The sound palette utilised here by Visible Cloaks (aka Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile) is rich and nuanced, seemingly from a constant synthesized source, but the way the glassy, bell-like tones are stretched, shifted and smeared lends a hazy, metallic dreamlike edge to what might otherwise veer close to new age. [Jul 2026, p.60]

Dreijer's innate pop sensibility gives these tracks a fluorescently fresh bounce, which his choice of vocalists only enhances. [Jul 2026, p.64]

For all its internal violence, its vandalised sounds, structures and conventions, Lavender Networks has a kind of utopian charge - even if that utopia might be personal to Marcloid. [Jul 2026, p.63]

The tracks are up to the usual high standards of MOM creatively and in execution. [Jul 2026, p.63]

For this fourth full length, brothers Jean and Rémi Fossat and Canek Flores tighten their sprawling jams, contracting the space rock crescendos of 2024's Ilion into potent shorter songs. [Jul 2026, p.61]

Seefeel respond to our hyperdigitised zeitgeist with music evocative of a time when technology could still inspire wonder and electronic music was made by hand - when a loop was a fragile ouroboros of materiality. Basking in this vibe in our particular historical juncture feels deeply, affirmingly human. [Jul 2026, p.58]

The group, now a trio with the addition of bassist/banjoist Michael DeVito, have never blended their various interests so seamlessly and effectively. [Jul 2026, p.54]

An album built from emotion and defiance. [Jul 2026, p.52]

Whatever its message, Inferno is heavy, unsettling and as compelling as anything they've made before. [Jul 2026, p.52]

It's the first time that singing has appeared on a Horse Lords recording. But while shape note singing requires no electricity, Saylor and Guo's voices have been so liberally dipped in AutoTune that the words are indistinguishable. [Jul 2026, p.49]

While the trio bring together pop literacy and experimentation on an equal footing like, say, Broadcast or even Cornershop, there's not the sense of mystery or storytelling of those groups. [Jul 2026, p.46]

You could (quite reasonably) object that this is a re-enactment of a duo that never really existed. Yet, with the help of two slinky compadres - Eric Random on keys and guitar, Oliver Harrap on beats - the old tunes sound as sinister and infectious as ever. [Jun 2026, p.54]

They stick with the lysergic pastoral shuffling while subtly expanding the skillset. .... Carrie Keith is more Elisa Ambrogio than Stevie Nicks, admittedly. Elsewhere, her voice has the ghostly quality of Grouper's Liz Harris. When Dylan Sharp takes lead, it's a drawly affair. [Jun 2026, p.56]

Not a lot happens on the surface across the album's 37 minutes, but unlike so much ambient music these days, it's rich in internal detail, particularly the twin viola lines played by James Sanders, a veteran figure on Chicago's improvised music scene. [Apr 2026, p.46]

A lot of Licks And Diabolik Kicks sounds like demos or at least the skeletal framework of lggy Pop and James Williamson's Kill City. But James still has a great guitar tone. [Jun 2026, p.53]

The acclaimed spoken word poet works with a sterling cast of musicians, from co-production by Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Brown and others, to vocals from Georgia Anne Muldrow ("Elsewhere"), Mereba ("Love Is A Choosing"), and Chicago rappers Mick Jenkins and Vic Mensa ("Melting Clocks"). [Jun 2026, p.69]

Bishop knows this stylistic territory like a master smuggler, and he delivers the goods. ]Jun 2026, p.52]

The rave and kosmische elements converge in some ways and pull apart in others, and Blumenfantasie is at its weakest is where the vibes are simply too misaligned. The combined effect the rhythms surging forward and the melody luxuriating outwards feels like trying to drive a car in too low a gear. [Jun 2025, p.65]

The dignified transitions between the different movements of Requiem get a little predictable at times, and its sense of tight control is anathema to the turmoil of Can's most memorable moments. But there is a poignancy in the weight and pressure of Requiem, and the way Schmidt tries to get all of its pieces in order. [Jun 2026, p.61]

