Recommended Records
Zomby - With Love
At a time when many electronic albums sound more like mixed sets than collections of songs, this expansive double album is all the more impressive, with its 33 abruptly separated songs holding the listener captive within Zomby’s edgy world for well over an hour.»
Sigur Rós - Kveikur
Kveikur feels alive where last year’s Valtari seemed frozen: from the opening notes of 'Brennistein', guitars swelling like a warning siren, there’s the sense that this could go anywhere, that this could - whisper it - actually surprise us. And it does, repeatedly: these nine tracks might be Sigur Rós shrinking from the light, but it's all the better for it.»
Jon Hopkins - Immunity
Immunity is an album which puts a well-placed confidence in rewarding the patience of the listener, melding together current club trends with a vulnerable humanity to create an hour-long arc of total immersion.»
Austra - Olympia
Austra come across as something different, the scale of Katie Stelmanis’s vocal too big, too earnest and too other to really comfortably in any given scene. »
These New Puritans - Field of Reeds
These New Puritans strive to expose folly in the pursuit of human-made perfection and yet so nearly attain it. »
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Tomorrow’s Harvest very quickly shows everyone who’s tried to ape Boards of Canada what they’ve got wrong.»
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
The new record by Vampire Weekend is the best alternative pop album you will hear this year.»
Deerhunter - Monomania
Monomania is kind of sloppy, but it also sounds pretty astonishing cranked up load, and it’ll surely find its calling this summer as Deerhunter's most fun album.»
The Veils - Time Stays, We Go
There’s everything here that those in the know have come to love and expect from The Veils, but there’s also a window in for the rest of you, so peer on in and you’ll see there’s a red velvet chocolate heartache cake just waiting for you to scoop it up. It’s laced with something special, but I can’t begin to describe what it is.»
Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 3 : To See More Light
Volume 3 is essential listening and another triumph.»
At The Drive-In - Acrobatic Tenement/Relationship of Command (reissues)
For a lot of people, particularly those in their mid to late twenties, and presumably a large portion of those that read this site, At The Drive-In are more than just a band.»
Phoenix - Bankrupt!
It's only when you've got as internalised a knowledge of how pop music works as Phoenix do that you can make an album as frequently barking as this and not fly away completely.»
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Mosquito
A blazingly enjoyable record, the most purely fun album the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have made since Fever to Tell.»
Paramore - Paramore
A masterful rock-vs-rock voyage through 30 years of influences, rather than something you can put a pithy sound-bite to. »
The Flaming Lips - The Terror
A brave, difficult and experimental album, The Terror reminds us that there’s more to The Flaming Lips than glitter bombs and dancing bears.»
Hookworms - Pearl Mystic
Pearl Mystic just happens to be one of those records that embodies perfection.»
Gold Panda - Trust
The most impressive aspect of Trust is how satisfying it is.»
Mogwai - Les Revenants
Like Zidane, Mogwai’s second soundtrack is one of their most vital releases in years; a collection of fully realized pieces that could be the closest they’ll come to an unplugged album.»
My Bloody Valentine - m b v
There are three My Bloody Valentine albums. And they’re all just peachy.»
Tegan & Sara - Heartthrob
Heartthrob is more than just a brilliant pop album, it’s unarguably a brilliant Tegan & Sara album and it’s very, very close to being perfect.»
Foals - Holy Fire
A record where Foals have focussed their many triumphs and missteps into one cohesive statement.»
Grouper - The Man Who Died In His Boat
Songwriting of this calibre needs no embellishment.»
Darkstar - News from Nowhere
Instead of straddling electronica's void, Darkstar have doubled down on the profound. It suits them well. »
Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse
Pedestrian Verse continues the trajectory of its predecessor, but whereas the charm of the first two Frightened Rabbit albums was an urgency that didn’t allow for polishing, and the third sounded more expansive, the impact of the fourth comes from the quality of the songwriting. »
Villagers - {awayland}
Far from falling under the weight of either expectation or ambition, {awayland} is a far more magnificent progression from Jackal than any of us could have hoped for.»
Broadcast - Berberian Sound Studio
As extraordinary and original as the film itself, Berberian Sound Studio is both a bona fide film score and consistent electronica album, and in the wake of Trish Keenan’s tragic death carries the very real air of a requiem.»
Stumbleine - Spiderwebbed
This album has so much and asks very little. It doesn’t ask you to focus on it and is perfectly happy to wash under you as a background as unobtrusive as any ditty Eric Satie playfully composed.»
Melody's Echo Chamber - Melody's Echo Chamber
Whatever happens next, Melody Prochet can rest assured safe in the knowledge that together with her beau they've conjured up one of 2012's - or any other year in recent memory - finest debuts.»
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Koi No Yokan is Deftones coming to terms with their own strengths, taking everything that’s gone before, then refining and polishing it to an impossible sheen.»
Jonny Greenwood - The Master - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Yet again Jonny Greenwood has excelled himself, repaying Paul Thomas Anderson’s commission with an excellent work.»
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