All the more powerful for jumping from comic invocations of Ric Flair and Friday The 13th to casual and viciously flippant references to Xanax and other addictions. [Jan 2018, p.78]

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]

Heavy with lurid and dazzling detail, seeking to put drum ’n’ bass-like textures and hyperkinetic beats against the gruff distortion of rock, it recalls Pitchshifter and Asian Dub Foundation in its genreless aggravation and futurist push. [May 2022, p.55]

The outcome is a typically serene and spacious deconstruction of concept and melody; a compression, or reduction of a vast palette of reference points, ideas and processes into a remarkably integrated set of movements. [May 2019, p.64]

Septet is beautifully appointed make-out music, redolent of Adrian Younge, Miles Davis’s 1980s re-emergence and late 70s pre-electro Herbie Hancock. [Sep 2021, p.54]

Thrilling even as it plumbs the depths of anguish. [Aug 2021, p.52]

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

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]

Xiu Xiu’s music compels you to empathise even if you cannot fully relate to it. The poignant, pulsing curves of “Piña, Coconut & Cherry” bring this perspective into focus: “You must love me, love me, love me, you are mine, this is mine”. [Oct 2024, p.60]

Let God Sort Em Out, their first LP in 16 years, might be their richest to date. [Sep 2025, p.50]

The warm campfire feel to much of Bardo Pond indicates just how much the likes of MV&EE owes this outfit, but MV&EE seldom sound this convincingly elsewhere. [Dec 2010, p.58]

All of the music is a kind of West African funk, a loping groove that’s an ideal platform for long, discursive but rhythmically grounded solos. ... “Leta’s Dance” has the feel of a mellow track from an early 70s Pharoah Sanders album, sweeping along like a river of electric piano and gentle guitar chords but ending with Bartz alone, keening on the bank, the new song leading seamlessly into the old ones. [Jun 2020, p.46]

Susanna is backed by a quintet of musicians who move in perfect harmony with her slowly uncoiling vocal. Shifting between jazz, orchestral and synthesized sounds, her approach to the time-honoured love song format is a much needed breath of fresh air. [Oct 2024, 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]

Air is also an omnipresent agent in Davachi’s extensive use of the pipe organ, as on “Vanity Of Ages” – an exquisitely slow unfolding of clustered tones that give rise to a shimmering microtonality. ... A similar compositional approach is used for the string pieces “Icon Studies I” and “Icon Studies II” but the effect is intimate and fluid rather than cosmic and imposing [Sep 2022, p.44]

This 17 track album is the perfect embodiment of the sound and ethos the label has been pushing over the last nine years. [May 2019, p.66]

The more we listen, as the images and phrases and grooves swim past, we're glimpsing pieces of a private puzzle, an exhilarating series of riddles with no answers. [Sep 2025, p.50]

Sunny Border Blue marks a return to a less considered, rawer style, and to lyrics which are nakedly confessional, mercilessly exposing her own and other people's weaknesses. [#206, p.67]

It’s Shellac as usual, so lean, mean experimental rock music which sounds like you are right there in the room with the band. There’s a hint of mature craftsmanship in the classic descending chord sequence of “WSOD” and the waltz time of “Girl From Outside”. [Jul 2024, p.60]

An upbeat yet ultimately wistful record about living, dying, youth, age, wasting time, but also trying not to waste time. [Oct 2017, p.59]

The music they make is as quirky, infectious and amusing as the theme that powers it along, and Memorial Waterslides turns out to be a work of inspired joy. [Oct 2024, p.62]

Atmospheric and engrossing, Birds & Beasts is a quiet triumph. [Oct 2024, p.62]

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

Not a visionary rollercoaster thundering around the heavens, but a rewarding slow and subtle grower. [Oct 2011, p.53]

More impressive is how well he and his production circle weave their microfibre soul samples as to draw perpetual tension out of complete simplicity. [Nov 2012, p.73]

Metallica's unrelenting sledgehammer style works as the perfect complement to Reed's vision of compassionless love, with monolithic chords deployed with almost surgical precision wile he dissects relationships w of masochism and power. [Dec 2011, p.63]

This 21st century Berlin sounds more muscular and dangerous, but not without a certain delicacy either. [Nov 2008, p.68]

True to her reputation as an uncompromising force, at no point during Edge Of Everything does Temple show any mercy. [May 2019, p.66]