Colonial patterns makes your ears feel like magnetised tape heads, the music dulled, pockmarked, riven with fissures of noise and age. [Oct 2013, p.58]

It serves as both a reconsideration of what’s come before and a confident step forward. [Jul 2022, p.52]

The pair’s soundtrack is trippy and foreboding, swaying between melancholy cosmic laments on slo-mo keyboards (“Leaving Moomin Valley”), mysterious Middle Eastern whines (“Hobgoblin’s Hat”), extraterrestrial dream sequences on thumb piano and wooden glockenspiel (“Most Unusual”) and a giddy blast of what sounds like computerised rodents squeaking with speeded-up glee (“Party Time”). [Mar 2017, p.65]

This is no mere revivalism. It’s a bridge with the past, created for the future. [May 2018, p.57]

Each track Nelson has tautly defined a geography of sound specific to that place, real or imagined. [May 2013, p.64]

These are tragic celebrations, Dionysian seances for the most schizophrenic of times. [Sep 2018, p.66]

His verbal style is notable because it avoids typical ragga chat or MC freestyling in favour of an almost literary blend of prose and verse. [#219, p.75]

Implausibly enduring, oddly endearing and extreme in ways both unexpected and otherwise. [Sep 2020, p.57]

Fires Within Fires is the summation of 30 years of experimentation in tonality and texture. Yes, Neurosis are firmly positioned within the extreme metal underground, yet their music, with its ability to generate images of beauty akin to those many of us have experienced in our own lives--not to mention the loss that accompanies them--challenges this categorisation. [Oct 2016, p.49]

A remarkable turn in the road for a remarkable composer. [Mar 2021, p.55]

The execution is elegantly minimal and yet alive with textures and warmth, despite the album's melancholy and often morbid content. [Mar 2018, p.55]

Thankfully here, in spite of the occasional song in Latin or mention of the Peninsular War, Batoh succeeds in stripping things all the way back to a jewel-like clarity. ... Even when things do take on a heavier and more expansive turn, technique, structure and lyrical meaning are powerfully combined. [Feb 2019, p.44]

There is a distinct lack of filler (as usual) but the best of the 11 songs is “Dead Weight”, which adopts a sideways crawl like a hermit crab in hobnail boots as our anti-hero tears herself to pieces and hurls them at the feet of an admirer. [Jul 2021, p.67]

Ladd's eclectic and downbeat montage of samples creates a rootless soundscape, seemingly geographically transient, restless, impatient and unsettling. It is the perfect backdrop for Ladd's soul-searching reflexes and rants. [#251, p.54]

The only drawback to this semi-collage approach is that many tracks are too brief. [#256, p.51]

This feels like a love letter to dayglo dreams of the online world of 20 years ago, with beats and samples too evolved, too exuberant to sink into mere nostalgia. [Oct 2016, p.51]

Exorcism addresses a similarly uncomfortable subject, her sexual assault in 2016 and what it means to be a survivor of trauma. That Wilson can turn such trauma into vibrant, addictive pop music is testament to her abilities within strict limitations--the entirety of Exorcism was crafted on a Prophet 6 synthesizer--but Exorcism is unafraid not just of its subject matter but of occupying an intrinsically ambiguous place for the listener. [May 2018, p.59]

Its infusion of HipHop drum programs, Old Skool electronics, rabblerousing calls-to-arms and repetitive guitar riffs is highly addictive. [#213, p.58]

This album will be warmly welcomed by On-U Sound and reggae fans everywhere. [Oct 2023, p.57]

The record’s surfaces are highly polished and glisten with a near futurist glow that’s only occasionally interrupted by percussion, most affecting when those pristine surfaces recede to emphasise the melodic lines that dance over them. “Vanity” lets ominous synths rumble while ornate electronics flourish above while the reverberating motif of “Tasakuba” is potent with longing and desire. [Jul 2021, p.69]

he 22a label founder flexes his expansive musical influences across ten new creations. One of the most exciting tracks here is “Buffalo Gurl”. Dividing its time between earlier R&B and sultry jazz chords, it’s the pick me up you didn’t know you needed. [Aug 2019, p.65]

This is Byrne at his best, as he calmly describes the impact of the object upon the victim’s history, feelings and anatomy that are being destroyed as a result of its violent intrusion. [May 2018, p.60]

They're both adept at the refined art of turning nothing new into something memorable. [#207, p.61]

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

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]

There are moments when the insights of Newsom's improvised mythology fall into pseudo-profundity... But still it easily stands with this year's entrancing reinventions of song--Julia Holter's Have You In My Wilderness, Jim O'Rourke's Simple Songs--and the high points of her own catalogue so far. [Nov 2015, p.46]

Recorded during a post-tour chill, the album writes a caustic, often dejected and cynical travelogue. ... Meanwhile, subtle slivers of sarcasm and dry humour punch through this acerbic sound. They find their way in bass-led, sumptuous lounge sludge on “Smoker’s Piece”, assess the “Current Situation” with screeching dissonance and pained shrieks and bemoan the grey daily life on the closing “Every Thing, Every Day”. [Apr 2021, p.54]

Where the previous two explore themes around rebirth and grief, Trappes’s vocal fills Penelope Three full of redemption and hope. On “Red Yellow”, synth lines swoop and sink despondently into the mix, but Trappes’s vocal is ascendant and bold. In places, this ability to draw striking emotional clout from delicate shoegaze-y soundscapes recalls Sophia Liozou’s 2020 album Untold. [Jul 2021, p.69]