The bulk of what's presented here is a relentless cathartic pummelling - a necessary soundtrack for the surreal ugliness of our current state of affairs. [Jun 2026, p.60]

This slippery set ends with Fras gazing into a void. The lyrics of "Das Göttliche Kind" were written using AI, and they find the singer chanting (in German) a strange messianic hymn. [Jun 2026, p.58]

Detached From The Rest Of You is James's most assured-sounding project to date, taking the sounds of scattered transmissions, broken signals, atomised moods and quiet voices and fashioning them into fragile and affecting songs of doubt and self-belief. [Jun 2026, p.56]

At only 25 minutes Anata is a brief but wonderfully intense and empowering experience that, like Wak'a, represents another foundational step in the Los Thuthanaka narrative. [Jun 2026, p.55]

Here, the answer is a fragrant sigh rendered by a chorus of collaborators on synth and harp, guitar, woodwinds and strings. .... Delightful Times wears its heart on its impeccably tailored sleeve. [Jun 2026, p.53]

A slow burning spectacular. [Jun 2026, p.52]

The slick professionalism of Let X=X may, superficially, seem antithetical to the realisation of exploratory art, but it's integral to the personal discipline that supports her incisive insights and formal ironies. [Jun 2026, p.52]

Knats's brass arrangements are complex with lengthy, sinuous melodic lines. .... Throughout the album, Robson is both gritty and witty, and while he details some struggling characters in hard times, his verse carries a message of positivity. [May 2026, p.59]

Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson unleash a set of five powerful tracks where their trademark drum and fuzz bass attack is more terra firma based than 00100's cosmic glide. That said, the addictive adrenalin rush they inject into tracks like "Wavers", "Cloud Core" and especially the more ritualistic sounding "Headless Horsefolk" suggests that both groups are spiritually entwined. [May 2026, p.60]

Bitches Blues is more varied and pithy, packing the same number of pieces into half the time. [May 2026, p.54]

Into Oblivion is fairly unalloyed, high octane trad-thrash/NWOBHM fare with robust riffs, galloping bass drum pedals and a mean streak deep enough to cut a planet in half. There is an audience for Into Oblivion that will gladly mainline it, well, into oblivion. [May 2026, p.58]

Again and again, these pieces fade out, just shadows and threads, before reappearing to lock into something slinky, straight out the fridge, Dad. [Jun 2026, p.60]

This is Irreversible Entanglements at their most accessible, their free jazz roots tightly folded into song form. While the tighter structures of such tracks leave less space for improvisation, the band find other ways to expand the sound, as on "Panamanian Fight Song" where an ambient piano intro recurs as a reverb-heavy apparition. [May 2026, p.53]

What's striking, and moving, is how the old communal spirit of Pullman's music feels stronger than ever, despite (or because of) the distances of time, geography and memory that had to be patiently overcome. [Apr 2026, p.56]

Songs like "My House Is Not My Dream House", "Constant Companion" and "Harmonizing With Myself" continue the theme of domestic solitude running through recent work, addressed with an eye for detail that elevates the songs far above standard confessional singer-songwriter fare. [Apr 2026, p.60]

Timing these ten tight tracks around the five or six minute mark, lead single "Crushing Realities", "The Dream In Fragments" and "The Soul Of Everything" move with a surreal, transcendent pressure transportive and gamelan-heavy throughout. [Apr 2026, p.62]

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]

Miniawy's trumpet makes an appearance over the moody reversed bass and Auto-Tune of "Reels In 360", while opener "I See The Stadium" pairs his agitated uvular Arabic with Aussel's hulking bass propulsions and the guttural snarls of Lord Spikeheart. [Apr 2026, p.62]

It's probably the most conceptually interesting record Squeeze have ever put out and also one of their most consistent and adventurous latterday works. [Apr 2026, p.60]

The way these four strong musical personalities making up the current quartet are moving forward while acknowledging their history gives Thirteen an extra dimension. [Apr 2026, p.56]

More than just a treat for both bands' fans, this is a genuinely surprising and brilliant collaboration. [Apr 2026, p.51]

