Top 25 Records of 2023

Another year. Another rotation around the sun. This one was particularly difficult for reasons I’ll attempt to avoid in order to save you, dear reader, from this post descending into a rather woe-infused, self-indulgent pre-recipe ramble. The only woe I want to promote here are World of Echo who, without giving too much away, do make an appearance a little further down the page. Let’s just say that 2023 can absolutely do one.

So, music then. There’s been some undeniable gold released during this foul year. Plenty of which didn’t quite make the cut. Here’s a few that deserve a shout out: The Haxan Cloak returned after 10 long years in the desert, Francois J Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley teamed up again, I caught up with Brachliegen Tapes as they continued their good work with releases from Degradation, Iceman Junglist Kru, and Distraxi, billy woods and Kenny Segal delivered a truck full of heaters, as did Surgeon, Lucy Railton’s Corner Dancer would likely have crept in if I’d heard it even a day earlier, Romance was on top form both solo and with Dean Hurley in tow, and Outsider Art appeared with late in the year scorchers from Coma Cluster and Crude Assemble. I had a chat with Dean who runs the label here.

We were pretty spoiled with great compilations this year and, whilst I don’t want to drone on with another list of not-quites, a certain amount of hat-tipping is deserved for the folks who put together the brilliant NID Tapes collection as well as Osiris Music’s Senses In The Sand. Good as they both were, they were pipped to the post by this fine trio: 

First up is a caustic block of energy from Chronditic Sound, A Silver Line Marks The Flag drew on an interesting concept requiring all contributors to utilise Verdant Weapons sonic wares in their arsenal. And with a stacked personnel list featuring Skin Crime, JT Whitfield, Prurient, Ron Morelli, Lussuria, and Himukalt, it’s fair to say that this roster really demonstrates the experimental potential of VW’s equipment across these scintillating 18 tracks of darkened and anarchic electronics.

Traversing a similarly pessimistic furrow is the 30th anniversary celebration of Downwards Records - Spasms & Savagery. If you’re not familiar with Downwards, now is the time to get acquainted. Karl ‘Regis’ O’Connor’s label is responsible for releasing some of the most forward thinking records by boundary-tearing artists in the British underground. Even the most cursory glance over the track list is enough to give an idea of how seminal this compilation is. Surgeon, Vivid Oblivion, Ann Margaret Hogan, Samuel Kerridge, Russell Haswell, Oake, My Disco, Tropic of Cancer, NONEXISTENT, FEMALE, Fret, JK Flesh, British Murder Boys. It’s all there and it’s all outstanding.

And rounding up the last of the compilations, before we get to the big 25, is something a little more serene and subtle - Always + Forever from Do You Have Peace? Where the previous two comps might be better soundtracking a war and an apocalyptic party, respectively, this one is better suited to soothing the after effects of a night of narcotic rough housing. Woozy and floating, it’s like swirling down a gentle river in an inflatable rubber ring. The players involved in this one include HTRK’s Jonnine Standish, Teresa Winter, Vessel, Jabu’s Guest, Static Cleaner Lost Reward, and Laughter of Saints. Big tip.

And, without any further ado, here are my favourite releases from 2023 in alphabetical order.

Aho Ssan - Rhizomes (Other People)

Rhizomes is unlike most records. It can be experienced as a standard ten-track release or there’s the option to descend further into the undergrowth and discover recordings otherwise unavailable. Hidden tracks, extended editions and solo pieces await the inquisitive and you can even participate in the creative process yourself through the provided sample pack. The focus of this release is community. Growing and strengthening it. Like its title, Rhizomes is the underground stalk from which roots and shoots grow. 

Read my full review over at The Quietus.

Jaimie Branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) (International Anthem) 

Here’s what I wrote for work: ‘Taking an all-encompassing approach, the late trumpeter thrillingly melded ideas from dance halls and punk basements to free jazz clubs and porch-strummed Americana. And as if that wasn’t a feat in and of itself, she somehow injected fresh lifeblood into these disparate scenes in the process. Allowing us a glimpse of what the future might have sounded like under her adept steer. This ultimate entry in the Fly or Die canon is both heartbreaking in its finality and exhilarating in its boundary-erasure. Whilst we might not ever hear another offering from Jaimie, how better to honour her memory than to grasp her torch and continue to lead the way into the hereafter?’

