It's over 10 years now since I have been listening to this mans music. Living in different places in the world, having different perspectives of it, from his own area of South East London, to Toronto. This music still pulls you back to that area, like the tide he mentions so much.

Music is difficult to review more and more now. We know everything about the artist at the click of a button and we see their entire process from their bedroom or expensive studio in NYC. Taking away merit here and ... read more

Another almost perfect album produced by JPEG, this decade.
I don't have any quarms about this LP, joking aside about the mixing, I think it's exceptional. It is harder to get sound to crush and punch this hard whilst still letting the driving instrumentation leak through still.
Every track is beautiful and deep. It carries from start to finish with swinging and gauntlet jagged cuts. Great sampling and melodies littered throughout. The only thing stopping this from being a 10 is maybe a huge ... read more

Okay, when the album dropped, I, as I am sure most people did, listened to the 'Online' version first. Which I thought was a near 10, I have been blown away by the complexity and riding of each and every song on this LP.

A couple of days after, I started playing the 'Offline' version on loop. This album is a 10 by far. The time taken to produce this must have been a painful amount of hours and effort. The tracks have an incredible amount of layers, starting and stopping within the same songs. ... read more

I have been anticipating this release more than any other this year, I changed by VPN just to hear it 12 hours early.

Kicking this off, the two singles that were released earlier this year were great, solid tracks that held all the fundamental elements that James Blake has excelled at over the past 10 years, so when track 3, 'Coming Back' started, I instantly thought to myself... fuck me, again with this stuff?

His previous album was a huge bust personally, I thought he strayed away too far ... read more

One of the best band albums I have heard this year by far.

Solid grooves and silky melodic riffs from start to finish. A huge highlight on this project is the amount of great chorus' falling off the back of some beautifully written verses.

Not much else to say about this, maybe in a way it's more of a compliment, it's such a structurally sound LP and has an incredible amount of replay value which is what 2021 has lacked in standout projects, being flooded with art pieces. This album has left ... read more

Dunno what you lot are on about, this EP was brilliant. Typical Metronomy in the best sense, and the collab with Pinty? perfect.
Shame it hit just after all the good weather's gone.

All the parameters for an incredibly perfect album and a 10 but just a couple of small point that draw it back from that clear 100. If I did ‘99’ ratings it would be

*EDIT, nah this is a 100... a 10/10, album, of the decade so far

I wrote out notes for the entire album, took me a long time. But it's genuinely not worth me typing it all out again.
Champagne Poetry was a highlight for the first 2 mins but Drake rides this out way too long. This whole LP was lazy and dead.

I was anticipating this album immensely. Everything out of Hyperdub over the pandemic has been high quality, interesting and innovative. Loraine James was no different, her Darkstar - Wolf remix was one of my favorite tracks of the past 18 months.

However I dived into this LP on Fridays release date, thought maybe I was in the right mood for it and tried it twice over again yesterday. It was bleak, maybe a bit too rude to say but - effortless in some parts. I was excited to see Nova as a ... read more

In a saturated year for esteemed Post-Punk, it's hard to have an ear for the strong standout points. With Black Midi and Black Country, New Road, respectively, taking a more artistic and obscure path to extend on their ideas from previous projects, Squid took a more hard hitting and accessibly sound which pulled off through a safer and less ambitious bet.

With Crack Cloud releasing one of my favourite projects last year, Vancouver has brought to the light another incredibly solid debut album. ... read more

I had a track come up on my radar on Spotify and had a mediocre view of the project, nothing is necessarily bad about it, good production at best, Alycia has a beautiful voice, but at times I just felt lost and forgetting I was listening to something I had put on which isn't always the best sign im afraid. With an industry being filled with new age pop attempts and R&B prodigy's, I had an urge to switch over at points as it just felt a lot like the beats were just packs that were acquired ... read more

A beautiful project from Ex:Re, with a year being filled with a lot of outrageous outlandish tunes from lockdown, this has pleasantly been a standout in my week of listening and reviewing

This album was really frustrating, because the singles leading up to it, I thought were great. Started the album, starts off great and I thought this was going to be a reasonably great review, but about halfway through I realized all the songs started sounding exactly the same, thus realizing that the singles 'Balloon' and 'Trophy' both sounded almost identical too!

If I am to rate the first half of the album I would give it an 80 to maaaybe an 85, I loved it, the snare sounds of Crumb are ... read more

I think scores don't get given nearly enough credit sometimes. A score is nearly always trying to compliment a visual without distraction, to amplify what you see. So alongside this goal, you have to not over complicate each piece - which is notoriously a remarkably difficult thing to do for most musicians. To have an entire soundtrack written primarily by, respectively, a rock band, and to come out with a project as clean and near perfect for its objective as this, warrants the highest of ... read more

too many similar releases coming out of Griselda. S.E.Gang def the only big tune on this project

it's not bad but it's not great, can't quite make my mind up, it is very White Lies early days for sure at points. Has influences of many great UK bands but I think its a very straight forward album and is decent for a band that hasn't quite hit the fame they should of from their debut. But I believe with another project like this they will stay a decent domestic band for sure.

Absolutely killing the 140 scene. Two producers who can actually write a melody and not really so solely on a great bassline. The Percussion and Hi Hat rhythms throughout these 4 tracks are beyond what most producers are pulling off in the scene. Best release of the year so far.

Okay, sometimes I really think when I see previous reviews it affects my view on it but this time I really think it just made me try and see through the music a lot more?

I understand where the album is coming from and I understand people have different tastes but I just don't really understand why the beat choices are what they are, the genre is very FIFA Soundtrack, and they don't quite hit on their own as great dance tracks, they don't fit as melancholy electronic music to compliment ... read more

I was not expecting this at all, the patterns of drumming throughout the entire project were almost always on point to the signature change and chorus.
The chords and melodies played throughout the first half of the project were going from strength to strength, a consistent mood was set and each track felt evolving.

Definitely one of the strongest LP's of the year so far.

The flows from ROCKS on this LP are uncomparable at times, definitely the most refreshing project I've heard spit wise in a long time. Beats like GUTTA and PTW are hard as nails but a lot of the beats just don't hit quite as well, they are perfect for the flow but I think what draws it back is that we have heard his flow on a lot of 140 tunes that are ridiculous and it's hard to go back to these instrumentals after.
It's well produced and even the writing on some of these lyrics are standard ... read more