Everything here is balanced in a way known to collectivist jazz but unknown to egotist pop, and it makes for something refreshingly human, engagingly communal and ultimately convivial. [Oct 2023, p.56]

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]

It’s a joyful noise, for sure. [Oct 2023, p.50]

While Haram was a bit heavy on the neo-noir vibes, Test Strips bustles with dynamic turns, and guests inspired to step out of character. [Oct 2023, p.51]

The album cuts across a plethora of genres, refusing to be static. “La Vacanza” and “Sublime” completely submerge you into this dream state, slowing down, giving a reprieve from the increasing intensity. [Sep 2023, p.56]

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]

On four extended tracks, Fennelly’s various keyboards (synthesizer, harmonium, piano) function as kind of bedrock that deftly accommodates a variety of tacks and textures from his partners. [Oct 2023, p.53]

Atlas is entirely ambient, a slipstream that moves in slow motion using dense atmospheres to confuse the listener, who is only momentarily permitted to take a specific position. The closing composition “Earthbound” guides us back towards the ground, but any sense of spatial awareness is already too skewed and you are left to wade your way through the remnants of sonic fog. [Sep 2023, p.56]

Protect Your Light, recorded at the late Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey, is the group’s warmest work yet. [Sep 2023, p.57]

Its 16 tracks are vignettes of memory and emotion, which see her thoughtful production informed by IDM, glitch and electronic emo. True to the album’s concept, there's a charming bedroom maximalism. .... Lovely, affecting record. [Oct 2023, p.48]

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

It’s great to hear “Starfield Road” and other tracks from Sonic Youth’s neglected post-Dirty albums. But it’s the deep cuts – like the stunning “I Love Her All The Time” and the closing “Inhuman” – that really drag you back. [Oct 2023, p.66]

She’s not one to let ideology or commercial realities kill her sense of uninhibited playfulness. So the scorching “Balloons” with her withering take on white fans buying Black trauma is followed by the flirtatious “Boomboom”, buoyed by the same hunger, the whole even more than the sum of its individually magnificent parts.

“Playing Chess” brings us to a smug, detached and ever so slightly creepy close. Big set pieces aside, however, there are gems aplenty amid the dross, from his rapport with Burna Boy on the menacing “Masculine” to a rare moment of meditative vulnerability wondering “Crazy how a murderer used to be a cuddler” on “Comeback”. [Oct 2023, p.60]

Tasteful pedal steel from Lanois gives a gentle country inflection to cuts like “Arajghiyine” – there’s a neat dovetailing here between two desert musics – but Tinariwen’s refined nocturnal heaviness reigns unchallenged. [Oct 2023, p.60]

The 27th OSEES album is their most synthheavy yet, but those Blurt-like grooves are still in place and the songwriting is still tight as a gnat’s chuff on a record that in typical Osees style ranges all over the shop from new wave to skronk to punk to disco. [Oct 2023, p.56]

She’s done it again but, as ever, differently. [Oct 2023, p.56]

A perfectly pleasant pop record that at its best recalls the likes of Glassjaw (“FKA World”) and Hurl. [Oct 2023, p.56]

The most triumphant volume in the series, an at times nearly orchestral realisation of Branch’s unique compositional vision. It’s a shame there won’t be further volumes, but this caps off one of the great catalogues in 21st century jazz. [Oct 2023, p.46]

A set of songs syruped in late 1960s and early 70s pop and rock nostalgia, yet still manage to sound unique. [Sep 2023, p.64]

Combining live ensemble performances by an 11-piece instrumental group, string quartet and four vocalists, with brief AutoTuned solo interludes, this is above all, a collective music. [Sep 2023, p.60]

This batch is a collection of film and advertising themes that stretch the limits of library music. “See The Cheetah”, credited to The Big Game Hunters, would have had all the kids frugging at a 1990s easy listening club. Best of all is “Moon Journey”, Garson’s symphony of tootling chugs, zaps, bloops and blasts that scored the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing on CBS News. [Sep 2023, p.66]

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]

If Magic 2 reveals that Nas can definitely still rap, it also continues his unfortunate run of uninspiring production choices. There are enjoyable moments, like the 50 Cent assisted “Office Hours”, the ominous string driven force of “Motion”, and the mesmerizing penmanship on “Slow It Down”, but overall the album falls short for an artist of Nas’s stature. [Sep 2023, p.68]

Earl Sweatshirt and billy woods, who kick off the proceedings with the intoxicatingly smooth “RIP Tracy”. MIKE and Sideshow offer up my personal favourite with “Bless”, and Boldy James teams up with TF on the moody “Trouble Man”. [Sep 2023, p.67]

