Right at the top of “Change Of Tone” there’s a fragment of studio chuckle that underlines just how remarkably spontaneous and unfussed this genre-messing project really is. There are long, slow passages of astral funk, MC’d by Terrace Martin’s vocoder and guest vocal murmurings, but also moments of much darker jazz futurism, elements of freedom (like the bizarre guess-the-nextnote piano fill under the PM Dawn-like “Awake To You”) and further elements of verité and concrete. [Jul 2018, p.57]

Will depend on how indulgent you personally feel towards the Parliamentary legacy. The smart thing to do would be to purchase tracks selectively and sequence your own version of Medicaid Fraud Dogg. In other words: be wise and sample before you buy. [Jul 2018, p.55]

Age Of is arguably Lopatin’s best album to date. He achieves exactly what he sets out to. [Jul 2018, p.55]

She mostly succeeds at marrying that [transcendent black pop] to a sound that’s broader and more accessible than anything she’s put out to date. [Jul 2018, p.53]

The eight tracks and 40 minutes here feel far more porous and open than a lot of contemporary electronic music allows itself to be--edited together by Hassell from various performances, its erratic, switch-backing progress sketches large structures but leaves them light and airy, rich and heady without crowding the mix. It demands to be played on a big system, to enter the air. [Jul 2018, p.50]

Though this particularly esoteric presentation was not unique to Serpentwithfeet, few executed it as well. But just as he did with the genre tag pagan gospel and his initial handle Josiah Wise Is The Serpent With Feet, this time around Wise has, lyrically at least, mostly discarded such trappings in service of something more tangible and familiar. [Jul 2018, p.49]

On his fourth album, he seems to be wrestling with how to modernise his signature blues and roots foundation without minimising its traditional elements. Parts that would work better with stripped down production are overproduced with the layering of background vocals, keyboards and added sound effects, making the music too rich for the message. [Jul 2018, p.48]

Pared back and abrasive, the music is somewhat diffuse compared to Schofield’s earlier records. The hard edges of its rhythms are scattered, the sound so foggy it’s hard to hear. [Jul 2018, p.46]

Through poetry, wordplay and a sonic palette that seamlessly bridges the human and the mechanical, IRISIRI positions itself at a nexus of sonic and conceptual ambiguity, weaving openended narratives with a logic that eludes straightforward interpretation and exudes genuine wonder and fascination. [Jul 2018, p.45]

The Body’s central drive focuses on heaviness, both as a sonic and emotional motif, and while their creative apex I Shall Die Here demonstrates a logical conclusion of the former, I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer sees the band explore dramatic terror, to limited success. [Jul 2018, p.44]

It’s a satisfying--if rather safe--album. [Jul 2018, p.44]

Hendrix’s collaboration with Stephen Stills on the Joni Mitchell penned anthem “Woodstock” is one of the album’s standouts, as they push the song further out than Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young could ever have imagined, while Johnny Winter on “The Things I Used To Do” sounds like the boy got moonshine on his fingers and pain in his heart. [Jun 2018, p.72]

Ultimately, though, it’s a portrait of the artist on permanent vacation. [Jun 2018, p.72]

Benin stalwarts including Black Santiago, The Picoby Band and El Rego Et Ses Commandos all deliver, while Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou get an outing on the atmospheric, if understated “Idavi” and the boogie funk of “Moulon Devla”. Les Sympathetics De Porto Novo’s set opener “A Min We Vo Nou We” is all ragged fuzz guitar and lifted JB licks, lit from within by the incendiary urgency of the Benin sound. [Jun 2018, p.69]

At 31 minutes it’s a perfectly timed drift towards increasingly heatsick, woozy instrumental hiphop. [Jun 2018, p.67]

The addition of Steven McDonald from Red Kross and Jeff Pinkus from The Butthole Surfers lends more low end weight to the band’s already bottom heavy sound, but otherwise Pinkus Abortion Technician is business as usual. [Jun 2018, p.65]

Sings Olivia Newton-John is an album nobody asked for but that’s partly what makes it special. Hatfield’s garage-bound arrangements scuff up the squeaky clean originals to likeable effect and she throws herself into the project with gusto. [Jun 2018, p.65]

If you’re after period reproductions of 1970s rustic rock, will please you just fine. [Jun 2018, p.65

As with all Venetian Snares records, it can feel a bit of an endurance test, every possible permutation of kick, snare and hat cycled through in a breakneck half-hour until the listener is battered into submission. But Lanois and Funk elevate each other’s sound, bringing a certain unlikely prettiness to the album’s general mood of freneticism. [Jun 2018, p.64]

No 4 is the culmination of a pull towards music that’s more space horror soundtrack than contemplative melancholia, and Vantzou’s darkest release yet. [Jun 2018, p.64]

All told, there are some beautiful moments on this record, as well as a sense that the gap between what Fennelly wants his music to be and what he is able to accomplish is gradually narrowing. [Jun 2018, p.62]

The record slips easily into a catalogue that is consistent with the familiar John Maus aesthetic, which will no doubt satiate a voracious fan’s appetite for music that exists outside of time, always and at once. [Jun 2018, p.62]

What’s exceptional about Novelist Guy is the ease with which he remakes grime in his own image, gifting it a breadth and charm and appeal others have struggled for over a decade to synthesize. [Jun 2018, p.62]

Here as elsewhere, Hval manages to perfectly combine an eerie, folkish, ethereal pitch that even veers on yodelling at times, as if summoning an army of hidden folk, with an earthly sensuality that speaks of all kinds of lust, particularly the kinds that hint at lengthy afternoons in obscure cabins. [Jun 2018, p.58]

Another stellar release by this persistently valuable band. [Jun 2018, p.57]

More than any other Gas album Rausch captures the exhilaration one can feel deep in the woods, walking for far too long, marching ever forward without ever looking back. [Jun 2018, p.56]

This might not have the more overtly radical studio tricks and militant attitudes that make, say, Moodymann more acceptable to experimental music fans, but as a narrative joining fusion to ghetto house to microhouse to churchy soul to beachlounging Balearica, it’s a deeply involving piece of work. [Jun 2018, p.56]

The Automator sounds uncertain, pitching up between a return to boom-bap and less familiar territory. The first half of the album pitches for the former, while later cuts go for reinvention, plunging Keith into a mire of riffs. [Jun 2018, p.54]