It seems likely Buzz and company have also been listening to a fair bit of Magma and Aphrodite's child, given the interludes of unaccompanied percussion, brooding Gothic keyboards and tightly complex arrangements which result in the most consistently impressive album this line-up has released to date. [Jul 2010, p.64]

The [guest] musicians have the good sense to know when to let Chesnutt's dry-leaf vocals and muted acoustic guitar carry the songs, and when to swell up and bring heightened Gothic intensity to the feelings of melancholy and dread. [Oct 2007, p.55]

These are effective dancefloor tracks that contain secret burdens o f menace or anxiety. [Dec 2012, p.68]

The Twigs sound tough and robust, ready to take on the whole world rather than cultivate one small part of it. [Feb 2013, p.45]

This is a good record. It's probably the best record by a group named after a situationist art installation you'll hear all year. But I'd be surprised if it came [on] top of any other list. [Feb 2016, p.48]

Judging by the music on And The Anonymous Nobody, their sights are set firmly on the future. [Sep 2016, p.49]

All of the six songs feel epic in structure, each gradually building from a subtle breeze into a fiery windstorm as Michael and John Gibbons's sustained guitar mantras bleed into each other. [May 2017, p.44]

The Automator sounds uncertain, pitching up between a return to boom-bap and less familiar territory. The first half of the album pitches for the former, while later cuts go for reinvention, plunging Keith into a mire of riffs. [Jun 2018, p.54]

Right at the top of “Change Of Tone” there’s a fragment of studio chuckle that underlines just how remarkably spontaneous and unfussed this genre-messing project really is. There are long, slow passages of astral funk, MC’d by Terrace Martin’s vocoder and guest vocal murmurings, but also moments of much darker jazz futurism, elements of freedom (like the bizarre guess-the-nextnote piano fill under the PM Dawn-like “Awake To You”) and further elements of verité and concrete. [Jul 2018, p.57]

There’s a brace of humble attempts to get his head round his situation, tracks like “Trauma” and “Oodles O’ Noodles Babies”, brilliantly nuanced performances where Meek wavers on the edge between uncommon restraint and a violent simmer. Jay-Z showing up on “What’s Free” to boast about tax avoidance brings everything back into perspective.

It’s a smart meld, digging up some real finds and gesturing towards a switched-on DJ mind. [Jan 2020, p.70]

Gane forgoes the intensifying momentum found elsewhere in his work for a more conventionally cinematic arc. [Aug 2020, p.52]

The Symbol Remains finds a band with their sardonic humour, lurid pulp fascinations and ability to jam intact. [Oct 2020, p.65]

The addition of Morgane Diet’s seraphic vocals provides an emotional access point, filtering a grand cosmic aesthetic into a relatable and human scale. [Nov 2021, p.64]

Fortunately, aside from this piece “Let Me Sleep”], the banal Clark-adjacent string spiccatos of “The Horror” and certain sections that drag on and on, this is compelling, bodymoving and occasionally inspired music. [Dec 2021, p.

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]

Here Dakar covers country with “Walking After Midnight” and “Love Hurts”, but the outstanding cuts are her takes on The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing”, as once claimed by The Pretenders, and a remarkably affecting reggae treatment of the old Louis Armstrong chestnut “What A Wonderful World”. [Jun 2023, p.64]

Its comforting gloom draws you closer and closer, extending an invitation to lose yourself that could easily be mistaken for escapism. But this music is one of presence, not absence. [Sep 2025, p.61]

The results are overwhelmingly chirpy, but there's a frisson between his uniquely crusty voice and the shimmering digital surfaces. He sounds comfortable, but he doesn't blend in. [Dec 2025, p.63]

It's good enough, in fact, for it not to matter much that it basically peaks at the start. [May 2026, p.52]

Altogether, there is a fluid, amniotic quality to the record. Listeners may find themselves spacing out, looking out the window or staring at something, sinking into the riffs and the ASMR-like words that emerge - "We are walking in circles", "She dreams in the future", "Impossible drawing" - amid the hypnotic rise and fall of the synths. [May 2026, p.46]

The result is streamlined and raw, but still with their customary flourishes of melodic invention woven in. [Dec 2014, p.48]

She’s the type of restless innovator that doesn’t stick with the same style for too long, and FIBS is a joyful, energetic follow-up to her debut. [Nov 2019, p.56]

Oldham's rewriting of his own songs sometimes turns into a queasy compulsion.... There are some stunning revisions in this collection. [Mar 2016, p.62]

he duo of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan come closer than on any previous effort to reconciling the two halves of their musical personality. [Oct 2016, p.52]

One of the hardest and most consistent recent statements in US hiphop. [Oct 2016, p.48]

With none of the barking dogs found on "Son," Un Dia generally limits itself to guitars, synths, voice and percussion, a more intimate, insular palette of sounds that is sometimes too subdued to really egage. [Oct 2008, p.60]

His music is closer to an upgrade of the wigglier, more luxurious end of Megadog/ Megatripolis 90s clip-on dreadlock rave, or more recently the hallucination holiday postcards of Call Super, than to anything genuinely raw and lo-fi like Kyle Hall, Jamal Moss or Karen Gwyer. [Aug 2018, p.66]