These are the records that have been the soundtrack to my 2023. If 2022 was a bad year for the world, then 2023 was more of the same, with a side-dose of personal horror. I did the exact same job for a whole year for the first time in a while, but everything around me seemed more chaotic, with ill health and general disruption not too far away. I suspect my musical choices have been influenced by that, although it certainly hasn’t been consciously.
I’m sitting writing this on a wet and blustery evening in the Isle of Wight (for the second year running). I think the amount of time I’ve spent here over the last two years has definitely influenced some of my choices, but only in a good way. There is some music that just makes more sense in a rural location, and many of these records are definitely not particularly influenced by cities or suburbia. But also this is a list that pays a lot more homage to louder and faster music than previous years. There are less melodically beautiful records (especially outside the top 25), and more that channel the anger that so many people feel towards the world and some of the people in it.
Albums
In all cases the links below are to somewhere you can listen to and/or buy the record in question (Bandcamp or the artist’s own website). For things you can’t buy anymore I’ve linked to a description.
- A Culture of Killing – Dissipation of Clouds. The Barrier.
- All Structures Align – Cut the Engines
- Baxter Dury – I Thought I was Better Than You
- Gum Takes Tooth – Recovery Position
- Harp – Albion
- Hey Colossus – In Blood
- HMLTD – The Worm
- HUNTRESS – Destruction Horizon
- Jellyskin – In Brine
- Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
- King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – The Silver Cord
- Lana Del Rey – Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
- Lankum – False lankum
- Lanterns on the Lake – Versions of Us
- Moundabout – An Cnoc Mór
- Obey Robots – One in a Thousand
- Richard Youngs – Modern Sorrow
- Shame – Food For Worms
- Sufjan Stevens – Javelin
- Svalbard – The Weight Of The Mask
- Sweet Williams – Sweet Williams
- The Unit AMA – Toward
- Vanishing – Shelter of the Opaque
- YOSSARI BABY – Inferiority Complex
- Young James Long – Orogeny
Singles
All of these are either one long song, or a 7″.
- Bleaklow – Glume
- Glaas – Cruel Heart, Cold Summer
- mclusky – unpopular parts of a pig / the digger you deep
- Objections – BSA Day / Better Luck Next Time
- Oh Baby & Kelley Stoltz – Not Enough
- Thee Alcoholics – Politicians, Kill Yourself
- Gimic – Defer to Hate
- Golpe – Assuefazione Quotidiana
Other stuff
Live albums, reissues, and things that were definitely available in some format before this year.
- All Structures Align – Details, Drawings, Distance and Departure
- Hey Colossus – You Laugh at my Face
- Hey Colossus – Live In Liege
- Black Country, New Road – Live at Bush Hall
- Pharoah Sanders – Pharoah
- Thee Alcoholics – Live At The Piper
- A.R. Kane – 69
- A.R. Kane – i
- Sweet Williams – Cold to See You
- Sweet Williams – That What You Hit – the Dannysound remixes
- Sweet Williams – Where Does The Time Come From – the Jason Williams Mixes
- Various Artists – Wrong Speed 2023
The rest
Other things I’ve listened to this year that I enjoyed.
- Big Break – Angel’s Piss
- Blackbraid – Blackbraid II
- Boris & Uniform – Bright New Disease
- Christine Ott – Eclats (Piano Works)
- Colin Stetson – When we were that what wept for the sea
- Colleen – Le jour et la nuit du réel
- Colossal Squid – A Haunted Tongue
- Daughter – Stereo Mind Game
- David Holmes ft. Raven Violet – ‘Blind On A Galloping Horse’
- Delco MF’s – 100% Complete & Total Motherfuckers
- Drumm Chimp – Behind the Wall of Zsleep
- Elizabeth Still – Going For Home
- Gazelle Twin – Black Dog
- GODFLESH – Purge
- GREEN LUNG – This Heathen Land
- Hands up Who Wants to Die – Nil All
- House of All – House of All
- John Cale – MERCY
- Jon Richards – Outside In
- Khanate – To Be Cruel
- King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation
- Maria BC – Spike Field
- Modern Technology – Conditions of Worth
- myst milano. – Beyond the Uncanny Valley
- Oval – Romantiq
- Overmono – Good Lies
- Richard Knox – Land Marks
- Richard Skelton – selenodesy
- Stigmatism – Ignorance in Power
- The Damned – Darkadelic
- Teeth of the Sea – Hive
- The Breedling – Irukandji
- The Eurosuite – Sorry
- Imploders – Imploders
- Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse – Giddy Skelter
- TORPOR – Abscission
- UKAEA – Birds Catching Fire In The Sky
- The Waeve – The Waeve
- The Wedding Present – 24 Songs