As I spent more time with their tunes piercing through my earbuds, I finally succumbed to their truly infectious ways. [Jun 2019, p.65]

The opening track and first single “Hide & Seek” is built around a hard charging, hooky punk riff that sounds more like The Offspring than the Lizard of old. Yow’s vocals, higher in the mix than they used to be, have a nasal, sneering quality that’s more actorly than unhinged. [Sep 2024, p.50]

Whether with Supersilent or on his own, Arve Henriksen has demarcated his own world of sound, communicating in ways that are sometimes inscrutable but always deeply felt. [Jul 2017, p.53]

A band absolutely floating free, and realising that this Throwing Muses thing is beyond all of them, beyond all of us, an almost tidal pull on the cells, forward into life. Sun Racket is an essential truth kit for a post-truth world. [Jul 2020, p.52]

The thick consistency of America is of a different sort: lusher, more polished, wider in scope, almost symphonic in its conception and structure. [Aug 2012, p.43]

Chasny’s vocals in particular, hushed and double-tracked, tend to sound like the performance of awed transport rather than awed transport itself. In that sense Threshold’s instrumental numbers--which on so many albums feel like interludes or filler--are standouts. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Companion Rises does not choose between the structure of a catchy acoustic guitar motif and those sometimes abrasive electric moments where composure is allowed to drift away. Instead it opts to combine them. [Mar 2020, p.56]

Most intriguing are the hi-tech elements that flicker past, adding a hint of touch screen technology to the contemporary urban space. And the snatches of pirate radio speech--now Wen's signature--are engrossing. [May 2014, p.69]

The result is a record that feels in touch with the qualities that have powered Oneida in the past – the dogged repetition, the scorching climaxes – but this time trades the crankier avant tendencies for a sweet dose of bubblegum. [Sep 2022, p.48]

Such durational piece, composed from several instruments, recall Phill Niblock, but Malone’s album is softer, more atmospheric, even melancholic. Does Spring Hide Its Joy is material for deep listening, and its considerable length alone is a radical statement in times of fragmented attention. [Feb 2023, p.52]

Wonder at the natural world has been an inspiration for musicians for as long as there has been music, but the mournful, realist shade to Park’s work makes that wonder all the more resonant and poignant now. [Mar 2025, p.52]

It occasionally breaks into shocking moments of lo-fi howl, as on the 11 minute “Distortion”, which begins with a juddering, buzzsaw chord. The jumbled and constant flow of imagery emerges every now and then from the tumult of his guitar, so that one pulls the other in a different direction. [May 2018, p.54]

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]

Young Thug has made a record about the agency public figures have over their own identities. In another, he’s made the year’s most bizarre, brilliant genre exercise. [Oct 016, p.65]

For music built around the shrouding and decay of its composer’s bodily presence, Thresholder feels curiously non-corporeal. In large part that’s attributable to the purity of Craig’s voice. ... But elsewhere--when melting between the tremulous organ tones of “And Therefore The Moonlight” or forming grainy cirrus wisps in “Sfumato”--Craig sounds as though he’s already shed his physical shell and ascended into the cosmos. [Dec 2018, p.46]

In terms of idiosyncratic yet thoroughly danceable electronic music, Cunningham remains nearly peerless. [Nov 2023, p.46]

Effervescent retro fun with a core of righteousness. [Nov 2013, p.66]

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

What the album lacks in innovation, it more than makes up for with its sheer edginess. [#228, p.59]

Dunn’s production is broad and volatile yet retains a measure of mainstream appeal. At all times Danilova’s voice threatens to destroy – the compositions that try to contain her, the recording equipment that seems to clip and distort, reverb effects that overload and scream, speakers and ears that feel like they might melt from the sheer intensity. She’s never sounded better than this. [Jun 2022, p.48]

“Ablaze”, “Beauty In Falling Leaves” and the monumental title track attain a state of angelic transcendence before crashing solidly back to earth with “The Screen”, a stone cold falling meteor of a song that leaves a crater in its wake, and is probably the heaviest piece of music they have yet produced. [Aug 2018, p.59]

These New Puritans feel better equipped than most to carry that mantle, a vision of English pastoral music heavy with stoicism and solitude; both steeped in, yet strangely unencumbered by history. [Jun 2013, p.55]

As a superior melodic rapper, Open Mike Eagle seems to communicate with a kind of preternatural whimsy. Even when he sifts through his trauma, his voice serves as a velvet glove, keeping this 30 minute album from descending into painful self-pity. [Dec 2020, p.54]

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]

It's a firm and deliberate withdrawal from the spotlight but one tinged with sharp self-awareness and the humane intelligence that governs all of Bunyan's work. [Sep 2014, p.52]

A song cycle following the blossoming and sudden death of a relationship, the conceit frontloads Broken Heart Club with joyous dizzy pop in “Tie The Knot” and the aptly titled but most definitely not saccharine “Sweet”. When heartbreak comes she’s brilliantly poised, pleading on “Heartfelt Freestyle” then flipping a finger to regret on “Missing Out”. [Jun 2022, p.62]

Consistently excellent, the album reaches its zenith with “My Shadow Life”, a simple love song from out of the gloom: “On my life I swear that I love you/My shadow life, I swear that I love/I love you”. [Sep 2018, p.55]

Sirens is unlike anything produced under his other aliases The Bug, Techno Animal or Ice. It exists as a piece of sound art rather than a club record. ... Sirens is testament to the ability of sound and its manipulation to transcend language. [Jun 2019, p.60]