What unites them through the funk of “Zipper”, the smooth, slightly cheesy pop of “Hottie” and the sudden bursts of metallic dissonance on “Sister/Nation” is a sense of hiphop starting over, moving beyond iconography and iconoclasm into a world where they have absolute freedom to make shit up as they go along. [Feb 2018, p.46]

Arcology is dense, detailed and melodic. [Mar 2016, p.51]

It’s the confidence and clarity of Dalt’s vision that makes this album a charming, compelling listen. In its best moments, it’s strange and familiar at once, like a weird, beautiful dream. [Nov 2022, p.59]

A warm and immensely good natured record. [Apr 2017, p.63]

Through poetry, wordplay and a sonic palette that seamlessly bridges the human and the mechanical, IRISIRI positions itself at a nexus of sonic and conceptual ambiguity, weaving openended narratives with a logic that eludes straightforward interpretation and exudes genuine wonder and fascination. [Jul 2018, p.45]

LSD is so concentrated, so packed with ideas, that on initial listenings, it's most efficacious when taken in moderate doses. .... Jim and co-producer Torabi have created a best fit from an abundance of available music, and this version of the band does Tim Smith proud, serving his singular vision with brio and love. [Oct 2025, p.61]

However difficult is might appear on first hearing, his music is at once curiously involving and constantly inviting. [#209, p.59]

One imagines Blue Eyed In The Red Room might serve as an alternative soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. [#252, p.47]

When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. [Apr 2021]

This is a magical and bafflingly arresting album. [Sep 2008, p.53]

These are songs with enveloping atmospheres that dramatise their lyrics with crisping, gasping, blinding, thundering, quietly screaming sound design. [Nov 2022, p.60]

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]

A collection of grungy, haunting songs that sound and feel timeless. Led by Hersh’s velvety grunts, this is the sort of rock that borrows the best from all the music’s variations to create something familiar yet surprisingly fresh. [May 2022, p.56]

Forget about the backstory, though, and it's clear that h remains a truly innovative MC, and Ultimate Victory is stronger than its predecessor for one reason. [Nov 2007, p.70]

That this is Spiritualized's most vital and compelling set for a decade suggests that his muse has been galvinised by his near death experience. [May 2008, p.61]

This is artfully bracing listening. [Sep 2008, p.55]

He doesn’t strain in the falsetto passages and there’s no papering over the cracks in his phrasing. He’s as accurate and precise as he ever was, projecting even at low volumes. [Aug 2019, p.55]

Drawing on such lofty motifs doesn’t make Dalt’s records any less intimate or enjoyable. Instead, they offer more space for exploring the most vulnerable corners of an artist’s emotional state, by using metaphor and allusion as a way to express the inexpressible. [Jun 2018, p.52]

The payoff is worth the effort. Those who’ve typecast Lombardo as strictly a metal/punk sticksman will be surprised by Rites Of Percussion. [Jun 2023, p.53]

It carries with it the expressivity of darker electronic take on popular forms, and exchanges the cliches of this UK habit for new and complex alien intimacies. [Oct 2015, p.49]

America’s National Parks is as consistent musically as it is conceptually diverse. What appear on first listen to be reserved essays on grand topics are steadily revealed to be eloquent statements of a mature and unified vision, realised with collective mastery. [Dec 2016, p.64]

Downbeat, deliberately anticlimactic, refusing to abide by rap orthodoxies, while affirming one of the genre’s dominant reflexes – calling out pretenders. Think of Marceliago as Macbeth transferred to Hempstead, Long Island, or any of the city’s other unacknowledged locales. Marciano’s rhymes read like rap koans. [Feb 2020, p.60]

Virtuosity quickly shades into something inhuman, as every plectrum and drumstick lands inevitably – and thrillingly – on target. [Jun 2023, p.54]

Its satisfying blend of genres amplifies the best of what both these artists have to offer. [Apr 2026, p.63]

She draws you into the shadows and crumbling concrete of America, a nation in which, as Knowles pointed out in a recent online essay, “a former Ku Klux Klan leader is running for Louisiana senator.” [Dec 2016, p.54]

The album opener “Electron Central” sets a blissful, meandering pace, winding around in a shimmering drone like a drop of ink diffusing in a glass of water. ... The album closer “Empty Hold” takes a more unsettled turn, swooning and rattling into a resonant void. [Feb 2020, p.61]

This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]

While perhaps not the triumphant return that many fans have hoped for, the murky and dystopic excursions of 8 Diagrams are uncompromising, visionary and unique. [Mar 2008, p.62]