Littered with fragments of found voice recordings and beefed up with pumping guitar riffs, Attempted Martyr takes no prisoners and, in the spirit of the group's origin state, efficiently kicks out the jams. [May 2026, p.61]

Accompanied by the group that toured with him for his 2022 YTIJA38 album, together with contributions from a select group of musicians. Their combined improvisational skills give Callahan the room he needs to expand upon how he throws his words out in songs - at times he comes across like a resurrected Lou Reed or a Van Morrison in full Astral Weeks flow. [May 2026, p.60]

Mystical, alluring and straight from the heart, We Are Together Again cements Oldham's reputation as a major force in the singer-songwriter tradition. [May 2026, p.60]

Altogether, there is a fluid, amniotic quality to the record. Listeners may find themselves spacing out, looking out the window or staring at something, sinking into the riffs and the ASMR-like words that emerge - "We are walking in circles", "She dreams in the future", "Impossible drawing" - amid the hypnotic rise and fall of the synths. [May 2026, p.46]

Another delightful batch of off-kilter pop, kosmische dance beat and much more besides. Albeit slightly less eccentric than its predecessor, All Clouds Bring Not Rain is a further indication how Memorials' music works in a variety of mysterious ways. [May 2026, p.60]

"K9 Reliance" indulges in faux harpsichord to conjure a convincing giallo theme, devilishly nervous and hush-hush, with brass swells that underscore the cinematic funk. There are a few odds and ends in the mix, too. "K12 Uplands" is a gorgeous pastoral led by woodwinds, tailor made for some adventure game's soundtrack. On "K13 Vigilant", strings and piano chase each other frantically. "K14 Welbeck" closes the album with a glorious organ dirge, reminiscent of Jenkinson's collaborations with James McVinnie. [May 2026, p.56]

It's not that the album is bad per se. Like Venom, it delivers for an appreciative fanbase. It's just that they could do this shit in their sleep. [May 2026, p.58]

Sunn O))) tend to proceed like a river frozen down to glacial subsonics, or molten rock creeping slowly across parched land, and have referred to the processes of nature in their work before. Here, however, they feel directly linked to some universal essence of landscape. [May 2026, p.57]

It's good enough, in fact, for it not to matter much that it basically peaks at the start. [May 2026, p.52]

Warping songs into strange shapes is no guarantee of success in itself, but while Picton lets his imagination off the leash and his songs take some unravelling, they are structurally sound and melodically adventurous. [May 2026, p.59]

Wendy Eisenberg is a remarkable record for many reasons, but the sublime interplay between Eisenberg's songwriting and Rubio's string arrangements is miraculous, hitting that sweet spot of skill and effortlessness. [May 2026, p.49]

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]

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]

It feels like a self-conscious attempt to approximate jazz without ever quite committing to it, no doubt partly due to the fact that Flea's horn chops are somewhat rudimentary, favouring languid lines that could generously be seen as resembling Chet Baker at his most unbothered. .... It's hard not to feel the project lacks any of the liberatory qualities one would hope for from a genuine jazz statement. [Apr 26, p.50]

Darkly beautiful release. .... Halo's entropic instincts are a perfect fit for the film in question. [Mar 2026, p.50]

Autechre Guitaris elegant and crystalline, a set of fascinating miniatures composed of unexpected links and gaps. It's as confounding and crafted as an Escher staircase. [Mar 2025, p.47]

The result is a genuinely experimental record, with more than a dash of cheerful craziness. .... The intonation may not be classically perfect, but this is the timbre he wants, and the saxophone can party over a gleeful Latin beat. [Mar 2026, p.68]

Kamaru expertly composes in a broad field. The sounds he favours are expansive on their own, but together they narrate an impossibly vast space, offering a lingering glimpse into the composer's ability to work within constraints. [Mar 2026, p.52]

Although some of its best tracks are undeniable, PLAY ME's signs of the times are for established Gordon-heads only. [Mar 2026, p.50]

Its satisfying blend of genres amplifies the best of what both these artists have to offer. [Apr 2026, p.63]

