We Are Sent Here By History is a meditation on all of the war, death and resistance that has shaped the world we live in today. Whether or not we can use the lessons learned from that pain to create a future that is worth living is a question that remains unanswered. [Mar 2020, p.56]

With nowhere to hide, her voice is revealed as an equally fine instrument, informed by previous interpreters such as Sandy Denny, Anne Briggs and Jacqui McShee, but with an earthier, softer edged quality. [Mar 2025, p.48]

An account of stifling domesticity plays out over a propulsive 4/4 rock beat and swirling woodwinds, which serve to evoke how, in spite of everything, she felt “electric, alive, spirited, fire and free”. .... Testament to the subterranean efforts to prevent this woman’s story from being forgotten. [Oct 2023, p.52]

Her most powerful album to date, both vivid and serene in its uncanny way of slowing the pace of time. [Mar 2019, p.61]

Listening with a heart opened with affection kindled by Mascis's warm and defeated drawl, there's much to engage the latent Dinosaur fan looking for a still moment. [Mar 2011, p.52]

The second CD is noisier at times, and more surprising overall, introducing new instruments to powerful effect. [May 2015, p.53]

Byrne's Who Is The Sky? has a similar foundation of strong songwriting, but with bigger production and instrumentation. [Oct 2025, p.50]

Especially potent are moments in which Rundle’s velvety delivery overlaps with Bryan Funck’s bitter growls. Here, they find strength in one another and traverse a valley infested by guitar riffs dripping with filth, earthshaking tom hits and forlorn swirls of folk, leaving behind a harsh yet stunning trail of music. [Dec 2020, p.62]

It sounds vast and brutal. An early salvo of sub three minute crunchers peak with the juddering, wounded "To Feel Something", and the galloping metal number "Make Me Forget You" is the highlight of a longer closing trio. [Mar 2026, p.60]

Fohr’s music achieves ever greater levels of emotional richness while keeping a careful distance from the confessional. [Nov 2017, p.54]

With Drumm at the helm, the album resolves itself as a spooky and nuanced maelstrom. [Nov 2012, p.56]

It could all, of course, be unbearably mannered, but the duo's constant striving for layered perfection, contrasted with the very human qualities of the vocals, keep it grounded in some sort of feeling. [Sep 2008, p.61]

The result is an improbably appealing melange of hyperslick R&B and musoid avant-Metal, where mid-1080s Radio Top Shop melodies nestle in the artful embrace of surgically enhanced riffola and soaring, pitchwheel punishing minimoog solos. [Nov 2010, p.65]

All the sharp, cold ridges of the usual electronic sound palette are sheared off and smoothed down on this beguilingly gentle release. [#228, p.65]

The Sonics actually sound like they're back. [May 2015, p.53]

Built around Richman's distinctive voice and guitar style, Only Frozen Sky Anyway is typically hook-laden and heartfelt. [Oct 2025, p.50]

A roaring return to a full band sound featuring twin drums, electric bass and keyboards. The secret ingredient that makes it such a blast, though, is an unabashed injection of prog pomposity. [Nov 2018, p.62]

Modern production simply won’t allow for the kind of warm frictive depth in the low end or biteable chunkiness of beats those albums revelled in--but as a dazzling showcase for Bootsy’s still-ill skills it’s great, always problematising what could be politesse with the sheer deranged drive behind Bootsy’s shades, always plumbing for excess as a watchword. [Nov 2017, p.54]

When she laughs that she’s never read Robert Greene’s self-help manual 48 Laws, not only is she declaring her album a bullshit-free zone, she’s redefining priorities for 21st century grown-up rap. On this form you have to hope her approach prevails. [Nov 2017, p.70]

Equal parts joyous and depressing, Distracted is a painfully timely exploration of the psychological and social implications of our tech and media-saturated world. [Apr 26, p.58]

By zeroing in on the darkness at the heart of an economy demanding a constant turnover of novelty, they've made something deeply essential for the moment. [Nov 2012, p.57]

She extends her compositional technique, with added space, breath and timbre, into new dimensions. ... On Spirit Exit, Barbieri is closer than ever to club territory and the ecstatic. [Jul 2022, p.42

It Is What It Is is a fitting ethos for an artist whose genre-twisting tendrils have extended themselves into the highest reaches of the pop canopy, simultaneously flexing their deep funk and jazz roots. [May 2020, p.62]

