird looking guy” while the deranged piano of a haunted ballroom plays for no one (“The Hidden Joice”). But it’s a fun, fairground of a record too, with a hare-brained 1960s Wurlitzer pop song (“Give It To Me”), dopey scat (“Scooba”) and silly names and phrases like “Chicken Butt” and “Eat Yourself Out”.

The LP’s best tracks are those where the producers keep it undercooked and Westside Gunn is kept in check--to a point. [Sep 2018, p.62]

His words remain relatively vivid but his voice is old, his stories nostalgic, occasionally tired. A baffling decision to sprinkle a handful of past recordings through the tracklist reveals he can't compete with his own 20 year old offcuts. .... Otherwise he's generally best when choice sparring partners inspire sparks of life. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.83]

Oczy Mlody fluently balances three decades of untamed experimentation with the poppier sensibilities they've gained along the way. [Feb 2017, p.51]

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

While bound by established conventions, [it] is nonetheless rich and dazzling enough to soundtrack a saga that exists outside the bounds of normal human capabilities. [Oct 2008, p.60]

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]

It's hard to shake off the suspicion that The Fifth Release contains more than a few offcuts and outtakes that never quite made the final cut of its more assured and inventive predecessor. [#202, p.55]

Listening in one session is like wolfing a hurried seven-course meal with post-dinner coffee and is roughly as messy. [Sep 2013, p.65]

[The album] is so blatantly, almost self-consciously pleasurable it should come, like an insalubrious takeaway, with heavy duty napkins. [Apr 2014, p.65]

I'd like this to be much more depraved, or just for El-P to fully embrace his Eno role for another solo album of weirdness. [Aug 2016, p.59]

The music works on its own--laser-sharp, energetic and gloriously fun. [Mar 2016, p.55]

At times it takes an effort to differentiate Hive1 from many other of the gentle experimental works involving modular synthesizers across the decades, despite its unique origins. But there are subtle--and again, intensive--surprises scattered throughout, both in sounds and forms. [May 2015, p.47]

The atmosphere is underwrought, miserable, monochrome. [Jun 2015, p.46]

It’s as stunning and vibrant a set of agitpop brilliance as Conn has ever produced. If he’s ever moved you, move to this. [Apr 2020, p.64]

The record works best however when Leandoer wears his heart unashamedly on his sleeve.

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

Blue Songs nevertheless presents a level of poetic inventiveness that isn't easy to trace in the dance pantheon.

Slug Guts embrace their destiny as swaggering, bar-destroying dirtbags, and we're all better for it. [Oct 2012, p.68]

The album’s strongest moments aren’t the existential musings of “Marathon” or “World Of Flaws” but the palpable joy when he reflects on his everyday life in the ebullient title track, and the problematic yet precious local pride of “Brixton Baby”. [Mar 2018, p.47]

DeGraw's skill for mixing and matching swatches of sound is unparalleled, but without context it becomes much like choosing colours for your living room. [Dec 2013, p.48]

The results are mixed. The album never fully escapes the feeling of rootless hipster genre-rifling. But the skill of Mast and Stroud at engineering riffs cannot be denied. [Jul 2010, p.60]

Third Avenue is less approachable, more problematic [than Dave's Psychodrama]. ... But overall he shows a range Dave should take note of. [May 2019, p.50]

While nothing on III is exactly a soundtrack to sipping caipirinhas in the sun, there's also nothing about it that suggests grimacing theatrically on a darken dancefloor. [Oct 2011, p.52]

As Town And Country's move into mellow artists maturity, C'mon is an oasis of sensitive calm from our loutish world. [#217, p.61]

Celebrity guests or not, this is what Beans is--a densely indigestible acquired taste. [Apr 2011, p.70]

Apart from a few works for chamber instruments, which have a similar pleasing air of fakeness to Michael Nyman’s faux baroque cues for Peter Greenaway, these sketches all have uncertain origins and textures. [May 2020, p.66]