ML Buch - Suntub (15 Love)

A gorgeous gold-dappled waft of dreamy pop from the Danish composer. I might be writing this with the shortest day of the year nipping at my heels but every rotation of this record feels like the first sunlit fronds of spring bursting into my eardrums. At times fuzzy and unruly, at other points little more than a drift of delicate guitar. Yet it is always transportive, uplifting, poetic and joyous. Is there much more that you could want from an album?

Tara Clerkin Trio - On The Turning Ground (World Of Echo)

A quiet, contemplative effort that creeps up on you like shadows lengthening into night. In places this draws from the same waters as avant-folk group Širom or the über cool beats of Black Taffy but it’s always through Clerkin’s kaleidoscopic and exploratory lens. On The Turning Ground might only be an EP but it contains ideas enough to demand regular re-listens, each revolution revealing a little more of its wonky secrets.

The Day Of The Antler - Love Beyond Love (Satatuhatta)

An unexpected late dip into the Finnish Noise underground had this one barrelling into my top 25 without a second thought. Coming in from the cold but bringing the icy land in with it, Love Beyond Love is forged through the clangs, scrapes, and fizzing energies of rural industry with further electronics subtly layered inseparably throughout. Amidst the cacophonous shrieks and burrowing distortion, surprisingly beautiful and poignant piano pieces pop up to punctuate the ear shredding with full, heaving emotional heft. Magnificent stuff.

EP 64/63 - Ondata Rossa (Permanent Draft)

Absolute all star line up on this one: Agathe Max, Yoshino Shigihara, Valentina Magaletti, and Dali De Saint Paul. This live document perfectly encapsulated the riveting rumpus which the gang concocted at New River Studios back in ’22. Each unique voice, powerful enough on their own, seamlessly compliments the other, crafting a swelling and dizzying tide capable of carrying innocent and well versed ears away in its run away flow. It’ll have you kicking yourself for missing the penultimate performance of this series but ever grateful for the careful documentation of it all.

Exit Electronics - Every Shade of Grey (Deathbed Tapes)

Utterly blown out industrial demolitions from one of the best to ever do it. It’s no secret to say that I’ve been feverishly following Justin Broadrick’s career for the past 20 years. Whether he’s screaming his lungs out in Napalm Death, dripping Jesu’s honey, unleashing Final’s overwhelming atmospherics, carving gutters with Godflesh, bludgeoning souls with Techno Animal/Zonal, or soundtracking the end of days with JK Flesh, it’s all been welcome and eagerly adored by these ears. Exit Electronics is no different - a prime example of Broadrick’s uncanny ability to constantly shove further forward, successfully scoring the carnage of existence in the process. Stick it on the slate.

Gazelle Twin - Black Dog (Invada Records)

To be played LOUD. Invoking a Lynchian nightmare combination of Coil and Scott Walker, Gazelle Twin squares up to the unsettling, the uncanny, and the unexplainable shifts that occur in a darkened house at 2.15am. If you’ve caught her live performances on this tour, you’ll know that the theatrical element is as much cathartic as it is self exploratory but GT taps into something dark and sinister within all of us in the process, exposing a nerve, raw and wiggling. Listening to this will get it right between your gnashers.

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - SAVED! (Perpetual Flame Ministries)

Another one from the day job: ‘A rapturous evangelical gospel and country record cut through The Caretaker's lens and allowed to go more than a little feral. The newly anointed Reverend has shed her previous skin and turned to the church, delivering a warped and demented gospel that twists logic and is caked in crimson blood - take a deep breath and submit yourself to be Saved!.’

Jabu - Boiling Wells (Demos ’19 - ’22) (Six Of Swords)

Industrial R&B of the highest order. These might be off-cuts rescued from the digital floor but you need to remember that Jabu’s off-cuts > than the most polished offering from most pretenders. This is woozy, Blunt-esque melancholia. Rough on the riddims and reclining in Bristol murk. In short, perfect for these blackened nights.