In the best way, Barber and Pearson distil their knowledge and experimentation into something which sounds like the raw essence of a musical personality [Aug 2008]

There's a great danger in finding beauty in suffering, but this album takes that risk and reaps great dividends. [Mar 2011, p.54]

Tyondai Braxton’s own Telekinesis is a symphonic work that sounds like a lost sci-fi film soundtrack. It has the clustered, hovering awe of György Ligeti’s Atmosphères and the eerie arpeggiated angles of Herrmann soundtracks like Vertigo and The Day The Earth Stood Still. [Dec 2022, p.50]

The new Pusha T album is more assured and therefore effective than the last Clipse album, nowhere near the focused brilliance of their first two. All production is handled by Kanye West who’s likewise harking back to his glory days with assorted updates on his College Dropout sound. [Jul 2018, p.62]

Martin’s productions, equal parts frosted dub techno and eerie minimalism akin to the pre-orchestral Stars Of The Lid records, match Kamaru’s patient inquisitiveness. While there’s diversity here – compare the beatless slow build of opener “Differences” versus the scuffed kick and snare of “Ark” – Kamaru and Martin are resourceful with limited palettes, unearthing poignancy in subtle shifts of permutation and iteration. Music and voice forming a perfect alloy. [Jun 2024, p.52]

This album explores that idea of opposites attracting and co-existing within one entity. It’s also a powerful, confident pop record tooled up to compete with the heaviest hitters (Paul White’s production is key, as it has been for Danny Brown and Charli XCX) while occupying its own uniquely ambivalent and querulous space. [Nov 2019, p.60]

A fitting tribute to one of the greatest collectives in music history and essential for anyone who has ever had their lives changed by Parliament/ Funkadelic. [Nov 2017, p.54]

One of the chief sources of the album's power is the value it assigns to the act of witnessing, of seeing and taking account of the most vulnerable. [Apr 2016, p.47]

This extended incubation period has paid dividends. [Nov 2010, p.65]

A series of hermetic, drifting analogue tracks sprawling over eight sides of vinyl. The occasional bizarre touches of the more conventional numbers show his techniques best. [May 2015, p.59]

A cheeky and addictive listen. [Oct 2025, p.64]

The album is a present, absorbing companion. Recorded in just three days, the album’s six tracks have that elusive quality of feeling both spontaneous and meticulous. [Aug 2025, p.46]

Mechanics Of Domination is careful, elegant and cerebral but it is also quietly stirring. [Nov 2017, p.56]

Just as there's something inescapably seductive about fast cars in a nocturnal metropolis, there's something innately pleasurable about this Emeralds release. [Nov 2012, p.58]

IDLSIDGO is monumental in its willingness to just be a great rap album. [May 2015, p.59]

Merging a sophisticated rhythm dynamism, often with an almost gamelan aspect (“Two Flames Burn”) with a Laibachian apocalyptic proclamatory element and 90s crossover rave-electronic-industrial urgency, Disturbance may not be entirely different from what Test Dept were doing a long time ago, but, then again, nor is the political context in which they’re doing it. [Mar 2019, p.60]

Complex puzzles for nimble feet to crack, custom-built for dancing. [Apr 2015, p.52]

Here we have songs about pet dogs, home invasions by molluscs, and boxing documentaries, threaded together by moments of humour and a command of language that few other rappers can match. [Oct 2025, p.64]

Hurley was simply ready to make a new record, which includes a cover of The Louvin Brothers’ gem “Alabama” and a remake of his gorgeous “Lush Green Trees”, and that’s what he did. It’s a gesture that shouldn’t be taken for granted. [Dec 2021, p.50]

The mainstreaming of yoga, mindfulness and other pursuits of spiritual enrichment in our digitally distracted, permanently anxious modern reality might have tipped the balance, as Laraaji pulls in listeners who aren’t necessarily collectors of forgotten, strange or otherwise outsider music. [Nov 2017, p.58]

This is von Hausswolff’s most open, personal and ultimately affirmative recording to date. [Mar 2018, p.48]

1988 is full of these striking juxtapositions, placing tales of hustling and gunplay in smoothed out, soulful musical beds. [Jun 2020, p.50]

