A Short History Of Decay is a stirring suite of studiosculpted alternative rock that jettisons most of their heavy music influence while finding new routes to scoured ears amid plumes of dreampop drift. [Mar 2026, p.60]

His music, which radiates humour, tenderness, frustration and audacity, remains seductively mysterious. [Dec 2018, p.54]

The duo fashion a collection of bright funny and often extremely beautiful songs that bristle with invention. [Aug 2010, p.58]

The album is warm and lush, mixed and engineered by David Darlington, who has worked with Eddie Pamieri and Wayne Shorter. It’s a different side of The Arkestra in a convincing, throwback fashion – to a time when new jazz albums came fast and each was an event. [Nov 2022, p.68]

Heart’s Ease picks up directly from where Lodestar left off. The lightness of touch of that earlier album, the delicate and sparse instrumental backing, so unobtrusive it enables rather than dominates, and her knack of filleting songs down to their bony essence, are all elements Collins pursues further here. [Aug 2020, p.52]

This might not have the more overtly radical studio tricks and militant attitudes that make, say, Moodymann more acceptable to experimental music fans, but as a narrative joining fusion to ghetto house to microhouse to churchy soul to beachlounging Balearica, it’s a deeply involving piece of work. [Jun 2018, p.56]

Age Of is arguably Lopatin’s best album to date. He achieves exactly what he sets out to. [Jul 2018, p.55]

While rock fans may be disappointed by Yo La Tengo's fleeting venture into playful jazz, the group continue to produce music that's full of gesture and emotional intensity. [#231, p.73]

It's [Neil Fallon's} witty, intelligent, lusty lyrics that elevate Book Of Bad Decisions from good to great. [Oct 2018, p.50]

Such unashamed prettiness in a production is rare, and it's rarer still to achieve this without sliding into a quagmire of tweeness or an insufferable knowing smugness. [#252, p.62]

Thanks to Tune-Yards’ trademark genre splicing--demented nursery rhyme chanting, jerky rapping, tortured harmonising and stuttery 808 beats--Private Life shows there’s still space for playfulness amid the polemic. [Mar 218, p.55]

On their sharply delivered follow-up, they delve into darker realms of the genre utilising the combination of abrasive though sparsely used guitars and dub inflections to exhibit something similar to This Heat, or maybe even present day British noise rock collective Gnod. [Jun 2019, p.65]

While ultimately not as inventive as some of Child’s earlier outings, Crash Recoil is nevertheless an urgent, kinetic techno record. [Apr 2023, p.60]

The pairing of contemporary classical with electronic music is a concept that could easily--and often does--go wrong. At times Shelley’s On Zenn-La feels like it’s about to do just that, but this very awareness of historical context makes it a worthy tribute to its hallowed predecessors. [Oct 2018, p.51]

The tracks don’t so much develop as flow--and don’t so much flow as slide slowly, tidally, from one pole to another. Those poles are, to put it crudely, a smooth Badalamenti-like gloom and a more polyphonic, Vangelis-style choral sound. [Dec 2016, p.69]

Boss, Magik Markers' most straightforward set of rock songs, is still rife with a liberating freedom. [Oct 2007, p.62]

Xylouris and White seem to have decided take advantage of all available resources, adding stylistic, instrumental and emotional variety without sacrificing the looseness of their early work. The busman’s holiday is over, but the party continues. [Feb 2018, p.55]

The Patience is a little less introverted [than 2021's Elephant In The Room], looking beyond the shutters of lockdown, and feels like Jenkins is maturing into an artist who is aware of how his frustrations need to breathe, wait (hence the title) and take time to coalesce. It’s his best music since his early mixtapes, and certainly his best official album since 2018’s remarkable Pieces Of A Man. [Sep 2023, p.57]

In terms of idiosyncratic yet thoroughly danceable electronic music, Cunningham remains nearly peerless. [Nov 2023, p.46]

It’s a much rougher around the edges effort than 2019’s GREY Area, but it works because Simz is an alum of the pirate radio days; this is her forte. Sonically it’s a dream. [Jul 2020, p.59]

Horse Lords music has never been untidy, but this LP’s seven tracks evince a hyper-focused precision. Even when they flirt with entropy during the last two minutes of “May Brigade”, the transition from rhythmic grid to textural layering is immaculately executed. ... This may not lead the people to call for Comradely Objects rather than Ed Sheeran or (name your preferred chart topper here) but it’ll do the job just fine the next time you need some new minimalist jams for a highway drive. [Nov 2022, p.62]

Sounds as if it could have been recorded in the city 50 years ago with a hotshot producer like Bones Howe or Curt Boettcher at the helm. ... “If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will” might be the best example of this delicate balance, with the track “Fools” being the second; even though that song sometimes leans into mid-1970s schlock territory best left to Boz Scaggs or Andrew Gold. [Jun 2019, p.65]

Limned in choirs, organs and brass, the languorous “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” flips dolour into something magical, and transcendent. Strip away that prairie pedal steel and loosen the seams, and “Darkness And Cold” would be the kind of standard Leonard Cohen might test drive, were he still with us. [Aug 2019, p.59]

More than any other Gas album Rausch captures the exhilaration one can feel deep in the woods, walking for far too long, marching ever forward without ever looking back. [Jun 2018, p.56]

Halfway through its flow, Gave In Rest reveals itself as her first sustained attempt--a successful one--at stranding listeners in a mellow darkness before taking them back outside. [Oct 2018, p.51]

The mood is always unsettled and unsettling, either furious or fragile. [#258, p.67]

Listening to Sarah Davachi's newest album in the scorching heat wave outdoors, the world slows to an ominous crawl. As the sombre organ notes take hold, a bird with a worm wiggling in its beak becomes a dark omen. Branches move ominously with the slight breeze, filtering brief flashes of sunlight. Every little detail gathers unbearable weight, falling deeper into a hypnotic abyss. [Oct 2024, p.50]

Viewfinder may end on a questioning note, but its music is warm and expansive, the sound of an inspired composer coming into the light. [Oct 2024, p.49]