Kesto could have been improved with some judicious edits; but when they are at the top of their game, these Finns are undeniably great. [#244, p.59]

Their current music has that wobbly centre of gravity that makes it sound both proto and post-punk at once, something between the garage fog of the Nuggets era and the more art-damaged end of the 1980s hardcore spectrum. Imagine Hüsker Dü or Saccharine Trust after they had too much to dream last night. [Aug 2024, p.84]

He remains a fascinating and fearless artist. But one can’t help but miss the outre experiments of Terror Management, where he bombed away over noise rock flurries and sepulchral beat loops alike. [May 2022, p.54]

Though it may not feel exactly pleasurable, it most definitely connects. [Sep 2014, p.72]

The tracks are subject to strategies of sampling, distortion, cut-up and back masking, to a troubling point of excess, impurity, queasiness, and corrosion, unheard of in earlier releases. [Feb 2012, p.60]

The selections step sufficiently far from the territory established by their own songs to generate intrigue without stretching credulity. [Jul 2020, p.64]

The result is a kind of lo-fi dream music, sea-changed and composite, with whisper-core mbalax drifting in and out focus between vaporous synth washes, low-key beat programming, spoken teachings and lilting song. [Feb 2021, p.61]

Bozulich's gloom is top quality gloom, as far as that goes, but nothing here lights up the heart like [2008's] Voyager's blistering "Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space." [Sep 2011, p.51]

After long, lean years of straight edge piety and arthouse restraint, guitar solos that don't hold anything back are as refreshing as they are liberating. [#224, p.56]

Its utter ahistoricity is one of its more charming dimensions, in a "why not?" sort of way. [Sep 2011, p.52]

Sonically, there is not much new ground to be found on Holograms On Metal Film as Stereolab are essentially revisiting the sonic pathways they carved out in the past. Yet the messaging in these songs is as timely as ever. [Jun 2025, p.49]

This is not a purely inert record, in the sense that it is still essentially rhythmic, its tracks built from an interplay of beats and circling melodic motifs. Instead, Statik more often brings to mind the approach Aphex Twin took circa the material on his first Selected Ambient Works collection – loops as unbroken circles, movement employed as a means of remaining in one place. [Jul 2024, p

Not surprisingly, given Marhaug’s presence during the time of global crisis when it was produced, this album has a harder edge than Owens’s previous releases. [Jun 2022, p.60]

Infinity Ultra keeps going with the introspective synth symphonies, but there are a couple of spots where it’s also up for a party, although maybe one where the dancefloor is full of blissed out narcoleptics. [Aug 2017, p.63]

Polyphonic chants mesh with distorted piano hits and percussive clatter in an ecstasy of derision and judgment, before turning into a righteous roar. [Oct 2021, p.58]

Love In Shadow, Sumac’s fourth studio album in three years, features four songs occupying a side of vinyl each and brushes territory you’d hardly associate with its members’ other projects. [Oct 2018, p.62]

In lesser hands [it could have slipped into corny retro tropes], but In Dust is if anything even less indebted to past styles than last year's impressive self-titled debut. [Sep 2011, p.56]

For much of the record he has opted for the middle ground of an unchallenging electronic music LP in the twinkly and tasteful tradition of Four Tet and Border Community, as ready for coffee table listening as a full AV show at London’s Barbican centre. ... At its most restrained Ephem:Era advances the sound of Signals in exciting directions. [Aug 2018, p.63]

To counter the straightforward songs there's a raucous stoop-start freakout on the likes of "Beat" and "Separate." [Sep 2013, 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]

There’s a mite more polish on Reason To Smile than some might favour. But there’s also a rich seam of dark humour and rage worthy of Kendrick Lamar or Silent Eclipse. [Jun 2022, p.62]

There’s a weighty sense of looking back and taking stock to Venus In Leo, while simultaneously navigating a present that’s growing increasingly alien to its protagonists. [Oct 2019, p.55]

Its stark, frosty textures recall the Metalheadz-influenced feel of Pinch's recent solo work, an aesthetic that occasionally, especially on "Precinct Of Sound," threatens to tip over into sluggish moodiness. At best it's just as deft and cosmically heavy as you'd hope. [Mar 2015, p.52]

The result lack some of the swarming, piercing detail and vertiginous shifts that give so much drama to late Scott. At the same time, it mostly does away with that haunts latter-day songs. [Oct 2014, p.51]

There are signs of eclectism creeping in, but these are balanced by the group's tendency to consolidate its progression with a rearguard action of sheer brute force. [Jul 2010, p.56]

Rose Golden Doorways sits somewhere between grindcore and raga. Created in a consecrated place – a church in Stoke Newington lends volume and reverb – it moves relentlessly forward, a continuous 38 minutes that reaches an apogee with the alien blast of “Those Among Us”. [Apr. 2020, p.59]

Three years in the making, Dawson’s follow-up ditches the formula entirely, transporting the listener to the AngloSaxon kingdom of Bryneich. ... The big question is how seriously to take all the antique stuff. [Jul 2017, p.50]