“An account of stifling domesticity plays out over a propulsive 4/4 rock beat an swirling woodwinds, which serve to evoke how, in spite of everything, she felt “electric, alive, spirited, fire and free.” - Daniel Neofetou, The Wire • #5 in Best Albums of 2023
“The hymn-like songs on this LP are drawn from the annals of the artist's maternal ancestors, but Roberts... gives these speakers a modern vocabulary and self-conception.” - The New York Times • #9 in Best Jazz Albums of 2023
"Each of these tracks effortlessly conjures the swirling feeling of needing to make a decision – and questioning your own being – never quite settling, always moving." - Vanessa Ague, The Quietus • #51 in Best Albums of 2023
"Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin series is one of the great works of art of the 21st century... [Chapter Five is] a heartbreaking record, but it’s also deeply inspiring, a tale of thwarted but nevertheless undeniable resilience and determination.” - Phil Freeman, Stereogum • #1 in Best Jazz Albums of 2023
"This 5th instalment hustles a new ensemble, steeped in post-rock, improvisation, new music and avant-rock, for a record that sees all their circles bleed. Matana’s vocals guide the album, mostly in spoken word form, but reserving the right to rage when combined with their own horns, harmonicas, and percussion (…) Rare earth materials, not to be treated lightly." - Boomkat • #74 in Best Albums of 2023
“The fifth installment of Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin series is among the most stirring, chaotic, indescribable music released this year–even just calling it “jazz” only tells a portion of its story (...) The album constantly comes at you from opposing directions. It’s music that should be unsettling, and it absolutely is.” - Andrew Sacher, Brooklyn Vegan • Best Jazz Albums Of 2023
"Matana Roberts’s Coin Coin series is both immediate and timeless, an acknowledgment that history, myth, and fiction drink from the same bottle." - Bandcamp • Best Jazz Albums of 2023, December 2023
"These recordings qualify as an event: epic tale, sound collage, historical document, societal unmasking, art experiment, philosophical reverie—Roberts’s Coin Coin series is more than just a collection of albums. They relate a story (and subsets of stories) that eschew conventional forms of delivery. Avant-garde, jazz, blues, art rock, spoken word, minimalism, so much more. And, really, it’s counterintuitive to give names to the components of a project that transcends categorization in the first place." - Best Jazz on Bandcamp, September 2023
“Another musical landmark by Roberts.” - Best Folk on Bandcamp, September 2023
“The latest edition in Roberts’ series untangling African-American history packs a mighty punch...a dense thicket of free-jazz, electronics, and liberatory lyrics.” - Aquarium Drunkard • Best Albums of 2023
“A musical patchwork in which the boundaries between free jazz, post rock, folk, noise and improvisation disappear.” - Albert Koch, HHV • Best Albums of 2023
“Matana Roberts’ music resembles a patchwork quilt: a stitching together of spirited free jazz, harmony singing, simmering electronics and raucous fife-and-drum blues that feels both artfully constructed and loaded with personal significance.” - UNCUT
“Combines composed cacophony with folk spirituals and free-improv. [Their] jazziest yet, expressive alto-sax and hypnotic spoken words ladle emotional gravitas onto its fevered meditations and splintered storytelling.” - MOJO ★★★★
“Roberts is adept at creating song cycles that have a highly theatrical if not cinematic quality, almost like a distillation of Bertolt Brecht and Julie Dash, in addition to an arranging style that hints at major avant-garde heroes, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Julius Hemphill and Amina Claudine Myers…striking in its evocation of visual image amid a daringly-crafted sound world.” - Jazzwise ★★★★ Editors Choice
"An excursion into everyday politics, a contextualisation that is more than a call to discourse. Too much has gone awry in the corridors of power." - Rolling Stone DE
“... sees Roberts’ poetic composition at its most gripping as the spoken word spirals from gently drifting hope to a manic world of delirious staccato violin, clattering drums, thumb piano shamanism and other-world scatology. All these twists and turns intensify the events being told but with more definition than mere backing music… looks back in time in order to understand, reflect where we are now and point towards a restorative future.” - Backseat Mafia 9/10
"With every passing year it becomes clearer that doubting the vision, fortitude, and creative potency of Roberts is stupid. Even without considering the formidable body of work they have amassed outside of Coin Coin, the first five chapters of the endeavor are so substantive, original, and resonant that it’s undeniable we are witnessing a different kind of history in the making." - Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street Substack