Like O'Rouke, Ambarchi skips light-footed across vast terrain in under an hour, and comes out with something that resonates perfectly. [Mar 2012, p.50]

Unremittingly bleak but absolutely compelling. [#204, p.68]

With its warm timbres and cushioning delays, sonically Captain Of None is Colleen's most approachable record yet. [Apr 2015, p.52]

Hendrix’s collaboration with Stephen Stills on the Joni Mitchell penned anthem “Woodstock” is one of the album’s standouts, as they push the song further out than Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young could ever have imagined, while Johnny Winter on “The Things I Used To Do” sounds like the boy got moonshine on his fingers and pain in his heart. [Jun 2018, p.72]

Embracing several facets of Lafawndah’s incredible virtuosic vocal abilities, every track on The Fifth Season leaves you immediately wanting more. [Oct 2020, p.56]

Trees Outside The Academy is a relaxed, organic record that charms without really trying, and perhaps the closest Moore will ever come to the lost Moby Grape album. [Sep 2007, p.57]

Encore is Hall’s first record under the moniker since the 1981 single “Ghost Town”, and with guitarist Lynval Golding and bassist Horace Panter in the fold, it feels more like The Specials than anything has in a long time. [Mar 2019, p.59]

Where Spectrum was full of empty (head) space, All Things Being Equal is flooded with warm, luxuriant modular texture, across its bandwidth. [Jun 2020, p.56]

The five pieces do indeed feel like direct transmissions from Batoh's withered soul. [Mar 2012, p.50]

For the most part, however, throughout its undulating ride, Antiphonals transfixes and immerses, transporting the listener deep into their own psyche. [Sep 2021, p.52]

Eton Alive is but another visceral and impetuous take on a grim political reality. [Mar 2019, p.58]

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

The recipe still works. [Mar 2012, p.52]

Fantasy Empire stands out from run of the mill noise rock because it captures not only the ferocity of the playing, but also the fecundity of sharp and serious ideas that lesser acts cannot match. [Apr 2015, p.58]

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

Each piece might be filled with personal meaning to the artist, but they all leave enough space for listeners to reflect on their own worries. The transition between the noisy, illusory interlude “[ A Backlit Door]” and the understated beauty of “Haruspex” is an especially poignant moment on an album rich with them. [Dec 2023, p.54]

The album exhibits two players of formidable range and ability. [Apr 2015, p.60]

Superficially, Lovage is a continuation of the Handsome Boy Modeling School aesthetic that collides HipHop, rock and electronica into an ironic hipster epic. [#213, p. 59]

The sound is crisp without sacrificing any of Chesnutt’s trademark grit. By adding a little glean, Cody Chesnutt gives you the best of both sonic worlds. [Aug 2017, p.48]

Torche’s engagingly awry blend of harmony and heaviosity finds full fruition on Admission, an album you might feel somewhat ashamed for enjoying so thoroughly. [Sep 2019, p.61]

Maus’s genius is to splice nostalgic sonic expectations for the future with new structural realities. [Nov 2017, p.60]

As a whole, Goons Be Gone feels strangely anachronistic, but not nostalgic. Retrieved from the heyday of punk rock, but with a lot of its own to say. [Jun 2020, p.59]

The trio are in classic 1970s rock mode throughout. [Mar 2012, p.53]

Its feel is psychedelic but strong. [Apr 2015, p.60]

Dear is pervaded by a deep melancholy, but of a sweet, lovelorn kind, a looking back and a bitter-sweet attitude. Who knows if it’ll be their last record. If this is the case, it’s certainly a fitting send-off. [Aug 2017, p.49]

The depths of the production reflect the depth of concept, as Morgan makes vertical connections between personal relationships and queer and Black histories. ... Water is a palpable step forward from a versatile, ambitious artist. [Dec 2021, p.52]

The ten tracks here sprint, pound, flex and grunt, the guitar equivalent of a vigorous workout. Cerebral turns and Derek Baileyesque abstractions burble throughout, but Stateless hits more like a punk rock record than a study in extended technique. [Oct 2020, p.51]

Yoshimi’s mesh of voices is sometimes overpowering, although, as with Björk, that feeling of overpowerment is part of the deal, constructed to bring the listener to a place that feels like the edge of something--the singer’s endurance; the listener’s understanding--only to push them over into somewhere else entirely. [Nov 2017, p.61]