A Short History Of Decay is a stirring suite of studiosculpted alternative rock that jettisons most of their heavy music influence while finding new routes to scoured ears amid plumes of dreampop drift. [Mar 2026, p.60]

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]

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]

Rendering his [Neşet Ertas'] sparse, haunting, saz-led arrangements in Altin Gün's electrified image does require a fair bit of upholstery, but they play with delicacy and poise, transforming "Bir Nazar Eyledim" into a remarkable kosmische pop ballad. [Mar 2026, p.60]

They're still worth rooting for just about but mileage -may vary. [Mar 2026, p.54]

The result is a dreamy potion of cascading stringwork and ethereal song, a soothing, otherworldly balm, grounded in ancient tradition but partly inspired by modern tragedy, as the album title suggests. [Mar 2026, p.53]

Glenn's rich, wordless vocal melody becomes a trellis for the winding vine of Elizabeth's vibrato as she sings the arc of a blooming romance. The mood is joyfully bittersweet, basking in the glow of a shared life which, like all living things, must end. [Mar 2026, p.49]

With Discombobulated, Hen Ogledd have grown to fully inhabit their costumes, Sun Ra Arkestra style, with the greatest musical and lyrical realisation yet of their diverse strengths. [Mar 2026, p.49]

While opening track "Echo In The Field" evokes Laraaji's Day Of Radiance, Moran's compositions here, while still intricately crafted, are more prickly than expansive. Second track "Prism Drift" is tetchy clockwork sprung with piano bass strikes of doom.[Nov 2025, p.63]

This Soul Jazz set is the biggest jungle splash for a long time, featuring the booming basslines, the fiercest of Amen breaks and heavyweight ragga vocals on essential cuts from Krome & Time, Cutty Ranks, M-Beat, Bizzy B, Lemon D, Top Cat, and more all dating from the prime years of 1993-95. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.97]

The album is notable for featuring White's first vocal performance, both on "I Don't Do/ Grand Central", where he's joined in spirited conversation by Zoh Amba, and the title track, on which he narrates his inner life through word association and repetition. It's a taste of a new compositional element that will be interesting to hear develop. The album's other collaborator is White's regular producer Guy Picciotto, whose light touch encourages an egalitarian approach to sound, where everything is in the mix and everything matters. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.94].

The unlikely tonal blend makes Lux one of the least predictable collections of spiritual songs in pop history. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.90]

Children's voices soften and lift the sound, not with nostalgia but with unvarnished purity. Even the darkest tracks have this sense of movement: "Endgames" trudges on a low, stubborn pulse until bowed strings and harp flourishes nudge it into tentative radiance. The album becomes a procession, carrying its own weight into a brighter place. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.88]

Like all the music collected on Off The Record, "Lake Shore Drive Five" serves as a testament to McCraven and his band's ability to make improvisation sound focused and intentional, even as they take us on an unexpected journey. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.88]

Iconoclasts finds von Hausswolff at her most unabashedly accessible and soulful. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.86]

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]

The laser focus evenly applied to songs from the upcoming album (Grant Hart's heart-wrenching "Don't Want To Know If You're Lonely" and "Sorry Somehow") and older material makes it apparent why Hüsker Dü were the first US punk band to make that historic leap into the mainstream. To catch an earful of them in a live setting after that dicey dive is truly an illuminating experience. [Dec 2025, p.68]

Refusing to conform to any one style, Die Spitz surprise throughout with songs like "Voir Dire" and "American Porn" that lash out and sting, alongside the seemingly endless looping guitar stutter that accentuates the glorious roar of "Down On It". [Dec 2025, p.60]

Their second album Vesper Sparrow explores the arrhythmic and atonal multilayered textures that underpin Ellis's soaring contemporary jazz saxophone. .... The closing "Evensong Part 4" is a celebration of disconnected, cycling, melodic instrumental chants, layered into a richly joyous texture, with a Sowetan jazz feel.