Loraine James - Gentle Confrontation (Hyperdub)

Here’s one I wrote for my 9-5: ‘James manoeuvres through exploratory electronic landscapes with guile and a glint in her eye, leaving remnants of genres in her elusive dust. A tumble of footwork here, a waft of ambient there, a ghost of techno left clutching desperately at the vigorously scattered drums - her path is one to be followed.’

Khanate - To Be Cruel (Sacred Bones)

If you’d told me at the start of 2023 that I’d be clutching a new Khanate album by June, I would have demanded silence whilst I stripped your skin from bone. But here we are at the end of the year and not only is there a new album but there are a small handful of live performances announced for a band that I never thought I would get to see. Fantastic stuff. And what about the record? I wouldn’t say that the years have mellowed them but there is a slight softening of the edges. The guitar angles might seem less severe whilst Wyskida’s drums don't quite feel like they’re about to pop your eyes out but Dubin still shrieks like his throat is being engulfed with flames and the dread atmospherics are just as intrusive and unsettling with side-eyed paranoia scuttling out of every muted cymbal crash. 60 disjointed and bruising minutes of terrified anguish. It’s precisely what you’d want from Khanate. Welcome back boys.

Kinn - Dogtooth (First Light Records)

Apocalyptic spoken word, the cries of seagulls, staccato bows bounced upon fading strings, booming bass notes, and snatched exclamations all add up into an intensely atmospheric creation that is as cinematic as it is enveloping. Kinn has constructed a brilliantly mysterious soundscape that feels both otherworldly and threateningly real. A bit like mistakenly wandering through that part of town everyone warned you about, half cut. These tracks are enigmatic, enchanting, and they’ll play upon your uncertainties and insecurities long into the night. Gulp it down, if you dare.

Lankum - False Lankum (Rough Trade Records)

This one was album of the year at my place of work. Here’s what I wrote for their annual:

Mary Lattimore - Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Ghostly International)

Returning to the cool waters that inspired Silver Ladders, Lattimore pushed her harp-shaped boat out into deeper emotive pools, enlisting a stellar cast of characters in the process. Rather than diluting her vision with the addition of Meg Baird, Walt McClements, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, and Lol Tolhurst of The Cure, Lattimore has honed it into a tighter, direct, and even more affecting unit. If you can make your way through this without your heart breaking, you might need a quick humanity check up.

Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void - Full On (Alter)

The fearless experimentation and freedom gained by working with a trusting collaborator has allowed the floodgates to open on Lewis and Void’s deep, combined pool of creativity. Diving into Benzedrine-backwashed states of mind might not be for everyone. But, with the thought-sluicing effects relatively diluted, these short, spiralling sounds are particularly pleasing, engrossing, oddly rewarding, and thoroughly brilliant. More disquieting Coil-esque drug trauma explorations please.

Read my full review at The Quietus

Kali Malone - Does Spring Hide Its Joy (Ideologic Organ)

Noticing a theme? Well, here are some more day-job pilfered words: ‘Consisting of lush unravelling drones, this follow up to Living Torch is grander, more exploratory, and deeply affecting than its predecessor. Enlisting Lucy Railton and husband Stephen O’Malley to contribute cello and electric guitar respectively, Malone’s fifth full length demands you sit with it, and let the reams of sustained resonance envelop and enthrall you. And there’s plenty to sit with. This magnificent 3 hour suite is going nowhere fast. It invites you to slow down time, to separate from the attention-clenching demands of the world and to simply be as the lengthened chords seep into your mind and permeate your pores.’

Memnon Sa - Offworld Radiation Therapy (Shadow World)

If you caught 2020’s World Serpent then you will have been in with a modicum of understandable preconception as to what you're getting in for. Offworld Radiation Therapy, however, cares not for your preconceptions. Its only goal is an imagined future, full of hope, benevolence and gusto. All played out via quavering synths, rollicking drums, and starry-eyed exuberance. If this isn’t what plays when you emerge afresh, after passing across this mortal coil, then I might have to insist on hanging around a little while longer.

