These themes of anguish are not so much bleak as moving, for he always finds a way to inject his wry observations into the mix. [Feb 2008, p.54]

The tracklisting is divided between acknowledged classics and ephemera. There are extended remixes, demos and live tracks, but only a couple of genuinely illuminating items, and more often in theory than practice. [Nov 2018, p.72]

Nothing has afforded him unlimited space to recalibrate after a period of upheaval and loss. [Nov 2015, p.45]

It’s all well played and lusciously presented, and if you’re meditating to the album, little here will disrupt your vibe. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.77]

Even when he's calling all the shots and playing most of the instruments himself, Turner seems to stay in the background. For the most part, his strategy works. [Nov 2013, p.62]

These are elements that need time to present themselves, on an album that requires a retreat inward. It’s the kind of mindquietening escape. [Oct 2018, p.55]

It's impressive on the first few listens, it grows irritating with repeat play. [Apr 2011, p.57]

The new, mature De La means traditional pop over brash artistry, religion over irony, and conformity over the extraordinary. [#215, p.59]

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]

There's a sparse but fluid lyricism to Chasny's tumbling, post-Takoma guitar style. [Feb 2011, p.56]

Where the album works best is in the loose, mesmerising fluency of tracks where such odd structures loses its slight air of gimmickry. [Sep 2014, p.64]

It's the multilingual, mulch-direcctional, half sung, half spoken vocals that really make The Visitor though. [Jul 2013, p.66]

His unfocused ire dominates every inch of space. It's frustrating because the best tracks here deftly whirl together seemingly disparate styles. [Dec 2012, p.61]

As with all Venetian Snares records, it can feel a bit of an endurance test, every possible permutation of kick, snare and hat cycled through in a breakneck half-hour until the listener is battered into submission. But Lanois and Funk elevate each other’s sound, bringing a certain unlikely prettiness to the album’s general mood of freneticism. [Jun 2018, p.64]

Songs are short with a pop-punk punchiness. “Defendants” could be a relationship song encoded in the to and fro language of a courtroom and features a breezy guitar solo, as do several tracks that follow. [Dec 2024, p.47]

Where French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott gained attention with her reinvention of the viola da gamba as a rhythmic instrument on 2015’s enchanting Captain Of None, this album is more ambient and interior. [Jun 2021, p.63]

The crisp and urgent execution on this recording has been immaculately produced, the overall result being an immediacy that only an accomplished performer and ensemble can achieve. [May 2017, p.47]

Wet Tuna always sound as if they’re trying to escape the constraints of product and profit. “Disco Bev” is delightfully sour and affectionate, “Sacagawea” more expansive and produced sounding, but it all hangs together brilliantly, even as it falls (dis)gracefully apart. [Oct 2019, p.52]

I miss the grit and grain of Skelton’s unique string sounds, but he still gets a brightness in his melancholy, often via a bristling major chord. [Oct 2020, p.61 ]

While 2016’s Painting With was a jumble of interesting ideas lacking direction, Time Skiffs is the opposite: a paint by numbers indie pop affair completed using a quirky palette. While paring down to a more focused format is welcome, the music is suffocated by anachronisms, both within AC’s own and wider pop contexts. [Feb 2022, p.46]

His maniacal energy is infectious. [Nov 2008, p.77]

An engrossing collection. [Aug 2016, p.63]

The inconsistency here might grate but if you focus on Freddie’s spellbinding raps the story is cohesive and fearless. [Jun 2017, p.77]

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]

Darkthrone do pretty much what they please, divorced from scene politics and free to enthuse about Ron Hardy mixes or delivering the post. [Nov 2016, p.56]

Deprived of fuzzy riffs, Domenic Palermo’s voice floats naked in a woolly, gentle sound, simultaneously confessing and recollecting. But from there on, they shift into higher gear, injecting doses of anxiety into colourful progressive dream pop and shoegaze bites. [Dec 2020, p.62]

It's only when that rhythm programming is either stripped right back or broken apart that you get a sense of overabundant glee in playing with the blurts and splurts of the synth timbres, and this feels like more than the generic, albeit impeccably executed IDM record that the title rightly suggests. [Mar 2016, p.53]

Combining live ensemble performances by an 11-piece instrumental group, string quartet and four vocalists, with brief AutoTuned solo interludes, this is above all, a collective music. [Sep 2023, p.60]