Moments of levity arrive in "Cherry Blue", "DIS" and "Waterfalls" but overall the album's evenhanded pacing creates a strange unease. It seems governed by the temporal logic of its samples, as if Lopatin were intent on preserving their integrity rather than reshaping them. The emotional resonance that usually grounds Lopatin's work feels somewhat displaced by this formal precision. [Dec 2025, p.54]

Some will delight in her richly creative studio experiments, while others may find it too vague and discursive, despite several strong cuts like "Devotions" and "Think About It/What U Think?". [Dec 2025, p.63]

The results are overwhelmingly chirpy, but there's a frisson between his uniquely crusty voice and the shimmering digital surfaces. He sounds comfortable, but he doesn't blend in. [Dec 2025, p.63]

The Alchemist's patented gangster music soundtracks, full of moody textures and synths, can sound quite placid. It's up to Armand Hammer and co to bring rough tension and focus to an album that often feels overly atmospheric, despite standout cuts like "Dogeared" and "Super Nintendo". [Dec 2025, p.63]

The songs are long, mostly clocking in somewhere between ten and 20 minutes; the minutely orchestrated whole gives the misleading impression of a tightly controlled collective improvisation, with everyone doing their own thing together with spectacular commitment and focus. [Dec 2025, p.56]

Throughout, strings carry forward brief, carefully composed interludes, dipping into sound fields that recall early 2000s post-rock; pensive percussion and melodic guitars riffing in and out of focus. The compositions are painterly and precise, punctuated by chimes and deep piano tones. [Dec 2025, p.56]

Each turns in a fine performance, yielding some decent tracks, but they fail to generate the kind of frisson that would make this more than a historical curio. [Dec 2025, p.55]

A conventional song based offering, but essentially a continuation of the dialogue between Gunn/guitar and luscious underscoring this time more orchestral than electronic. The mood is generally soothing, but shot through with occasional suggestions of disquiet. [Nov 2025, p.53]

Those accustomed to the aggro, politically charged jazz rock of Brooklyn's Sunwatchers might be taken aback by this second solo outing from their saxophonist. Tobias titles what he concocts here "anti-imperialist pop", which shows there is still a kind-hearted intent behind the music even if its bubbly beats and dreamy vocals might sound like a mad stab at the mainstream. [Oct 2025, p.62]

Both Ishibashi and O'Rourke have spent lifetimes devoted to improvisation, and even if they only pick up a conventional instrument here and there on Pareidolia, the magic they weave on computers is no less spontaneous. [Oct 2024, p.54]

What a blessed relief, given all this, that Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, collectively, still sound wholly and unapologetically like themselves. [Nov 2025, p.60]

It's a generous, open-hearted collection of jams. [Nov 2025, p.50]

Music For Writers is lovely to review, both because it does exactly what its title suggests aiding concentration and contemplation for writers, and reviewers while standing up to a degree of scrutiny. [Nov 2025, p.53]

The album's high point "Who Wants To Live Forever" is a duet between Reznor and Spanish artist Judeline, and like "Vaster Than Empires" from Reznor and Ross's Queer soundtrack is all the more complex and humane for reaching outside the tight-knit NIN universe. "As Alive As You Need Me To Be" is a fitting phrase to conjure at this point in NIN's lifespan their entire oeuvre has never felt more like a living thing, both within and outside the group. [Nov 2025, p.55]

As ever, he works with a solid dub toolkit, but tracks like "The Well Is Poisoned" (co-written with Brian Eno) and "Hiroshima Dub Match" sound newly anxious. [Nov 2025, p.56]

Tower Block is easily Lawrence's best record since 1992's Back In Denim. [Nov 2025, p.61]

These half-asleep compositions inhabit the porous spaces between songform and atmosphere, the result being a remarkably relaxed album that is perhaps the strongest of the trilogy. [Nov 2025, p.52]

It's ["Ghost Net" is] the uneasiest thing that The Necks have done in years, and its duration of 74 minutes is long enough to wear down both resistance and acceptance. .... The other disc-long performance, "Rapid Eye Movement", is far more approachable.

Standing apart from the usual darkwave fold, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete make music that's melodic, accessible and moreish without compromising their darker, more experimental instincts. [Oct 2025, p.64]