The production, courtesy of DJ Dahi, No ID and James Blake, spirals outward from the world this Long Beach native’s peers inhabit and into satisfyingly experimental territory. [Oct 2016, p.65]

Most of SremmLife II’s successes are confined to its front half, but the brothers have a strong enough pop sensibility to reward your attention even when they’re on autopilot. [Oct 2016, p.65]

The sum is Ocean’s most thorough reading of his world to date. [Oct 2016, p.65]

The laser-like concentration on groove and gorgeous textural flutterings just about keep them away from pastiche; the result is like having honey poured in your ear for 50 minutes. [Oct 2016, p.64]

The results are tougher and less poised, less prone to pastiche or ironic self-identification. But in the process he’s become a bit workmanlike: you feel he could knock these tunes out to order and they’d all be creditable, but not much more. [Oct 2016, p.63]

Stripped of the visuals, the seemingly endless succession of minor variations (75 tracks between the two collections) on the same sets of glossy and pleasant synth arpeggios can be at once bitty and overwhelming. [Oct 2016, p.63]

Stripped of the visuals, the seemingly endless succession of minor variations (75 tracks between the two collections) on the same sets of glossy and pleasant synth arpeggios can be at once bitty and overwhelming. [Oct 2016, p.63]

There’s a strongly conceived sense of contrast and drama to “Sorcerer” and "Copter," the latter transforming from overwrought mid-80s action show theme to a slick and drugged R&B jam. [Oct 2016, p.63]

The vocal arrangements almost all verge on the irritating--overblown neo-gospel--but there’s too much good here to deny on that basis. [Oct 2016, p.63]

Become Zero sees Chesley using digital processing for the first time; “Radiate” benefits greatly, evolving over nine minutes from treated bowed dissonance into churchy ambient drone, while “Machine” adds layers to an initial loping pulse until it’s an enveloping roar. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Rich and resonant. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Do Not Disturb, VDGG’s 13th album and their third since regrouping in 2005, bears little evidence of engagement with music’s outside world, but it’s creative and sprightly on its own terms. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Tracks like “It’s Not Me” and “All-Seeing Eye” feel like works in progress and weigh down an already overlong album. Yet the album has its superlative bursts, like the fingerpicked coda of “Goodbye” and the gnarly biker metal guitars on “Alarms” and “Goatfuzz”. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Masculin Féminin documents a youthful band impulsively pouring noise into rock, free of machismo or the urge to ape what was then hip. [Oct 2016, p.61]

The songs have an irresistible quality of self-reflection. [Oct 2016, p.60]

As the album progresses, uneasiness is subliminally incorporated into otherwise deceptively easy rockin’ tunes. [Oct 2016, p.60]

It has a few surprises and sharp edges, but the structures are unstable. Like the post-rock improv of Aethenor, occasional bolts of energy strike and convulse the players. In its second half, however, 13 finally picks up momentum. [Oct 2016, p.60]

Diehard metalheads will continue to grumble, but Opeth are never going back to their old sound, and with Sorceress they’ve proved the wisdom of their choice. [Oct 2016, p.57]

Its exploratory, playful, even mystical temper, slipping easily between the emotional zones the history of song traverses, suggests a boredom with eschatology. [Oct 2016, p.55]

If Atrocity Exhibition doesn’t connect with quite the same power, it’s not for lack of commitment or craft. [Oct 2016, p.53]

he duo of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan come closer than on any previous effort to reconciling the two halves of their musical personality. [Oct 2016, p.52]

This feels like a love letter to dayglo dreams of the online world of 20 years ago, with beats and samples too evolved, too exuberant to sink into mere nostalgia. [Oct 2016, p.51]

Fires Within Fires is the summation of 30 years of experimentation in tonality and texture. Yes, Neurosis are firmly positioned within the extreme metal underground, yet their music, with its ability to generate images of beauty akin to those many of us have experienced in our own lives--not to mention the loss that accompanies them--challenges this categorisation. [Oct 2016, p.49]

One of the hardest and most consistent recent statements in US hiphop. [Oct 2016, p.48]

Jenssen can't maintain the balancing act throughout Departed Glories and only really pulls it off intermittently. But when he does it casts a lovely autumnal light somewhere between Folke Rabe’s pastoral minimalism, Andrew Chalk’s haunted pools of tone, or even the lambent string arrangements of Debussy’s Jeux. [Oct 2016, p.48]

The outcome is a record you could forget you're even listening to. [Nov 2016, p.66]

The Divine Feminine is well-intentioned and well-staffed, but ultimately lacks the sort of specificity in vision that would do its subject matter justice. [Nov 2016, p.61]

Darkthrone do pretty much what they please, divorced from scene politics and free to enthuse about Ron Hardy mixes or delivering the post. [Nov 2016, p.56]