Urstan can be seen as a remedial effort. [Apr 2012, p.58]

It's tempting to consider The Ex as Holland's The Fall, but that wouldn't be quite right--de Boer's pronouncements lack the gnomic bite of Mark E Smith. But these free thinkers are still taking more risks than Salford's finest have considered in years. [Dec 2010, p.46]

Pastel and Thomson don’t attempt to (re)create the actual music made by Memorial Device; instead they piece together a suggestive collage of sounds evocative of the post-punk era and representative of wistful remembrance. The Pastels’ dreamy tendencies are well suited to this brief. [Sep 2024, p.54]

How you feel about the LP will reflect how far you’re into its comic meets splatter trick. It feels sketchy and underdeveloped to me. [Apr 2019, p.68]

“Sky Burial” gives us a melodic refrain of “I’ve been looking for you” bouncing over phantasmal electronic, squelching synths and a bass that almost clangs with detuning; “Dyma Fy Robot” revels in Metal Mickey vocals and a tumble of discombobulated percussion and trilling birdsong; “Tiny Witch Hunter” tangles helium-fuelled vocals with wailing sax and African rhythms. [Dec 2018, p.59]

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]

For all the homemade, quirky charm on show here -- and the album has plenty of wide open, lyrical moments -- Ether Teeth leaves behind a lingering, moody, melancholy aftertaste. [#231, p.60]

Pleasantly ear friendly and leaves no unpleasant odour or lingering aftertaste. [#243, p.74]

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]

An excellent showcase of their different approaches. [Oct 2007, p.55]

This is perhaps the group's most straightforward release outside of their intermittent collaboration with late vocalist Ronnie James Dio. [Jul 2013, p.52]

I can’t recommend this as a great hiphop record or remotely the state of the art right now. But for fans it’s an essential, harrowing work – Gang Starr’s equivalent of Big Star’s Third. [Jan 2020, p.60]

His songs are still gauzy and intangible, the breathy vocals offering lyrical wisps that only hint at turbulent emotions. [Aug 2015, p.58]

Yes, it's disappointing that Stewart fails to stretch the musical imagination at the same tome, but to roll you eyes at the lack if sophistication or concussive originality is to shun the bigger picture. [Mar 2012, p.60]

Who Do You Love? may be a tacit admission by Norway’s Årabrot that they can push that sound no further. There’s an unlikely, boisterously garage rock vibe to much of this record, albeit larded with gothic drama by Kjetil Nernes’s vocal approach. [Nov 2018, p.65]

Unfortunately, for all the insight, this willingness to play victim often overshadows the incisiveness of the MC's observations when it come to the beats he has chosen to rail over. [Sep 2008, p.66]

If Magic 2 reveals that Nas can definitely still rap, it also continues his unfortunate run of uninspiring production choices. There are enjoyable moments, like the 50 Cent assisted “Office Hours”, the ominous string driven force of “Motion”, and the mesmerizing penmanship on “Slow It Down”, but overall the album falls short for an artist of Nas’s stature. [Sep 2023, p.68]

Sounds at times as much like an audio documentary of Cameron's Britain as a collection of electronic songs. [Oct 2015, p.62]

Likeable but fairly forgettable listen. [Feb 2016, p.57]

His arch over-emoting robs his songs of any sense of genuine feeling. [Feb 2013, p.60]

Melvins' evolution from potential stoner rock dinosaurs to 21st century sound shifters is complete. [Jul 2008, p.52]

Sic Alp's latest might make for acceptable audio wallpaper--nice tunes and all, just ragged enough to contrive an illusion of edginess--but it crumbles under closer scrutiny. [Mar 2011, p.58]

The record inevitably calls to mind such seminal sci-fi soundtracks as The Terminator and Blade Runner. ...The album is nonetheless imbued with an intrinsic purposiveness which emphatically renders its sounds meaningful in excess or independent of conceptual determination. [Dec 2017, p.49]

At times this soundtrack feels like a library music album with umpteen variations of the same cue, at different speeds and edit times – but the piano-led “Strodes At The Hospital”, the guitar solos and growling synth bass of “Hallway Madness” and the many moods of “It Needs To Die” are moments of fresh interest. [Dec 2021, p.61]

The music is so devoid of anything to grab onto, listening to it is rather like plummeting at speed through the artificial landscape constructed for the film. [Mar 2011, p.48]

A richly nuanced album, and eloquent in its restraint. [#257, p.57]

Is it fun? Well, yes, even if it does end up sounding like 15 different musical assemblages from an equal number of historical periods playing at once. [Feb 2016, p.59]

It's a startlingly consistent album--dazzling, baffling and sprawling in the same way that Russell and his work was. [Dec 2014, p.50]