Aja Monet - When The Poems Do What They Do (drink sum wtr)

Few debuts arrive this fully formed. Monet merges her surrealist blues poetry with rhythmic jazz in a blend that has you asking how it’s possible that this record hasn’t already existed for decades. A timeless air carries these stinging and thought-instigating verses into our hearts to take up space that was already reserved for them. It’s beautiful and insightful and, just when it needs to be, it is enraged, despairing yet still clinging to cascades of hope. ‘For Sonia’ just about did me in the first time I heard it and hasn’t yet failed to raise the hairs on the back of my neck with every repeated listen since.

Niecy Blues - Exit Simulation (Kranky)

Softly soulful, smoke-soaked numbers wafted over from South Carolina on a river of reverb. This is like a little package of heaven that is equally happy waltzing around the background as it is demanding your complete and undivided attention. How you choose to interact with it is entirely your own call but consider it suffice to say that you’ll still feel its soothing fingers long after the needle has hit the final run out groove.

Reciprocate - Soul To Burn (Gringo Records)

Full power super trio made up of Big Lad’s Henri on drums, Stef Kett of Shield Your Eyes on six strings and vox, and tied all together by the bass rumble of The Wharves’ Marion Andrau. They might have set out to write a Funk Rock opus but their own idiosyncrasies inevitably win out, instilling the rough & ready leads with off kilter machinations, pummelling fills, and wild yelps. It’s the sort of soul music that Richard Dawson might pen with Captain Beefheart. And that is, clearly, in no way a bad thing. It proper rips. Like a wildly careening juggernaut gone spasmodic, lurching its way through oncoming traffic in some kind of intricately choreographed ballet that ought to come unstuck at every turn yet keeps whirling along at an unfathomable rate. Each near miss plastering your grin just that little bit wider.

Ronce - Crève (Dawn Records)

If you’ve read these pages before, you might have caught Ronce’s incredible pair of releases in 2021. Thankfully the self-proclaimed ‘Chaotic Gwyneth Paltrow’ has returned with a new marrow-chilling edition of her feminist feral gore ASMR. It bristles with startling intensity and a trembling sense of threat barely contained beneath the surface. Few can match these horrifying collages formed of softly spoken spurns, heartbeat rhythms, splashed liquids, unnerving drones, clinked glasses, whispered shrieks, and piercing electronics. Ronce tells tales we might not want to hear but absolutely must listen to.

Shit and Shine - 2222 and Airport (The state51 Conspiracy)

Shit and Shine is, as Meghan Trainor would have it, all about that bass. He wields it as a weapon. It’s a constant force that drives his music onward, never daring to slow to a dawdle. Ceaseless movement seems to be essential to what Shit and Shine does. You can witness this play out in the life of main man, Craig Clouse. He’s a keen mountain biker, hitting the trails three or four times a week and, musically, he’s prolific to the point of intimidation. By my maths this is the tenth release that he’s put out in the past twelve months. Based on this tireless output, he must either be running on some kind of renewable energy or have found the secret to perpetual motion. The only other explanation is that he has a series of clones chained up in a basement churning out off kilter banger after off-kilter banger whilst he hurtles downhill on his pedalled steed.

Read my full review at The Quietus

Tirzah - trip9love…??? (Domino)

This surprise drop from the dream duo of Tirzah and Mica Levi practically achieved cult status from the second it landed. And understandably so - utilising a singular beat for the duration of the album, Tirzah and Levi manage to pack trip9love…??? with meaty and rip-roaring R&B twists that can tug a tear from a duct just as easily as soliciting a body pop from across a heaving dance floor. There’s some serious magic in this one.

Alexander Tucker + Keith Collins - Fifth Continent (Subtext)

“Sometimes the pain of feeling no grief is worse than the pain of grief” – Keith Collins

Fifth Continent (and the accompanying anthology, Fifth Quarter) is a vast, encompassing work grown out of grief and missed opportunities. It ties Alexander Tucker’s sonic language to Keith Collins’ carefully spoken words and also to the pens, prose, and imagery of so many other collaborators, admirers, and tQ regulars including Jennifer Lucy Allen, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Stephen O’Malley, Simon Fisher Turner, Dan Fox, Barry Adamson, and our own Luke Turner. But there’s another character that features heavily on this recording – that broad, pebbled cape on Kent’s headland, Dungeness. A place as inseparable from Derek Jarman as he was from Collins and whose shadow looms large over this sprawling package.

Read my full review at The Quietus