From the trancelike undercurrent moving through “Bird On A Wire” and “Ghosts Of People” to the solid punk attack of “2020 Vision” and “Tout Est Meilleur”, the album is testament to Bush Tetras’ resilience. [Sep 2023, p.64]

Animals is a riotous, communal affair that doesn’t so much straddle the line between hiphop and jazz as wrestle with both traditions and emerge with something grand. [Sep 2023, p.60]

Ultimately the digressions charm and gel thanks to the generosity of Freedia’s performances, marshalling us through dance manoeuvres in service to the communal heart of bounce. [Sep 2023, p.52]

A smorgasbord of bittersweetness, with yearning pads providing a translucent bed for snatches of fragmentary counterpoint. [Sep 2023, p.50]

Harps and synthesized beats all have a home here; and it feels futuristic in a way that reminds me of Ursula LeGuin and Todd Barton’s Music And Poetry Of The Kesh: synthesizer based folk music as the imagined legacy of a future indigenous culture. [Sep 2023, p.67]

The album’s stylistic breadth and the cinematic sweep of its production add up to a more polished version of the anthemic, collaborative sound cultivated on the tour, heard on his 2020 Live At Le Guess Who? 2018 album. [Aug 2023, p.51]

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]

A delightfully disorientating new missive from David Thomas and his band of talented reprobates. [Aug 2023, p.62]

I consider 2018’s Digital Garbage one of their finest albums and the fact that Plastic Eternity doesn’t quite measure up to its scorching brilliance is understandable – few records do. This one is looser, less wound-up and perhaps a little less cohesive. But it is always, always nice to have them back. [Aug 2023, p.62]

The results are a little underwhelming. Lyrical themes are repeated throughout the album and the feeling that something is missing compared to the projects that came before is hard to ignore. This might be due to having become accustomed to hearing Mike as part of a duo; but also that since 2012 he has been rapping over El-P's beats, which are a big part of RTJ's appeal and an effective platform for his vocals. [Aug 2023, p.54]

A welcome return from Baxter Dury, as he turns his gaze to the past to offer up a typically wry dissection of his upbringing and his formative years. [Aug 2023, p.50]

Funky Nothingness is, in any case, an enjoyable addition to his extensive discography. It may not disclose some previously hidden dimension, or even pursue the experimentation with overdubbing that gave Hot Rats its particular character, but Zappa’s sheer love for music and the playing of it, the insatiable essence of his artistic libido, oozes from the grooves. [Aug 2023, p.74]

Held up against the 6Music conveyor belt of sprechgesang wannabes, however, the group’s debut album resembles both a nod to the past and an accomplished piece of work in the context of now. [Jul 2023, p.52]

Riveting. .... The lucidity behind every message on My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is arresting, as it is drawing from a well of pure emotion that can be comprehended in full. [Jul 2023, p.48]

A necessary record, and a thoroughly compelling one. [Jul 2023, p.51]

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]

There are plenty of surprises on Bright New Disease, and much to admire. Joined together, the essences of each band are recognisably present, their unique flavours seemingly intensified and emboldened by the other. Enjoyably diverse and satisfyingly coherent. [Jul 2023, p.48]

The Omnichord Real Book isn’t for Me’shell Ndegeocello new jacks or the musically light hearted, but for listeners who aren’t afraid of taking a musical journey with no straight path. [Jul 2023, p.58]

Both NV and Deradoorian maintain their musical identities but balance each other’s urges with concision to the point where the record emerges as a holistic, kaleidoscopic transmission from a duo at play with each other and with the possibilities conjured by their shared will. [Jul 2023, p.51]

Bores are in the minority and easily avoided, the exquisitely curated majority impress both in isolation and together as kaleidoscopic wonder. An unlikely joy. [Jul 2023, p.58]

Avalon Emerson & The Charm will find favour with anyone into Cocteau Twins, dreamy bedroom synthpop and anything Balearic. “Entombed In Ice” feels nostalgic but fresh, Emerson’s vocals floating effortlessly overhead. [Jul 2023, p.63]

The focus is on the uniqueness of their music (check out the Deep Purple inspired organ solo on “Forest Dweller”) which infuses progressive song structures with foundational black metal’s penchant for folk melodies and historical narratives. [Jul 2023, p.62]

A sense of foreboding and emotional struggle is expertly crafted, so much so that at times it can feel like there’s little air and no escape. Outside of the songs, there’s a more uncanny, ineffable sense of power on the instrumental jig or reel passages of “Master Crowley’s” and “The New York Trader”. [Jul 2023, p.55]

The Future Never Waits (oh, that pesky future!) benefits from the addition of former Coil/Spiritualized/Waterboys keyboard player Thighpaulsandra, who appears to have opened up the band’s sound in such a way that seems almost effortless. [Jul 2023, p.52]

