Album of the Week
Our favourite LP of the moment
Album of the Week
Brian Coney On The Moonlandingz’ Interplanetary Class Classics
In The Moonlandingz first full-length offering as a non-fictional outfit, Brian Coney finds a record that refuses to wear only one mask – futurist without revivalism, acerbic but with swagger – and throws off with gusto any accusations of the term side-project
Album of the Week
Karl Smith On Mind Over Mirrors’ Undying Color
In the sixth release from Jaime Fennelly's Mind Over Mirrors project, expanding from a solo effort to a collaboration on five fronts, Karl Smith finds a work of folkloric mythology both saturated with history and necessary at our present moment
Album of the Week
Joseph Burnett On Shackleton’s Sferic Ghost Transmits
In Sam Shackleton's latest offering, Joseph Burnett finds a record occupying two spaces simultaneously – pushing both the legacy of Coil's post-industrial pagan folk tradition and testing a sense of "what might have been" for mid-to-late 00s dubstep
Album of the Week
Jeremy Allen On Mick Harvey’s Intoxicated Women
In the fourth (and supposedly final) instalment of Mick Harvey's Serge Gainsbourg albums, Jeremy Allen finds a fitting culmination to an unprecedented 22 years of dedication to the deceased French icon – not just a satisfying end, but a promising jumping off point, too
Album of the Week
Luke Turner On The xx’s I See You
In The xx's third full-length effort, Luke Turner finds an album seemingly more geared toward the televisions syncs that catapulted their once affecting minimalism to ubiquity – a record more about treading old ground with heavy boots than the light touch their debut promised
Album of the Week
Andrew Lindsay-Diaz On Brian Eno’s Reflection
In Brian Eno's latest foray into ambient music – a generative piece of, quite literally, endless possibility – Andrew Lindsay-Diaz finds an answer to cynical critics of the genre, and a piece of work very much right for the present moment
Album of the Week
Brendan Telford On Hey Colossus’ Dedicated To Uri Klangers
The nihilistic bombast and bluster that is the noise of Hey Colossus showcases a disparate cache of men desperate to beguile, bewilder, and laugh at the demise of all around them – including themselves. Brendan Telford looks at this bludgeoning compilation that spans the band’s brutal, mystical history
Album of the Week
Jeremy Allen On Justice’s Woman
In the French electronic duo's third album, Jeremy Allen finds not only a a work that sets right any misstep that may have occurred between 2007's † and the present day, but also a potent commingling of their anachronistic mechanical workings with a touch of the human hand, reaching out
Album of the Week
Tristan Bath on Innercity Ensemble’s III
Alluding to 70s American jazz fusion, contemporary musical counterparts and the uncanny absurdity of David Lynch, in Innercity Ensemble's third full-length album, Tristan Bath finds a counterpoint to mainstream safety and the latest chapter of an irrepressible Polish musical resistance
Album of the Week
Eat Yr Idols: Rory Gibb On Powell’s Sport
In Oscar Powell's debut full-length, Rory Gibb finds confirmation of both the diagonal honcho's sense of humour and the curiously un-psychedelic quality of his music, as well as a new kind of inscrutability, rooted in detachment where previously it had been the product of anonymity
Album of the Week
Ben Cardew On DVA [Hi:Emotions]’ NOTU_URONLINEU
In the latest incarnation of DVA, a veritable Janus of culture, Ben Cardew finds a record out on its own, confounding as it is rewarding, weaving a complex sonic atmosphere framed by anxiety — at odds with categorisation but very much in line with reality
Album of the Week
Suzie McCracken on Jenny Hval’s Blood Bitch
In attempting to unpick the much-advertised gothic vampire horror of Jenny Hval's sixth album (and fourth under her own name), Suzie McCracken finds a much denser web of influence, connecting layers of ancient themes — from witchcraft to menstruation — with the pranksterism of conceptual art
Album of the Week
Luke Turner On Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree
In the sixteenth full-length recording from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Luke Turner finds perhaps their most perfect musical expression of horror, its realism and sense of inevitability overpowering usual tendencies toward the baroque, and a powerful lesson in empathy
Album of the Week
Richie Troughton On Noura Mint Seymali’s Arbina And Interview
In the Mauritanian artist's latest offering, Richie Troughton finds a record set to question our perceptions from the outset, moulding psychedelia into a tradition of folk music, and takes the opportunity to put some of those questions to the artist herself
Album of the Week
Lead Review: Ben Cardew On Zomby’s Ultra
On the masked producer's first full-length work since 2013, Ben Cardew finds an expansion beyond the usual tropes of Zomby-ism — collaborations unexpected for their results rather than their partners, tracks that play out over the five-minute mark, and the sound of thoughtful deliberation, all contributing to a welcome expansion of the known Zomby universe
Album of the Week
Lead Review: Tara Joshi On Frank Ocean’s Blond[e]
In Frank Ocean's long (long) awaited third album, Tara Joshi finds the artist asking questions about the positive and negative effects of the immediacy of our age and is left with her own about expectation and lasting change in the face of its subversion
Album of the Week
Lead Review: Lauretta Charlton On Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound
In Dev Hynes' third album as Blood Orange, Lauretta Charlton finds the adoptive New Yorker in fine cosmopolitan form, the free-flowing quality of his music celebrating a parallel sense of fluid identity and of freedom to be — to construct our own selves, in whichever way we choose
