The Best of 2023
Favorites Records Released in 2023
- Ángeles Rojas “breath into the forest, into the bird, into the song”
- Anohni and the Johnsons “My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross”
- Armand Hammer “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips”
- Bar Italia “Tracey Denim”
- three singers but none of them can sing, imaginary nostalgia, guy necklaces
- Bill Orcutt “The Anxiety of Symmetry”
- horseshoe theory but with beautiful music and annoying music at either end
- Billy Woods & Kenny Segal “Maps”
- Blake Mills “Jelly Road”
- middle-class music, soft Los Angeles cowboy aesthetic
- Catherine Lamb “parallaxis forma”
- the mathematics of sound (I don’t understand)
- CIA Debutante “Down, Willow”
- The Crying Nudes “angel heart”
- bands that probably don’t exist, Dean Blunt’s latest whispery girlfriend
- Fire! Orchestra “Echoes”
- chaotic big band groove, Joe McPhee hollerin’ about jacking off
- Graham Lambkin “Aphorisms”
- Graham Lambkin & James Rushford “Gondolas”
- Henry Birdsey “Laments for Rhodes Piano”
- Angelo Badalamenti falling asleep to La Monte Young
- Irreversible Entanglements “Protect Your Light”
- Joanne Robertson “Blue Car”
- Josiah Steinbrick “For Anyone That Knows You”
- Julie Byrne “The Greater Wings”
- Julius Aglinskas performed by Apartment House “Blue Dusk”
- concussion music, moving toward the light
- Kali Malone with Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton “Does Spring Hide Its Joy”
- Karenn “Everything is Curly”
- squiggly dancing, music to make your wife mad
- Keith Fullerton Whitman “A Stable Environment”
- magnetic levitation, strange cloud formations
- Khanate “To Be Cruel”
- not so old that they can’t still beat your ass
- KOU “KOU”
- not overthinking things, confusing but familiar, drunkenly riffing on Lucier
- Krano “Lentius Profundius Suavius”
- Lana Del Rey “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd”
- Seth Rogen’s handmade ash trays
- La Tène “Ecorcha/Taillée”
- Laurel Halo “Atlas”
- club drone, orchestral screw tapes
- Maria W. Horn & Mats Erlandsson “Celestial Shores”
- Mark William Lewis “Living”
- drugged driving, rainy cities, moody guys who still smoke cigs
- Mary Jane Leach “Woodwind Multiples”
- Melaine Dalibert “Magic Square”
- Michiko Ogawa & Lucy Railton “fragments of reincarnation”
- Perila “On the Corner of the Day”
- pmxper “pmxper”
- Russians in Berlin, women talking, sketchy drums
- Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band “Dancing on the Edge”
- the spirit of DCB, Kentucky soul, peanuts on the floor
- Sarah Davachi performed by Quatour Bozzini “Long Gradus: Arrangements”
- waking up before everyone else, feeling the temperature change as the sun rises
- Stephan Mathieu “Mauve District”
- Theodore Cale Schafer “Trust”
- forgetting the camera is on, reminiscing, texting an ex
- Uranium “Pure Nuclear Death”
- Kaczynski metal, laptop industrial, back patches