This is pleasant but forgettable music, dissolving the instant it hits the eardrum. [Jul 2023, p.52]

Archangel Hill is a great album. As dearly as I love her early work, there’s something about Collins’s sound here that feels just right. [Jul 2023, p.50]

A lifetime’s pain and a decade juggling mixtape fame with his trap life erupting in one magnificently choreographed molten flow of poetry. Not that it’s all full blast, Potter comes with the widescreen vision of Scarface or Ghetts, stepping back as necessary, philosophically patient. [Jul 2023, p.65]

The album’s first half is simultaneously some of Godflesh’s most aggro material and as gleaming and chromed as a Terminator that’s been burned down to its metal skeleton. Purge isn’t a completely boom-bap orientated album, though. “Lazarus Leper” is both one of the album’s longest tracks and one of its most old school. The primitive drum machine beat sounds like something that could have come off the group’s very first EP. [Jul 2023, p.51]

Dreamy stuff for sure, but tinged with a lingering sense of nightmare. [May 2023, p.60]

Here Dakar covers country with “Walking After Midnight” and “Love Hurts”, but the outstanding cuts are her takes on The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing”, as once claimed by The Pretenders, and a remarkably affecting reggae treatment of the old Louis Armstrong chestnut “What A Wonderful World”. [Jun 2023, p.64]

This album feels more urgent and defiant than its predecessor. [Jun 2023, p.49]

The result is a project dripping with atmospheric sound and real emotional weight. [May 2023, p.64]

Obviously this is well-trodden ground, but even on the brink of corniness, the crunchy satisfaction of Sqürl’s sound makes them extremely listenable. [Jun 2023, p.60]

You might not always know what they are saying but the wails in “Iron Maiden” and foreboding synths of “(Crystal Aura Redux)” don’t need translating. The bleak production and relentless beats should keep us dancing all the way through the apocalypse. [Jun 2023, p.54]

The resulting heady musical cocktail that Portner serves up will be eagerly drained by his fan base, but the cloying bubble gum aftertaste may leave any newcomers feeling somewhat queasy. [May 2023, p.60]

The closing title track is a full ten minutes of ethereal synth drift. Tucked between these are a couple of neat facsimiles of the kind of mellow handclap bounce heard on Dance Floor Corporation’s scene-setting 1990 Ambient House compilation. But there are some clunkers too. [May 2023, p.54]

Romantiq is hypnotic, curious and, at its best, genuinely fresh and beautiful. [May 2023, p.54]

It’s the definition of method to madness. The sense of barely controlled chaos, occasionally lashing out in random directions, only adds to the wonder that it holds together and maintains momentum. [May 2023, p.61]

The group’s take on their core material has never been overly reverent, but they are in masterful command of the style’s essence, and their previous excursions beyond the boundaries mean they can keep it fully upgraded for novel deployments on cuts like the razor-sharp “Çıt Çıt Çedene”. [Jun 2023, p.65]

Played front to back it works as a dazzling kaleidoscope; on shuffle, every combination worked in a different way, with no weak links because the quality of each track is insanely high. Underground, resistant US rap par excellence. [Jun 2023, p.60]

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]

Virtuosity quickly shades into something inhuman, as every plectrum and drumstick lands inevitably – and thrillingly – on target. [Jun 2023, p.54]

The payoff is worth the effort. Those who’ve typecast Lombardo as strictly a metal/punk sticksman will be surprised by Rites Of Percussion. [Jun 2023, p.53]

Pieces Of Treasure is a moving album from an artist who knows these songs inside out and is smart enough to know when to set knowledge aside, to access each song’s elemental power. [Jun 2023, p.52]

As The Forest In Me progresses, it’s interesting to consider which sounds are made with purpose and which are accidental – what is substance and what is ephemeral. When locked in to Xylouris and White’s deeply connected sound, it can feel like great secrets are being offered up to the listener, but heard in passing it’s barely anything at all. What magic. [May 2023, p.59]

Lightning Dreamers may be over the top and all over the place, but that’s what it takes to project a complete picture of Mazurek’s vision. [Apr 2023, p.57]

The deep funk veteran garlands Black Thought’s words with a heavy bottom, making for an experience that’s less psychedelic and decorative than Cheat Codes. Although Black Thought doesn’t stray from the tendencies that distinguish his solo material from his work with The Roots. [Apr 2023, p.68]

Deeply scored with pitch-black humour, concrete riffs and the mucus rattling squalling of vocalist Zack Weil, Oozing Wound shift effortlessly from the piledriver bludgeoning that motivates “Hypnic Jerk” to the more sustained instrumental fury of “Crypto Fash”, without surrendering any of their creative firepower or ability to surprise. [May 2023, p.60]