There's something very likable about this album....The problem with Too Old To Die Young is that it's too familiar to sound truly fresh. [May 2008, p.65]

The music on Freak Puke isn't exactly unheavy, but its heaviness is of a different vintage. [Jun 2012, p.60]

A decent film soundtrack. [#219, p.74]

15 tracks of raspingly dry boilerplate hiphop, whose moods and references are pretty much (all) the Americans ones you'd expect. [Nov 2007, p.51]

Guillermo Scott Heren's eight record as Prefuse 73 is oddly colourless (or should I just say boring) suite of compositional drifts. [Apr 2011, p.70]

It all slides down very easily--but there's isn't much of an aftertaste. [Aug 2010, p.66]

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]

Its one of those Wobble albums that marks time between more major projects, and it's typical of his restless musical nature. [Sep 2018, p.65]

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]

Without the strength of material to prompt the question of whether Byrne should be taken at face value or not, the songs on Look Into The Eyeball simply glide by unobtrusively, and Byrne's romantic sentiments start to sound like Paul McCartney at his blandest. [#208, p.53]

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

MBM's wholehearted embracing of the familiar is stronger than ever, erasing any freshness or innovation, and cancelling out all distinguishing features. [#226, p.72]

They have edited a tightly bound collection of six monstrously loud tracks with titles like “Cuts On Your Hands”, “Starres” and “Dark Inclusions” that read like they have been torn from some eldritch book of spellcraft but are in fact informed by the cosmos and attempts to make contact with alien intelligence. Unfortunately any insight regarding this is hidden behind the pleasingly crushing avalanche of guitar shrapnel, thundering bass and percussion that muzzle Baker’s already clouded vocal. [Jun 2021, p.54]

If narcoleptically bland neo-soul is your bag, you’re in luck. A parade of guest singers and rappers do nothing to inject any interest. [Sep 2023, p.69]

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

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

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

It seems telling for an album about self-discovery that the most convincing tracks are those where he’s openly panicking over his identity rather than those where he’s found an uneasy peace. [Mar 2020, p.61]

Deprived of the rushing, crescendoless highs of Glass Swords, the tracks often seem to struggle to articulate their fascination, or to find satisfying structures. [Sep 2014, p.60]

"Miss Lucifer"... [is] the first of many tracks on Evil Heat that cross rock 'n' roll and electro, only to get Sigue Sigue Sputnik. [#223, p.61]

Balance[d] between the exquisite – lines aching with elegant age and restraint, chords feeling bruised and heavy with knowing (“Hymn”, “An Intimate Distance”) – and the slightly underdeveloped (“Bells”, “Innocence”). ... The Turning Year is calming and often very beautiful. [May 2022, p.44]

They sound somewhere between being tentative and caught in a frozen, allegorical state of sketchiness, turning the sleepy head of bedroom pop into a death's head. [Sep 2014, p.64]

Despite the bloodlettting and reckless spending, Future just sounds bored. And occasionally lazy. [Apr 2016, p.50]

The line-up sounds tantalisingly promising--but the hoped for bass-heavy meltdown never fully materialises. [Jun 2016, p.58]

The songs have an irresistible quality of self-reflection. [Oct 2016, p.60]

Colors II is musically all over the shop, offering an experience that’s akin to being on a sonic rollercoaster that’s scarily still under construction. But for all that it’s still one hell of a ride! [Sep 2021, p.62]

It's only unfortunate that such a master of making Rick Ross albums must live in a world where there are already five other Rick Ross albums. [May 2014, p.74]

Although there are still psych-rock moments that recall the strident moves of Quicksilver Messenger Service or Spirit, it's a darker and more straightforward album than 2012's Between The Times And The Tides. [Nov 2013, p.63]

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]

2 Chainz moves around the sort of eclectic brat selection that Lil Wayne was devouring in the mid-2000s. [Nov 2013, p.66]

