The sound is crisp without sacrificing any of Chesnutt’s trademark grit. By adding a little glean, Cody Chesnutt gives you the best of both sonic worlds. [Aug 2017, p.48]

This Valley is deeper and wider, thanks in no small part to Gelb’s voice, which has matured beautifully over the decades while retaining its waywardness. It’s exceedingly rare that a Gelb/Sand release is a waste of time, and Returns doesn’t buck that trend. [Sep 2018, p.63]

The most successful moments come when the supernatural energy of Rimbaud’s work are palpable in their musical translation. [Jan 202, p.69]

Rocky synthesises the cutting edge experiments of his peers into a more commercially polished product that lacks the eccentricity of its influences but is uniquely out there when compared to most mainstream fare. [Feb 2013, p.61]

Breezy, disorientated, unhurried, its content seeks an instant surface rapport through a bold display of clips and cuts. [#245, p.69]

A fitful and languishing affair whose best moments will have you yearning for more, while the worst may leave some listeners wondering what they were doing here in the first place. [#248, p.59]

While some tracks here showcase his incredible touch, others are straightforward hiphop loops that might have been built using a Tony Allen sample kit, and the album as a whole lacks conceptual or thematic unity. [Jul 2021, p.60]

Cutting through the tedium reveals a moderately engaging narrative of low level criminality with solid insights ranging from the cloying to mildly provocative. [Feb 2017, p.59]

Even though there are no drums, nothing here ever feels aimless. [Sep 2013, p.48]

The aforementioned “Carpathian Darkness” is an archetype for the album as a whole, thoroughly captivating despite (or because) of its familiarity. [Feb 2021, p.46]

Again and again the same transition is repeated, as the album slips between the utopian and the real. [Jul 2015, p.49]

This is music strapped for battle, the beats tooled up and live-sounding, the loops and details kept to a brute minimum by Doom so that the lines, and guest spots from Vinnie Paz and Open Mike Eagle, can really punch through. [May 2018, p.63]

The album’s just out of reach quality is genuinely affecting, its impressionism charged with tension. [Aug 2018, p.52]

The Wire agenda stays constant in a changing world. [Apr 2015, p.63]

There’s far more US punk in this music (you’re often reminded of The Descendents and The Dictators) than UK punk and, considering we live in the age of Bob Vylan, much of the album sounds too retrograde. I would have loved more of the angriness, and some quality control on the inherent defeatism/smirk of band name and album title. [Aug 2021, p.65]

Joyful, heart-warming, brain-fizzing stuff. [Jul 2022, p.50]

There is, in the end, something vaguely nauseating about a bunch of popular entertainers in middle age creating state-supported art inspired by the deaths of countless young men caused by an act of state-subsidised slaughter. [Jan 2015, p.61]

There’s a telling lack of conviction when he uses the past tense saying “I used to feel so devastated… now we on our way to greatness”. It’s a shame because when he settles for articulating rage from a less lofty position at the centre of a crowd he’s rejuvenated, alongside Schoolboy Q, J Cole, Styles P and Kirk Knight admitting a burn in his gut and boasting of how he’s “flowing religiously... Amerikkka’s worst nightmare, the super predator”. [May 2017, p.62]

The core line-up of guitarist Buzz Osbourne and drummer Dale Crover, along with the recent addition of Steven McDonald from Redd Kross on bass, attack the vast catalogue of songs with great zeal while making sure to confound the masses in the way we somehow expect. [Oct 2021, p.51]

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]

Ultimately, though, one crucial element is missing: El-P's voice. His desperate, throbbing-forehead-vein rapping is as vital as his sound as the synths or the beats, and this disc would have been vastly improved by even one bilious verse. [Aug 2010, p.61]

To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]

A slippery, shape-shifting quality is one of the great strengths of Amon Tobin's sixth album. Plainly put, Out From Out Where is impossible to pin down. [#226, p.67]

A very nice slab of pan-generic, lof-fi, yearn-pop. [#231, p.59]

It's cleaner sounding for a start--each track gleams like a freshly sharpened butcher's knife--and the sense of dynamics is rather more acute. [Nov 2012, p.70]

Each track Nelson has tautly defined a geography of sound specific to that place, real or imagined. [May 2013, p.64]

Risveglio seems keen to be accepted on its own terms rather than a simple curio. This it warrants, and rewards patient listening.

Ultimately the album's strength lies in the way its civil facade barely masks Trim's enduring unresolved issues, its portrait of an MC looking to simultaneously escape, dominate and earn the acknowledgement of a scene he transcended a long way back. [Sep 2016, p.62]