On Scaring The Hoes, Brown and Peggy sound great together while offering few artistic revelations. [May 2023, p.52]

The album’s eight tracks meander, but they never get lost. “Basin” for example sounds like Brian Eno’s Music For Airports might if it were scaled down to be played in an apartment hallway instead of a spacious terminal. [May 2023, p.51]

His curatorial vision is matched by vocals which have never sounded so assured and impressively soulful. [Apr 2023, p.58]

No Highs is a soundtrack for knotted stomachs – introverted, devoid of catharsis and all the more moving for its honesty and restraint. [Apr 2023, p.54]

Songs to shiver ’n’ shake to. [Apr 2023, p.64]

Big | Brave roars into action with the immense “Carriers, Farriers And Knaves” and proceeds through five subsequent tracks whose heaviness is substantially derived from a keen sense of texture – abetted and encouraged by producer Seth Manchester – and the anguished wail of guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie. [Apr 2023, p.64]

Pitiless, but ultimately forming a sanctuary for Xiu Xiu’s irredeemable sadness, Ignore Grief might just be their most startling record to date. [Apr 2023, p.63]

This album emerges as too tangled to be pulled into a simplistic linear narrative; throughout, innocence and trauma co-mingle both lyrically and sonically. Fawn/Brute is as complex and irresistible as its themes would suggest. [Apr 2023, p.54]

The way these surprises are smuggled in via skilful sonic illusions attests to Holden’s wide listening habits, and his judgement for bringing different sounds together like an old school studio producer. [Apr 2023, p.54]

The album feels both of the original vintage in its occasional psychedelic trappings and, masterfully, altogether new. But, perhaps most importantly, it richly rewards repeat listens. It’s a dense record, but not an overly busy one, and different instruments bubble to the top with each run through. [Apr 2023, p.59]

While ultimately not as inventive as some of Child’s earlier outings, Crash Recoil is nevertheless an urgent, kinetic techno record. [Apr 2023, p.60]

Let’s Start Here has a middlebrow sensibility, with plenty of grooves Calvin Harris would approve of. Its best moments come when he unleashes his oddball trill, an evocative sound that bland sentiments like “So surreal, the vibes I feel” can’t quite diminish. [Apr 2023, p.68]

Optical Delusion’s seven different guest vocalists yield wildly differing results, ranging from hits to misses. [Apr 2023, p.67]

Kate NV’s sense of play works at a deep grammatical level, particularly in her witty inversions of scale. Small sounds, squeaks, blips and twinkles are inflated into starring roles; boices are shrunk to decorative background shimmers. As with The Pastels, Haruomi Hosono or Pierre Bastien, WOW reminds you that playtime deserves serious attention. [Apr 2023, p.67]

Pop hooks and club-ready rhythms warp with bubblegum plasticity from track to track, never repeating but luxuriating in the excess of their own ideas. [Apr 2023, p.66]

Paternoster locks in with bassist Mike Abbate and drummer Jarrett Dougherty for 34 minutes of joyous thump with no filler in sight. A tough but open-hearted and ultimately life-affirming rock record. [Apr 2023, p.64]

For whatever accessibility that might be lost in the decision to eschew English lyrics is balanced by a fresh emotional immediacy. Arrangements are sparse and pristine, each sound serving a purpose. ... An album that witnesses Deerhoof at their most vulnerable and volatile. [Apr 2023, p.52]

Donaldson’s lyrics tend towards the observational, and are often delivered with a wry turn of phrase that can be laugh out loud funny. ... The Town That Cursed Your Name juggles pathos and bathos throughout. [Apr 2023, p.58]

Good Luck doesn’t betray Friday’s general aesthetic or artistic persona. On the contrary, it retains her darkly seductive, slightly edgy and risqué aura, but conveys it through a disparate medley of styles. [Apr 2023, p.53]

Thankfully it offers something much more than the sum of its parts and references. It speaks to our present moment with a yearning generosity and the kind of deep knowing that only comes with age. [Mar 2023, p.51]

93696 is their sixth to date and, in many ways, it still sounds like music made to illustrate a theory. [Apr 2023, p.56]

Praise A Lord is a record conceived and assembled with considerable care – literate, theatrical and elegantly audacious. [Apr 2023, p.62]

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]

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]

They’re on fire here and now, reassuringly within that sound world you’re familiar with but – perhaps because the album is self-produced – sounding freer, looser and more magnificent than ever. ... A band who’ve clearly lost none of their miraculous touch with their sources, who incredibly seem to have an entirely new lease of life. [Mar 2023, p.60]