In Arbouretum’s case the song remains much the same, but its continuation is more than welcome. [Apr 2017, p.60]

There’s a luxuriant impulse at work on this second album by the London-based keyboardist and producer. The strings in particular work beautifully on the soporific funk of tunes like “1989” or “Toulouse”, suggesting a Xanaxed Roy Ayers recording for CTI in the mid-70s. Aug 2020, p.68]

[The album] is so blatantly, almost self-consciously pleasurable it should come, like an insalubrious takeaway, with heavy duty napkins. [Apr 2014, p.65]

What we have here is the hangman’s blues, the alienated piano soliloquies of classical, the wary prayers of gospel, the lustful frustration of R&B, the drugged lightning of rap. Beastmode 2 is Future at his worst, which is to say, Future at his best. [Sep 2018, p.66]

Propulsive and beautifully weighted, this is music of absolute clarity. Sangare’s voice gleams adamantine. [Oct 2020, p.67]

The mix between organic and technological sonics, including the harmonious tones of Williams's own voice, makes for a mesmerising debut. [Sep 2016, p.59]

The music for the horror/revenge fantasy developed from Cosmatos and Jóhannsson’s mutual appreciation of heavy metal and psychotronic cinema, and it shows. [Nov 2018, p.56]

The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

It's the most vibrant and vital he's sounded in a long while. [Nov 2014, p.64]

Music to aspire to, music from when it seemed like there might be a future worth dreaming about. [Oct 2020, p.68]

The album feels like paten's mostly mechanically calculated and precise output to date. [Sep 2016, p.59]

The precision and control and grand guignol gothery are all still in place – but there’s also surprise (check the startlingly clean and gorgeous nine minute odyssey of “They Move Below”) and a palpable energy the band haven’t shown in years. [May 2022, p.55]

These tracks embody the heartache arising from Remy struggling with her place, and the place of her sisters, in the world of male power and dominance. [Mar 2018, p.57]

He knows that being the most complete version of himself requires lifelong searching – græ never fails to feel like such a journey. [Aug 2020, p.63]

A gorgeous album. [Jun 2018, p.50]

On top of the crisp, sympathetic playing, the songwriting and vocals stand out with tunes that could have come straight from the Treasure Isle songbook. [Sep 2016, p.59]

While the intellectual territory is familiar, it's explored with similar playfulness and ear for inventive juxtaposition as Papaich's fellow city dwellers Matmos. [Oct 2015, p.50]

Become Zero sees Chesley using digital processing for the first time; “Radiate” benefits greatly, evolving over nine minutes from treated bowed dissonance into churchy ambient drone, while “Machine” adds layers to an initial loping pulse until it’s an enveloping roar. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Archangel Hill is a great album. As dearly as I love her early work, there’s something about Collins’s sound here that feels just right. [Jul 2023, p.50]

This is the adult Metallica at last, monolithic, grandiose and grizzled. Maturity suits the band, makes them a weightier proposition than the pursuit of former glories ever could. [Dec 2016, p.62]

On the opening “Asynchronous Intervals”, Golding’s beautifully burnished tenor tone – sumptuously recorded here – plays against free drums that gradually morph into a slowly burning groove. On “ActiveMultiple-Fetish-Overlord”, that tone is broken up against Luthert’s palpitating, roiling low end work. “After The Machine Settles” is muscular jazz rock; “Because Because” with multitracked/echoing soprano, is a stirring conclusion. [May 2022, p.58]

Her taste--for beats at least--isn't that expensive, but is certainly sophisticated, perhaps pointedly so. [Jan 2015, p.74]

He's come up with a debut album that combines vaulting ambition, real musicality and a deceptive deftness of touch. [Jun 2008, p.47]

This music reminds you how alone you are; it consoles you through its insolubility, comforts you by jabbing you in the chest and letting you know how complex the struggle is, how inaccessible we are to each other but just how universal our pain can be. [Dec 2016, p.63]

If there’s a heaven for a gangsta, Eazy-E is smirking down on South Central serene and secure that G Perico is doing immaculate justice to his legacy. [Mar 2018, p.61]

Continues along lines that Stereolab have been laying down since the late 1990s: motorik drumming and a swish of keyboards tarversing a linear landscape, with the emphasis on Sadier's laconic, dewy vocals. [#239, p.65]

Ultimately the album's strength lies in the way its civil facade barely masks Trim's enduring unresolved issues, its portrait of an MC looking to simultaneously escape, dominate and earn the acknowledgement of a scene he transcended a long way back. [Sep 2016, p.62]

The vocal arrangements almost all verge on the irritating--overblown neo-gospel--but there’s too much good here to deny on that basis. [Oct 2016, p.63]