This is Smith’s most essential non-Fall work since his collaboration with Inch back in 1999. [Apr 2020, p.60]

Although Lee Perry’s name will probably sell more copies of Guide To The Universe, New Age Doom are what makes this album worthwhile. ... With everyone involved recording their parts remotely, the result is impressively coherent and live-feeling. [Dec 2021, p.54]

To expand simple love songs into extravagantly gilded showstoppers is to risk lapsing into bombast. But for all their love of musical saws and [Jonathan] Donahue's quavering voice, Mercury Rev are unashamedly grandiose, and their references may be too in thrall to the rock hegemony for some. [#210, p.60]

Closing track “Alone Together” is the exception, with its laidback 70s groove. Otherwise there is a rich sense of eerie detachment, more Eno than disco. Not a desolate one but a widescreen richness of field recordings, sweetly echoing synth tones, spoken word interludes, plaintive wheepling of birds and clarinets, ghostly acousmatic sounds and layered vocal harmonies. [Mar 2025, p.46]

[Bachman] offers a pretty good idea of where he's coming from. If it sometimes feels like the stream of America pimitivist fingerpicking artists is neverending, Bachman does at least apply his digits to a variety of instruments. [May 2015, p.56]

There’s no stridency, special pleading or chewing of scenery, just gentle enactments. This is what folk music used to do before Volk became toxic. Malkmus represents his characters via traditional techniques. [May 2020, p.54]

Musically, the songs favor stripped-down and straight ahead garage rock production values, often driven by organ chords. [Jul 2013, p.65]

The sonic scribbles of Kid A are far more stimulating than their regular grind.... Along with Primal Scream's Exterminator, Kid A is a vital work. Anyone remotely interested in contemporary music should listen to it at least once. [#201, p.59]

This recording attests to their powerful rock credentials. [#201, p.63]

Everything about the record--the pacing, the choice of sounds--reveals a mature, careful hand. [Dec 2012, p.77]

Something about its balance between geometric elegance and genuine emotiveness gets at the heart of what makes him a great composer. The playful movement lends a sense of humanity to the structure, and the structure lends rigour to the dance. [Apr 2018, p.60]

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]

Immaculately interwoven electronics and the care with which each beautifully recorded track unfolds recall Chicago post-rock. [#254, p.53]

It's a genuine pleasure to hear an ensemble this aesthetically united working at such a high level. [Nov 2016, p.61]

Gojira once again let loose their own brand of fury on the world. Fortitude is a tightly executed example of the way their songs are propelled as anthems – emblazoned metallic sound banners flapping loudly in the gale they have summoned up. [Sep 2021, p.62]

I Shall Die Here's meeting of stark electronic textures and rhythms with monstrous guitars evokes Godflesh's Pure. [Apr 2014, p.63]

Sonnet isn't as compelling as Hymnal, with its fine balance between abstraction and form, but it's an illustration of Meluch's abilities as a skilled purveyor of rural psychedelia. [Jun 2015, p.52]

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]

They continue to surprise and enchant. [Sep 2020, p.52]

Zubot’s production creates a sense of vastness, placing Tagaq’s voice low in the mix with strings and drums or conversely counterpointing it to instruments to create icy thick layers of noise. However, his maximalist approach fails the more poppy tracks. [Feb 2017, p.45]

Once the starpower dazzle fades, it’s not always obvious who he is, but the lack of easy answers makes him interesting enough for now.

Koch feels like a merger of the two [Diversions 1994-1996 and Dutch Tvashar Plumes], backsliding into the dance timbres of yesteryear, and their hissy, ever moody dissolutions become predictable. [Oct 2014, p.63]

Its exploratory, playful, even mystical temper, slipping easily between the emotional zones the history of song traverses, suggests a boredom with eschatology. [Oct 2016, p.55]

The record crams a ton of sonic and thematic ideas into a small space and yet show almost no visible stitches. [Oct 2011, p.66]

Another stellar release by this persistently valuable band. [Jun 2018, p.57]

It is the slick heat of Gibbons’s liquid guitar groove, tempered by the equally blistering yet mysterious cool of his desert surroundings, that makes Hardware a deeper listening experience than initially expected. [Jun 2021, p.52]

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]

It’s not a bad record--if nothing else it goes some way to atoning for the disappointment of AC/DC rather than Ghostface landing on the Iron Man 2 soundtrack--but it could have been so much more. [Apr 2018, p.50]