“Experimental” Reviews

A meticulously crafted album that straddles the lines between jazz, folk, and psychedelia.

“All Delighted People” contains some of the most ambitious music Sufjan has recorded to date, but it’s still just as heartfelt and poignant as ever.

Put simply, Wind’s Poem is the most haunting album I picked up in 2009.

Arve Henriksen may be a “jazz trumpeter,” but calling Cartography a “jazz album” simply doesn’t do it justice.

Three all-too-short tracks that show off Lansing-Dreiden’s music in all of its glorious and maddening facets.

Even among diehard shoegazer fans, Chorus might be something of an acquired taste, but it’s never less than fascinating.

A madcap pastiche that’s everything you’ve come to expect from The Kleptones.

The sound of a band completely comfortable inside its own skin and supremely confident in their skills.

The disc has a highly improvised feel to it, based entirely around the live electronic manipulation of Helvacıoğlu’s acoustic guitar.

These four songs are inspired by the paintings of Claude Monet, J. M. W. Turner, Ken Bushe, and Mark Rothko.

The EP’s four songs were created by improvising guitar lines through various effects boxes.

This music is full of embellishment while sounding neither gaudy nor ostentatious.

One of the best albums of 2007 so far, as well as one of the best albums of Low’s career.

The first important album of 2007.

Deerhoof’s experimentation often seems to serve no other purpose than to show off that the band can, indeed, experiment.

Those expecting to hear the pastoral soundscapes that Hood meanders through on their albums might be a bit surprised.

Jorge’s songs pirouette on the edge of an abyss, her delicate voice seemingly quite outmatched by the long, dark night of the soul that she faces.

I’ve heard most of the songs on here before, countless times. But I had never heard them like this, in such a sublime context.

Richter’s music is perfectly suited to the themes of loss, nostalgia, and alienation that permeate Haruki Murakami’s work.

A tribute to an old computer, the five long tracks that make up this disc are elegiac and gorgeous.