The sound is certainly has the depth and sheen you'd expect from Laswell. But what's missing is some of the edginess, invention and unpredictability that was Scratch's trademark. [Jun 2011, p.59]

From The Very Depths reinforces the group's reputation as well as showing they are still a force to be reckoned with. [Mar 2015, p.53]

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

Despite the lack of actual bass frequencies on Advaitic Songs, Om frequently sound weighed down which isn't the same thing as sounding heavy. [Jul 2012, p.61]

Expectations are, as ever, moderate for Tricky's latest album, and he doesn't disappoint. [Sep 2014, p.60]

All the ingredients required are present: sonic invention, surprise, risk taking, fun and adventure. [Mar 2024, p.56]

It's actually more pleasurable to pick a track at random and leave it on loop. [Sep 2011, p.56]

It's hard not to feel that this dense conceptual flotsam is arranged around a lucuna. [May 2014, p.67]

Iradelphic often feels lost in a borrowed soundworld. [Apr 2012, p.68]

Fans of Anderson's trademark spoken word phrasing, with pregnant pauses, raised eyebrows and question mark endings, won't be disappointed. [#211, p.52]

The production values can't cover for the lack of lyrical pizzazz, [Jul 2011, p.55]

The momentum doesn't dip through the sunny but sinister celebration of "T-Shirt Weather In The Manor," Kano's rapid flow over electronic rowdiness on "new Banger" and the stunning dancefloor swagger of "3 Wheel Ups."... The album peters out after that. [Mar 2016, p.46]

The beats are functional if not flashy. [Nov 2008.p.79]

Their music is an exercise in reductionism: how little does a tune need to be tune? Yet, somehow these non-tunes niggle away till they lodge firmly in the memory tissue. [Jan. 2012, p.66]

Some moments on the Pet Shop Boys' 11th album are as unsettling as any music released this decade. [Nov 2012, p.64]

Nehru is essentially indistinguishable from any number of bedroom rappers clogging Soundcloud with their freestyles to Doom's decade old Special Herbs instrumentals. [Nov 2014, p.76]

It all adds up to a queasy--but pleasurable--kind of time-travel sickness. [Mar 2012, p.67]

As with most of these tracks, the effect is cumulative, and if Co La's modus operandi at first appeared to be almost flippant, the resulting music is inescapably hypnotic. [Jan 2012, p. 52]

There are several memorable songs here, but the offhand, one-take atmosphere makes the project slighter than it might have been. [Feb 2011, p.50]

With more emphasis on achieving that elusive breakout moment than its predecessor and infinitely less grit, here Sway shows little of the infectious individuality he used to bring to less commercial work. [Oct 2008, p.72]

Those who were there the first time round will enjoy playing spot-the-sample on these hyperactive cut ’n’ shuts; for anyone else, it’s a strange one. Inarguably fun, but you’re left scratching your head, wondering why. [Jun 2017, p.74]

Sings Olivia Newton-John is an album nobody asked for but that’s partly what makes it special. Hatfield’s garage-bound arrangements scuff up the squeaky clean originals to likeable effect and she throws herself into the project with gusto. [Jun 2018, p.65]

A definite mixed bag, Pink Bikini is best when its songs feel fully formed in their own right, rather than semi-scripts set to music. [Aug 2023, p.56]

There's nothing on their fourth album that couldn't have been recorded in the early to mid-1980s. [Sep 2010, p.50]

Hexadic blurs limes between melodic theory and personal spiritual working, presenting an alchemy of number as a system of creative liberation. [Feb 2015, p.52]

This is a magical and bafflingly arresting album. [Sep 2008, p.53]

Explicit references to surrealism and Japanese ambient, alongside DJ Screw and Jodorowsky, read as clumsy and uncritical homages to tired tropes and cliches, which ultimately serve a tactless and indulgent end. [Nov 2018, p.63]