Gorgeous string arrangements, sax and synths give Birthmarks a palpable sense of encroaching mist. [Apr 2020]

We Are Sent Here By History is a meditation on all of the war, death and resistance that has shaped the world we live in today. Whether or not we can use the lessons learned from that pain to create a future that is worth living is a question that remains unanswered. [Mar 2020, p.56]

Some might find the shit-fi recording (albeit aided by a keen producer’s ear), the relentless bleakness, or Del Rio’s blackened vocals to be dealbreakers. But it’s undeniable that Raspberry Bulbs are not only unencumbered by constraints of genre, they’ve forged a sound unique to themselves. [Mar 2020, p.54]

Denzel’s flows are as hungry as ever, at times managing to channel the untamed spirit of DMX (see “Diet”) while Kenny’s production is the ideal mix of weighty drums and potent bass. It’s an energetic listen and one that can hopefully act as some sort of cure for Old Heads Syndrome – the belief that no one is making real hiphop anymore. [Apr 2020, p.68]

It’s hard to tell if there’s irony in all the anachronism but the record’s nostalgic to the point of kitsch aesthetic feels out of touch. [Apr 2020, p.67]

Every song on Fungus II aspires to soundtrack a twisted comic book or Hanna-Barbera cartoon about itself. Segall’s guitar and bass playing is wailing and distended while Chippendale lays down tight bursts of percussive fire. For the beetle-browed half hour this album lasts, these guys are here to party. [Apr 2020, p.63]

Like Stanley’s film, Stetson’s score fully realises the terrible, wondrous majesty hinted at in the 1927 text. [Apr 2020, p.62]

This is Smith’s most essential non-Fall work since his collaboration with Inch back in 1999. [Apr 2020, p.60]

Grave Of A Dog presents a challenges to the listener because although it succeeds as a well-executed project, there is a disjunction between form and content. Hayter in particular seems to gesture at a narrative, but its precise nature is left unclear. [Apr 2020, p.60]

Hus’s second album Big Conspiracy is the refined work of a man who’s emerging calloused and implacable from a tough decade, most recently a 2017 conviction for carrying a knife which cost him eight months and a string of festival appearances. Through it all, his music has swayed joyously escapist more than harrowing or politically charged. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Unlike many electronic producers whose work echoes the chill of black metal, he retains a certain subtlety – each jolt of sound is unburdened by grand posturing. [Apr 2020, p.52]

How literally Allen wants us to take his nod towards Herman Melville’s whale is left tantalisingly openended, although this tapestry of ghoulishly misremembered tales has an obvious parallel with Melville’s patchwork of story and allusion. [Apr 2020, p.49]

It seems telling for an album about self-discovery that the most convincing tracks are those where he’s openly panicking over his identity rather than those where he’s found an uneasy peace. [Mar 2020, p.61]

There Is No Year is a mixed bag of disparate musical styles, played out as an intelligently composed accompaniment for Fisher’s complex political rhetoric. [Mar 2020, p.58]

Wire’s music is characterised by unusual structures and perspectives, an approach largely absent from Mind Hive, the post-punk group’s 17th studio album. The most prominent themes here are political, with mixed results. [Mar 2020, p.57

Companion Rises does not choose between the structure of a catchy acoustic guitar motif and those sometimes abrasive electric moments where composure is allowed to drift away. Instead it opts to combine them. [Mar 2020, p.56]

This remake justifies the whole shebang. So perfect is the fit, in fact, that it feels uncannily like Scott-Heron’s sonorous rasp must have been recorded to fit this backing. ... Though often dark, this is both a celebration and a vindication: a truly great album. [Mar 2020, p.56]

With her second full-length album MHYSA has curated a minimalist smorgasbord of experimental arrangements, classic R&B tropes and seductive melodies, blending to bring the raw, naked emotion of the artist to the fore. [Mar 2020, p.52]

The folk inflection and multiplicity of Gately’s vocals make the album seem ancient. Or conjured. The songs aren’t ghostly as much as they feel witnessed, imbued with a palpable presence. ... Gately has sampled and mixed in her mother’s voice with her own, as if in acceptance of the balance of life and death. This co-existence – or the yearning for it – is ingrained in this astonishing album as a freshly carved cut in a foundational wooden beam. [Mar 2020, p.48]

Countless Branches does nothing different, but seems to knock them all dead by virtue of its naked simplicity alone. Some of these tracks are scarcely crafted songs at all but simple musings, addressed to no one in particular, not even an inward self, just uttered over soft, slow piano chords. [Mar 2020, p.48]

On the first, Williams engages each of Elkhorn’s members in turn. ... Williams switches to shahi baaja for the B side, casting effects-tinged tones like some cosmic fly fisherman wading into the confluence of two imaginary streams. [Mar 2020, p.47]

The first three Meters albums are their best by far, but every disc in this box is overflowing with addictive, brilliant funk. [Feb 2020, p.64]

Names of North End Women is marginally the more engaging of the two albums, possibly due to the previous creative relationship between Ranaldo and Refree. But All Hands Around The Moment actually illustrates most compellingly the contributions of each collaborator. [Feb 2020, p.55]

More passionate and sophisticated than much of what passes for musical eclecticism these days, Dark Matter is a fusion of old and new, acoustic and electronic. [Feb 2020, p.42]

If anything Quadra is even better [than 2017’s Machine Messiah], expertly filtering fresh textures (the fat synth that opens “Isolation” immediately raises an eyebrow, along with the Carl Orff-like chorale of “Last Time” and the Bollywood-ish orchestration of “Capital Enslavement”) into tightly coiled songs whose ferocity is comparable to Exhorder’s 2019 comeback Mourn The Southern Skies – albeit with a great deal more ambition and (effective) experimentation. [Feb 2020, p.56]

Hot Rats is testament to the power of the overdub, and as such, The Hot Rats Sessions mostly consists of a selection of instrumental parts presented in isolation, which won’t be of interest to all. As with the album, the rambling blues jams are the least interesting, and the real magic is in the origami-like marvels of “Peaches En Regalia”, “Son Of Mr Green Genes” and “It Must Be A Camel”. ... Most remarkable are the outakes.

The album opener “Electron Central” sets a blissful, meandering pace, winding around in a shimmering drone like a drop of ink diffusing in a glass of water. ... The album closer “Empty Hold” takes a more unsettled turn, swooning and rattling into a resonant void. [Feb 2020, p.61]

Downbeat, deliberately anticlimactic, refusing to abide by rap orthodoxies, while affirming one of the genre’s dominant reflexes – calling out pretenders. Think of Marceliago as Macbeth transferred to Hempstead, Long Island, or any of the city’s other unacknowledged locales. Marciano’s rhymes read like rap koans. [Feb 2020, p.60]