Despite being busy, Miri isn’t crowded. Kouyate has returned to a more acoustic sound after the electrified Ba Power, and his ngoni structures the songs with clarity and poise. [Apr 2019, p.68]

With moderately different production, a lot of this would probably sound significantly tougher, but one gets the sense that studio slickness has rendered it a little toothless, blunting what could be a much sharper edge. [Apr 2019, p.68]

Significant Changes is a brilliant album that merges Jayda’s parallel worlds. [Apr 2019, p.65]

The album finds different creative forms in convergence. Efdemin uses the album format to combine audio storytelling with ambient and drone based compositions that tell their own stories. [Apr 2019, p.65]

Gelb’s discordant phrasing and deft wordplay weave gently throughout. At heart, it’s a romantic album about lost moments. [Apr 2019, p.65]

The music resonates with a clarity Treanor had not yet achieved in the past, where the glassy shards of “ATAXIA A2” meet the staggered modulations and condensed hi-hats of “ATAXIA D1”, and ultimately reveal a unique and unexpected humanity. [Apr 2019, p.64]

Forgoing any temptation to portray herself as an alluring curio, Lafawndah instead pushes a singular yet communal vision, processing a blessedly rich vein of cultural information and cutting edge influence. [Apr 2019, p.63]

Cabral’s vocals, typically hushed, make Mazy Fly feel like a shared secret, its own world, and it’s thrilling to enter. [Apr 2019, p.62]

No More Normal showcases UK talent proudly, but bringing so much of it together, loses some of the character that might attract new listeners to UK music. Reaching for the historical weight of Soul II Soul, it ends up with the easy going vibe of The Brand New Heavies. [Apr 2019, p.59]

The entire affair has a bewitching ease, an effortlessness absent from Malkmus’s artistry since the days when he wanted to name his solo debut Swedish Reggae. [Apr 2019, p.58]

Little Simz’s latest--and greatest--album is divided between three emotional states: bravado, doubt and love. [Apr 2019, p.58]

He has a fascinating rhythmic sense, phrasing almost like a man who is writing down his words as he sings them, which gives the record a strong sense of immediacy and almost improvised spontaneity. And yet the accompaniments are more elegantly constructed than that implies, a beguiling mixture of harmonic squidge and tight metrical control. [Apr 2019, p.57]

She delivers an almost unrelentingly banging techno set whose cuts, while perhaps underground, could never be referred to as deconstructed. [Apr 2019, p.57]

The results are gorgeous. [Apr 2019, p.54]

Don’t let inevitable mainstream acclaim obscure the beauty and ingenuity of this album; it’s big enough for everyone. [Apr 2019, p.52]

State Of Ruin is a typically pristine offering from Planet Mu’s UK roster of trap and grime inspired producers, at once displaying high definition composition of dynamic bass pressure without really producing anything hugely exciting. [Apr 2019, p.50]

The production has remained faithfully jagged and abrasive, where a trebly and bass-starved sonic narrative enforces a fresh take on what continues to be intense and difficult listening. [Apr 2019, p.50]

It’s just possible that, nearly three decades into her recording career, It’s Real is Ex Hex frontwoman Mary Timony’s strongest release to date. [Mar 2019, p.62]

By the time you’re through to the end of the album, Negro’s precise refusal to have bullied you with his ideas means you’re happy to return to the beginning and let that sunlight in again. Central heating for kids. Lovely. [Mar 2019, p.57]

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]

There’s no subject harder to broach in polite society than loneliness. Martin and Robinson know this and should be commended for taking an extended gaze into this particular abyss. [Mar 2019, p.54]

Three years ago Eyes On The Lines marked the emergence of an important songwriting talent, a rebirth midwifed by a dozen years on the road. The Unseen In Between delivers the same impact, but deeper and more lasting. If you wanted to pinch a Chapman reference, you might say it acknowledges that those growing pains never actually stop. [Mar 2019, p.48]

These aren’t stoical songs; nor are they blandly defiant. They speak a deep truth about ageing, and one that spikes several more humdrum cliches: age isn’t just how you feel, but an ineluctable fact; it isn’t just a matter of numbers, but very much a felt experience, and Chapman has delivered a beautiful continuum of musical experience since he emerged in 1969 with Rainmaker and Fully Qualified Survivor. [Mar 2019, p.48]

Lee Gamble’s In A Paraventral Scale makes another step towards a scene that for some has been and gone. [Mar 2019, p.51]

“Carapace” is one worth returning to, an agitated Pixies-style rocker that pogos up and down for three energetic minutes. Equally enjoyable is the kosmische inspired interplay wired into “Lurk Of The Worm”, together with the bolts of grunge that light up “Where Have You Been All My Life?”. Elsewhere some of Pollard’s songs can be compared to those of Peters Gabriel and Hammill, two distinct guiding voices who can occasionally be heard whispering in the hull of this inflated blimp of a record. [Mar 2019, p.52]

Eton Alive is but another visceral and impetuous take on a grim political reality. [Mar 2019, p.58]

Encore is Hall’s first record under the moniker since the 1981 single “Ghost Town”, and with guitarist Lynval Golding and bassist Horace Panter in the fold, it feels more like The Specials than anything has in a long time. [Mar 2019, p.59]

Merging a sophisticated rhythm dynamism, often with an almost gamelan aspect (“Two Flames Burn”) with a Laibachian apocalyptic proclamatory element and 90s crossover rave-electronic-industrial urgency, Disturbance may not be entirely different from what Test Dept were doing a long time ago, but, then again, nor is the political context in which they’re doing it. [Mar 2019, p.60]