Saluton! Music hits us powerfully here, so the criteria for an end of year/best of list is simply, and honestly stuff we haven’t quite managed to move on from.
Some music hits hard then somehow fades, but other stuff remains essential and bounces around for much longer. This article simply groups the albums and artists that achieved just that in 2023, in our tiny corner of the universe.
FROM THE PAST, FROM THE FUTURE
One thing 2023 proved yet again is that there’s so much music already out there that’s frankly staggering. Music that may have been made decades ago, but still has the ability to cut through the present day like a scalpel. Music that dared to look forward then, and still feels like it’s leading the way as we stumble towards the quarter point of the 21st century.
The year began on a high, finally consumed by the gravitational field of Roland Kayn’s Infra. Our slow arc backwards through his career, landing one of his earliest major works. Reissued in late 2022, and when we wrote our review at the time, we stated it was quite possibly the best thing we’ve ever heard. Almost 12 months later, we remain convinced of the fact. Infra remains a fizzing and monumental masterpiece.
One of the many things that Kayn’s work has opened us up to, is that huge lengthy works obviously demand a lot of time. Whilst it’s initially off-putting, in a world of seemingly shrinking attention spans, that there isn’t really a radio edit or a quick way to satisfactorily get ‘there’ ends up becoming a huge strength. Kayn’s work comes alive when you submit to its vastness. There is no way around it, you have to do a bit of work, but the rewards are hugely worth it.
This theme of extended works has been particularly evident this year:
Angus MacLise | Tapes (Art Into Life)
At only a few minutes under 3 hours, Tapes is a staggering flythrough of the archives left at Columbia University after MacLise’s passing, at just 41 in 1979. It’s a chaotic mix of street recordings, trance outs, drones, tape loops, dialogues and pure third eye ecstasy.
Whilst the sound quality throughout is raw, the whole abrasive trip is as remarkable as it is varied. Organ Drone + Electronic Drone Mix is one of the best examples of how psychedelic drones can actually be.
However, the 20 minutes of Epiphany – Tanberg Session is a like a distillation of late 60s radicalism. Beginning like a soundtrack to an experimental film, complete with agitated ranting, abstracted atmospherics before somehow regenerating itself spectacularly into an acid fried guitar groove, that’s never failed to blow us off our feet.
Tapes is a glimpse of an alternative universe that the original Velvet Underground drummer mapped out. Lots of his other recordings are stunning and savage psych monsters, however, this is next level.
Read our full review here
Purchase here
Carl Stone | Electronic Music from 1972 – 2022 (Unseen Worlds)
Unseen Worlds, the label that’s had a significant hand in the thoroughly deserved spotlight of Stone’s work, has a simple mantra – releasing quality editions of unheralded and revolutionary, yet accessible, avant garde music. Ironically, it’s often been the music that stretches that idea the furthest which we have enjoyed the most.
Electronic Music from 1972 – 2022, is effectively the third of Stone’s instalments mapping out his consistently amazing chewed up aural zipper compositions.
Released as part of his 70th birthday celebrations, including performing all over the world, it’s easily the single best primer into his head bending psychedelic world. Whilst the newest works here are staggering fractalized pop forms, the two earliest tracks – the whole of side 1, are the ones we come back to the most.
Possibly slightly removed from sampling of his later works, Three Confusongs (1972) and Ryouund Thygizunz (1972) are two amazing examples of how animated, visual, disorientating, yet still bizarrely spectacular music, that’s been snoozing for a half century, can be.
Read our full review here
Purchase here
David Rosenboom | Roundup Two “Selected music with electro-acoustic landscapes” (1968-1984) (Art Into Life)
We have always loved Rosenboom’s music. Deservingly celebrated pieces like Piano Etude 1 (Alpha) from Brain Wave Music have always straddled a blissful point between chaos and a galloping melodic form of looping repetition. He makes undeniably weird, but beautiful music.
So, Roundup Two “Selected music with electro-acoustic landscapes” (1968-1984) (an expanded version of the original Round Up) collects various live recordings into a chunky 2-hour set, and a broadly a similar trajectory was expected.
However, Rosenboom live is clearly far more fragmented and wild. Although this collection was initially released in 2012, it’s recent discovery here was too good to not spotlight. Tracks like Musical Intervention 1979 and Musical Intervention 1982 literally liquify fairly normal sound sources into insane mercury landscapes. The whole collection begins and ends with tracks that last almost 30 minutes each, ensuring the heart of this release is significantly buffered from the rest of world. The effect is jaw dropping – Rosenboom in wild mode is a complete joy!
Purchase here
Michèle Bokanowski | Musiques De Concert (Sonoris)
Bokanowski was a new name to us but the 4-hour 4 CD boxset, serve as a hugely impressive overview of her work between 1973 and 2020. Trained by Pierre Schaeffer and studied with Elaine Radigue, her music is a unique blend of musique concrete, peppered with odd looping and bristling filmic editing.
These discs are full of fractured atmospherics, ethereal cross telephone lines and pulverised, half recognisable sounds from her everyday. The delirious stop start of L’Etoile Absente (1999-2000) and the slow descent in pure texture of Chant D’Ombre (2004) are staggering.
