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]

One can absorb the enthusiasm while feeling somewhat repulsed by the taste. On occasion, it works. [Nov 2013, p.65]

No More Normal showcases UK talent proudly, but bringing so much of it together, loses some of the character that might attract new listeners to UK music. Reaching for the historical weight of Soul II Soul, it ends up with the easy going vibe of The Brand New Heavies. [Apr 2019, p.59]

You might not always know what they are saying but the wails in “Iron Maiden” and foreboding synths of “(Crystal Aura Redux)” don’t need translating. The bleak production and relentless beats should keep us dancing all the way through the apocalypse. [Jun 2023, p.54]

This compilation gives voice to many lesser known artists who sang of the elation and estrangement of moving from the dirt tracks to the streets. [Aug 2012, p.44]

It’s a satisfying--if rather safe--album. [Jul 2018, p.44]

The album’s 78 minutes include ample shimmering prettiness and strafing digital energy, with only minimal concessions to anyone who would prefer one or the other.

In spite of these brief missteps, Change is a welcome return, revealing the multifaceted artistry of a previously enigmatic performer. [Sep 2021, p.48]

Crescent’s first album in a decade is certainly a memoir, and one as evocative and impressionistic as you might expect, where the fall of sunlight on a window or a late-night touring mishap--“I’m opening up the van/And the cymbals crash/All across the street/In the clear night” (“I’m Not Awake”)--stay lodged in the heart and mind far longer than any 12" release. [Jun 2017, p.69]

The album embraces bittersweet moods and moulds them into gorgeously transportive but deceptive cuts. [Oct 2020, p.62]

Pieces Of Treasure is a moving album from an artist who knows these songs inside out and is smart enough to know when to set knowledge aside, to access each song’s elemental power. [Jun 2023, p.52]

At every turn it bubbles with the delight of discovery, and shows the alchemical reaction between the two studio personae coming along very nicely indeed. [Mar 2017, p.54]

Hellfire confidently establishes Black Midi as a distinct musical personality. [Jul 2022, p.44]

The album repeats and reiterates her major concerns--artistic, political--and renders them witty and endearing. [Oct 2013, p.51]

As the album progresses, uneasiness is subliminally incorporated into otherwise deceptively easy rockin’ tunes. [Oct 2016, p.60]

On the whole Ash Koosha aka Iranian composer Ashkan Kooshanejad's follow-up to Guud is a likable gem of an album. [Apr 2016, p.62]

If it undeniably looks into a past long before any of the members were born, the actual results provide more welcome context, using the music of the 1960s to create a sound which, in toto, didn’t actually exist during that decade. [Nov 2024, p.62]

Objects scraped, rubbed, manipulated and plucked from their natural environments for the richness of their attack, decay and luxurious resonance here produce a superbly rich, tuneful and intricately rhythmic music. [Jul 2025, p.56]

The somewhat dated style and sound of Nextdoorland gives it a charm wholly unaffiliated with any current scene or trend. [#225, p.77]

Optometry is a success in terms of both sound and vision. [#221, p.53]

The Kadanes have created a collection of songs of which they can be proud. [#246, p.62]

But where Konoyo was a more visceral invocation of the electronic sublime, Anoyo stretches out and creates space for the reeds to be heard amid the splices, obstructions and reversals of the Los Angeles based producer’s typically stratified sonic design. [May 2019, p.67]

His murky but upbeat productions augment this sensation, giving Skelethon a sort of B-boy gothic feel, an old school park jam recreated by Tim Burton. [Sep 2012, p.74]

The pattern repeats elsewhere: the big showcase tracks like “Never Forget” and “Let Me Be Great” sag a little under the weight of their pomposity, where deep cuts “Imposter Syndrome” and “IDGAF” just get on with showcasing her untouchable cool. [Nov 2022, p.73]

The cleaner production of Half Free ups the anxiety. [Oct 2015, p.58]

What they sculpt is impressive if not entirely unfamiliar. [Oct 2020, p.65]

A smorgasbord of bittersweetness, with yearning pads providing a translucent bed for snatches of fragmentary counterpoint. [Sep 2023, p.50]

Clubbers might find Swanson's approach dilettantish.... In letting this set closer sprawl out, though, he happens on a spinning wormhole of spitting snares and abrasive Konono No 1-like melodies that's sulphuric in its intensity. [Mar 2013, p.60]