The First Family isn't for Sly & The Family Stone beginners, but it gives aficionados a fascinating glimpse of their origin story. [Oct 2025, p.72]

The project ultimately feels a little vague and indulgent. Though the sounds of plastic on offer are eclectic and the compositions joyous, Matmos seem to acknowledge climate change as a throwaway aside in favour of an avant garde remaking of physical theatre. [Mar 2019, p.55]

Challenge Me Foolish reveals just how influential he was and continues to be. [May 2018, p.62]

Kudos to both director and music supervisor for thinking outside the source music box. [Jun 2011, p.47]

A surprisingly engrossing side project. [Feb 2013, p.58]

While Ekoplekz's Brit-hauntoscopy might easily have started to wear thin by now, Unfidelity's precision and diversity has plenty to offer. [Mar 2014, p.65]

The Earth Is Blue has a glorious, spacey innocence that inspires affection. [#253, p.57]

Vol 1 collects the same tracks as the bonus disc from 2002's Luxe Reduxe reissue.... It's a little bizarre. [Aug 2015, p.67]

Nostalgialator is exhilarating, eschewing rhetorical rap fury in favour of a satirical masqued ball of capitalist obsessions. [#246, p.52]

Much of it is subtly melancholic, like a Broadway medley received in a dream. [#218, p.71]

It's hardly an essential record; more a reminder of past possibilities, really, than something that points toward the future. [Jul 2012, p.60]

[Arthur Jeffes] often seems over-cautious. ... Yet when Jeffes reins in a tendency to over-orchestrate, he shares his father’s talent for painting delightful scenes with limited palettes. [May 2017, p.53]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

The sounds can seem a bit insubstantial when compared to his earlier work, like 2018’s Soil, where serpent angled to suffocate the listener in raw emotion. But he eventually finds a nice groove that yields rewards. [Mar 2024, p.59]

Come Around sees Carla dal Forno’s songwriting taking new shapes and routes, allowing her to pour her cratedigging folk knowledge (showcased monthly in her NTS show) into these open and confident songs. [Dec 2022, p.54]

Pared back and abrasive, the music is somewhat diffuse compared to Schofield’s earlier records. The hard edges of its rhythms are scattered, the sound so foggy it’s hard to hear. [Jul 2018, p.46]

Ripatti employs a panoply of dynamic breaks and styles without sticking to anything for too long. The results are both claustrophobic and entertaining. [Aug 2022, p.48]

Micachu & the Shapes have yet to blunt their edge. [Jul 2012, p.60]

M:FANS sounds way too much of its moment: it sounds just how you expect right now to sound. Worse, maybe: it actually sounds like a few years back. [Jan 2016, p.84]

With the Jicks now sharing the spotlight, sees Malkmus's familiar tangled lyricism and meandering tendencies offset by some tremendous group performances. [Mar 2008, p.57]

Moore runs the risk of seeming absorbed in some kind of midlife episode, but he gets away with it by deploying punk spunk as just one of an arsenal of countercultural referents rather than as a means to regain or revisit his youth. [Mar 2013, p.50]

Down there, his most accessible work outside the confines of Animal Collective, revels in that upside-down gravity. [Nov 2010, p.61]

Those expecting further dubwize excursions from this duo may be disappointed by their venture into the lounge rather than the yard. Unfair, really, as Thievery Corporation have embodied eclecticism from their beginnings, and the bass booms as sweetly as on any of their previous efforts. [#200, p.83]

It may lack subtlety but it sounds incredibly vital. [#229, p.68]

Though it’s no concept album, eight of the 12 tracks address either social issues or spiritual solutions. There’s the odd Prince bit of obscure esoterica but mostly it’s direct and effective. ... Welcome 2 America is vital enough to render such matters moot. it’s the sound of Prince truly not giving a damn and that should be edge enough for anybody. [Sep 2021, p.70]

Byrne's Who Is The Sky? has a similar foundation of strong songwriting, but with bigger production and instrumentation. [Oct 2025, p.50]

The mainstreaming of yoga, mindfulness and other pursuits of spiritual enrichment in our digitally distracted, permanently anxious modern reality might have tipped the balance, as Laraaji pulls in listeners who aren’t necessarily collectors of forgotten, strange or otherwise outsider music. [Nov 2017, p.58]

Exactly how delicately balanced their chemistry together is becomes apparent on the two solo albums that round out this three disc set. Both are decent in their own right but pale in comparison to the group disc. [Jul 2018, p.62]