Given the spikiness of these earlier works, the final trio of Rhapsodia (2016-18), Cadence (2019) and Elsewhere (2019-20) is as surprising as they are beautiful. Seemingly gleaned from amorphous orchestral sounds, looped and layered into deeply emotive vapour trails, dusted in gentle buzz tones, and the mirage of rhythm. Incredible stuff.
Purchase here
NEW RELEASES
Being a tiny one-person operation, OBLADADA is fortunate to get access to countless new releases. Our reviews during the year are an indication of recordings that have moved us significantly enough to review. Other music that we loved but perhaps didn’t have time to review, more than likely feature in our ongoing monthly mixes on CAMP.
2023 was quite a challenging year personally, both physical and mental health suffered. But thankfully both fronts are being addressed and things are all vastly improved from even a few months ago.
Listening to our own advice, fresh air, getting into nature and throwing ourselves into the rarified creative atmosphere of music has been a vital component in our self-care. These releases have all helped stretch and soothe our brain and body…
Synthetic Bird Music | Various Artists (mappa)
Anyone who knows me, knows that as well as music, exploring nature is another huge passion. These days, it’s mushrooms and slime moulds that impress most often, but my love of birds has been a constant since I was very young. It’s an ongoing appreciation I’m still lucky to share with my dear dad. The countless countryside, wilderness, and mountain adventures as a child all punctuated by birds, their shapes, colours, behaviours and of course, their songs.
The wrasp of mountain ravens, the looping flight of lapwings, the oddness of corncrakes, the cuckoos, chiffchaffs and my favourite – the yellowhammer, a glorious bunting, which certainly in the UK, their song is often described as ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’.
Bird song is strange in that, as well as clearly being a functioning, nuanced vocabulary, it also often sounds beautiful to us humans. The ability to both command the air, and sound so lovely has meant birds are uniquely regarded.
Slovakian label mappa are undoubtedly one of the most consistently amazing labels in the last few years. Every release boldly steps into a new space, but Synthetic Bird Music still manages to push that quality level even further. A compilation gathering 32 artists over 2 hours, all simply asked to consider how birds and their songs fit into our world, and how a variety of musical practises, can convey this.
There are a few names we recognise but much here is by artists we were unfamiliar with before. However, very quickly we’ve found joy in simply hitting play. The variety is staggering, nothing falls into the possibly expected new age or ambient tropes. Instead, every single contributor has worked hard to create detailed vignettes of playful and innovative abstraction. Effectively the whole collection becomes a huge episodic suite that shifts and twists like some Xenakis filtered pop odyssey.
Synthetic Bird Music attempts to convey the world through their eyes. A world, despite the seemingly widespread love, that threatens a third of all bird’s extinction by the end of this century.
Thankfully, collections like this, whilst full of fizzing creativity, help spotlight the fact we should all do everything we can to respect and safeguard the miracle that is our planet. Likewise, for all those beautiful and pure souls that call it home.
A portion of sales from this collection are given to SOS/Bird Life Slovakia, a project near to mappa’s base and heart. So, as well as easily being our compilation of the year, it’s also a form of activism and support.
Purchase here
Meredith Bates | Tesseract (Phonometrograph)
Tesseract is a word that begs to be looked up. Upon learning it’s another name for a 4-dimensional hypercube (something touched on at my time in Art School), it immediately explains the curious vast nature of this album.
This geometric form is one that whilst explainable in mathematics can only exist theoretically in our world. Vancouver based musician Meredith Bates, in turn has taken these broad themes and applied them to processed violin, voices and found objects. It’s an album that has joyously and slowly smouldered here for months.
Animation from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract
Perhaps because it’s built around one of the most effective musical gestures of all – the sound of strings, this music feels like molecules of both universally understood classical music and huge emotional heft. The warmth of humanness in cold spaces and intergalactic voids.
Somehow, its huge 2-hour span delightfully unravels from orchestral mist into some spectral psychedelic nebulae. The six pieces feel more like untamed textural spaces to get lost in as we move between two fixed points. The 32 minutes of Debris is like a wild trajectory through an asteroid belt towards some beaming solar event. Equally impressive is the 47-minute title track, the tracing of anti-matter warping and tearing into a black hole, and then out of the resultant white hole.
In a year when so much of our listening has been dominated by huge avant garde archival releases, Tesseract is somehow a beautiful contemporary counterpoint to this. Deeply spacious, and at times wild, but without ever feeling savage or uncompromising.
The image on the sleeve somehow beautifully encapsulates the entire project. Earth based, human sized, a frozen moment that connects various elemental forces together. Tesseract has been a slow burner that somehow retains just enough mystery to feel like every listen reveals something unknown, epic and new.
