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”
  • resin hits, bunker punk
• 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​/​Taill​é​e”
  • playing D&D on LSD
• 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