Music that feels lived in and vivid, instilled with notes that roam between lives of people on the fringes while finding magic in the mundane. [Jun 2020, p.59]

[Wyatt's voice} is not the most technically 'correct' voice, but in the setting of Ros Stephen's arrangements for string quartet, with Gilad Atzmon adding alto saxophone, it is as though that uncertain crack, that flaw floating in the clear quaver of his voice is a precise match for the happysad ambiguities that haunt so many jazz standards. [Oct 2010, p.62]

They're wise enough to leave breathing space, such as the final minute of "The Hurt That Finds You First," which codas into a swishing corridor of guitar licks, or "The Last vigil," which brings the album wordlessly to rest on a pall of interleaved, echoing guitar chimes. [Mar 2012, p.56]

In Black & Gold has a poise, purpose and maturity not heard before. [Apr 2015, p.63]

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”.

On Angels & devils, The Bug crystallises a vision of low end and lower urges that feels dangerously universal. [Aug 2014, p.48]

O’Dwyer’s explorations of forgotten spaces, ways of listening and acoustic phenomena are as rich as ever, this haunted collection of subterranean sounds revealing even greater depths to her sprawling, strange work. [Nov 2017, p.61]

It’s melodic, often strikingly beautiful and consistently daring. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.98]

Bird Machine is not a revelation, but it can be a joy. [Oct 2023, p.54]

Rarely has an album exemplified the 'body and soul' paid so much lip service in House music so willingly. [Apr 2008, p.58]

I dig a conceptual framework but to be honest my enjoyment of Rooting For Love has little to do with earthbound concerns and everything to do with sheer escapist pleasure in form and grain. [Mar 2024, p.52]

Most of Infinity Machines' 110 minutes consists of lengthy, evolving jams build upon elephant's heartbeats bass beats overlaid by slowly building washes or jabbing trills of analogue synth, brain-sucking white noise and wailing saxophone. The later adds greatly to the miasmic atmospheres. [Apr 2015, p.56]

The comparison between [The Disco's of Imhotep] and Ancient Echoes revealing the absolutely consistency of Moss's vision over the years. [Aug 2016, p.50]

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

It’s all extraordinarily listenable thanks to Woolford’s clear vision in tracing various threads of connection between these forms of electronic funk. However, sometimes the direct, hyperspecific references, which can have such impact in club contexts, distract from the flow in the context of an album, and the moments where he navigates the spaces between those specifics become the most enduringly impressive. [Nov 2017, p.62]

Not a radical departure, then, but a very satisfying development of Reich’s totally distinctive stylistic approach. [Jun 2022, p.52]

Oozing Wound frontman Zack Weil has an unhinged screech reminiscent of Destruction's Schmier, symbolising the group's mastery of a kind of primitive thrash with no goal greater than the release of energy. [Nov 2013, p.52]

Ghosts continues the work of previous albums, but nonetheless manages to be a blast of fresh air. [Mar 2012, p.57]

His drumming combines an organic sense of living pulse, but preserves a precision and sparseness that pulls it back to the rock-tick of motorik. [Apr 2015, p.63]

This is an album, and a genre, to ponder--one that remains musically rich, deep and mysterious. [Aug 2017, p.50]

An expansive record that thoughtfully integrates electronic elements. It almost feels transmitted from a parallel past – a form of retrofuturism where science fiction meets folk. [Feb 2022, p.48]

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

Unsurprisingly the mood is melancholy and the louche, theatrical sexuality or carnal drama of earlier albums is replaced by a battered and searching tone, striving to make sense, or failing that, some poetry or beauty out of the tragedy. The narratives take on a less devilish tone here. [Nov 2019, p.46]

Lyrically, Foster possesses both esoteric wisdom and an ascetic purity yet never wanders out of reach; she has the musical instinct of her troubadour sisterhood (Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Judee Sill et al) and in the spoken word moments, the cosmic gravitas of Eden Ahbez. [Dec 2018, p.48]

Clark’s fifth album isn’t a retreat to an earlier style--if anything it’s even brighter, bolder and broader than St Vincent, even more given to IMAX worthy gestures-- but Clark does appear to have reconciled the streamlined automation of her new aesthetic with the orch pop crafting of her first three records, Marry Me (2007), Actor (2009) and Strange Mercy (2011). [Nov 2017, p.64]