Purchase here
Christian Mirande | Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next (Regional Bears)
As an album this fairly concise 32-minute collection somehow refuses to settle into anything in particular. The US based sound artist Christian Mirande weaves together all sorts of odd layers that often just happen to share the same space. Woozy electronics, vocal fragments, field recordings, snatches of rhythm, false starts and sabotaged by numerous aural trapdoors. It’s never easy to remotely predict where any part will lead you to…
The opener Introduction: Frog Pond is like waking up, having been spiked, whilst the brief Transition: Additive Brooding is a flight through sheets of pure energy. Eugenie & Me On The Battery Ferry is chirping cicadas with heavy industry somewhere a few miles down river… Each of the 9 miniatures that make up Side A (none of which are more than 2 and a half minutes long) could all easily form the basis of much bigger world building, or even a story, but instead, create a pleasing flick book of threads and possibilities.
The second side attempts the same thing, in a different way. This time Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next a) Vecherinka b) Mallacoota c) Bike Ride To The Library d) Frisson are underpinned with a sense of rhythm. Each of the 4 sections of 15-minute piece always somehow interlocking back to glassy electronics and tumbling drum grooves.
The whole thing is intersected with layers of voices and conversations. It’s an audio book, poetry, abstract hip hop, a collage, both uneasily and beautifully cluttered. In parts it’s like Robert Ashley jamming with forth world Eno but whatever is actually going on with Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next, its ability to remain unclassifiable has been its strength. Beautiful complex, wonderfully confused, but deeply engrossing stuff.
Purchase here
Matthewdavid | On Mushrooms & Mycelium Music (LEAVING RECORDS)
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises in more mainstream music this year was the sudden re-emergence of André 3000. The fact his new album New Blue Sun was a vast deeply kosmic voyage on which he only plays flute. An album full of extended pieces of new age drift. That it was actually a great listen, light years from the more earth based Hey Ya! was possibly even more surprising.
From our tiny perspective though the release is significant one, as it opens up this sort of music to a new audience. In turn it also potentially helps spotlight other musicians we have loved for years, that were involved in the albums making – serial astral polymath Carlos Niño and LEAVING RECORDS co-founder Matthewdavid.
Matthewdavid’s ep On Mushrooms and the thematically related album Mycelium Music have both offered beautifully realised, innovative submersions into deep electronic psychedelia. Clearly both projects alluding to the networking, alien intelligence, as well as the health and anxiety zapping properties of mushrooms. As well as their renewed profile in progressive medicine these albums blur the line between music made to trip to, and music made as the result of tripping.
Even without any help, the woozy reflective bouncing nature of the music is hard not to enjoy. The oily pools of Under a Tree or the spinning top of A New Ambient from On Mushrooms are stunning. Meanwhile Mycelium Music maps out things even further, the tape dragging beauty of Perpetuity, the muffled cloudscapes of Spills and the glitched tumbling of Phased Moon all go intergalactic.
Nothing on each of these releases settles into anything other than a totally baked nirvana, and whilst it never really makes any sense, we absolutely love it.
Purchase On Mushrooms, and Mycelium Music
John Fahey | Proofs & Refutations (Drag City Records)
Without doubt, the most surprising release this year was that we’d all be treated to a new John Fahey album. Whilst his premature demise back in 2001 still genuinely stings, nothing could have prepared us for Proofs & Refutations. The opener All The Rains still knocks us off our feet – at the time we said:
“It’s Terry Riley’s time lag accumulator, a Lawrence Weiner meditation on words, somehow narrated by Noah bellowing from the bow of his ark. It’s both unbelievably simple and breathtakingly innovative.“
The album has continued to amaze us. Even at a time of Fahey’s life when things were tough, 8 tracks that all somehow reveal an endless thirst for how his mind and guitar always looked for new settings.
Whilst Proofs & Refutations is an unexpected but hugely welcome gift, we wonder what else might still be waiting in the vaults? We can dream, but this newest of chapter of Fahey’s alway spectacular output, just had an amazing update…
Read our full review here
Purchase here
OUR ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Catherine Christer Hennix | Solo for Tamburium (Blank Form Editions)
Catherine Christer Hennix passed away on 21st November, and the sad news was met here, intertwined by a sense of awe. In the days that followed, we revisited all her music we own, and whilst her entire discography is small in numbers, its scope is unimaginably vast.
Her final album Solo for Tamburium was released in late September this year, somehow now feels like a beautifully elegant deep space goodbye. A 78 minute voyage along her modified keyboard. A form of glissando that models actual chunks of space. With no sentimentality whatsoever, a final journey, plotted by her hands, encrusted in light beams and dusted in the infinite.
Hennix was well respected as a mathematician in parallel to her music. She worked in a field of mathematics known as ultrafinitism, centring on the idea that number set can never be completed, that painly – there is no largest number. Whilst this quickly confuses our tiny brain, it’s easy to see Hennix’s work as a form of putting these formulae into practise by applying these aspects and proportions to sound. Music that takes tiny human gestures, gathered little parcels of sounds, but then births them in a way that both conceptually and physically expands forever.
Returning to Solo for Tamburium after her departure somehow makes it one of the most glorious and poetic goodbyes. The sound of hard logic, humanity, and the sound of space, both molecular and multi-dimensional.
Our album of the year.
Read our full review here, and our tribute to Catherine Christer Hennix here
Purchase here
obladada.com 