Listening Clark :: Class Of 2023 :: Module Nineteen
And good morrow, dearest chums…
You’ll forgive me for wanting to keep it brief here, only I am hurtling towards the thousand-album yardstone for the year and still have so much left to listen to.
Maybe I just shouldn’t bother going on holiday next year…
Anyhow, you know the drill, I’m assuming (if there’s anyone reading this obviously…)
Listening Clark :: Class Of 2023 :: Module Nineteen
Absent Friends, Vol. III – Minor Science
Angus Finlayson’s electronic art-noise project reaches its most accessible pinnacle with the third volume of a series that has taken shape as both a DJ set and sound collage project in its previous instalments, this album constituting of studio-based adaptations of live doodles that creates the kind of auditory nestling that unsettles and beguiles in equal measure.
Afro Futuristic Dreams – Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids
Currently enjoying its fiftieth year creating joyfully cathartic soundscapes, saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor’s jazz and world music ensemble continues to drive both its players and listeners to the outer realms of mourning and celebration, this latest album being heralded by some of the outfit’s most luminous notices yet.
Again – Oneohtrix Point Never
After assignments that have seen the electronic wunderkind collaborate with the likes of The Weeknd and Soccer Mommy, not to mention scoring duties for productions courtesy of the Safdie brothers and Guillermo Del Toro, Daniel Lopatin’s OPN moniker dusts off its impish machines to deliver a tenth album full of the composer’s customary leftfield tweaks and majesties.
CHAI – CHAI
The Japanese foursome continue to charm the pants off anyone caught within earshot on the eponymous fourth album, embracing the genre-mashing aesthetics of city pop to deliver with their typically playful DIY punk ethos that quite confidently delivers possibly The Best Pop Album Of 2023.
For Mahalia, With Love – James Brandon Lewis & Red Lily Quintet
Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis busies himself further despite quite the prolific year already with a fiercely jazzified new-century spin on some of the mighty Mahalia Jackson‘s most fervently adored gospel songs, essaying the pain, joy and transcendence of Jackson’s work with inimitable flair and feeling.
Signs – Purelink
Calming things down now with some spectral ambience courtesy of Chicago-based trio Purelink and their debut album, a beatific paean to the city life that falls somewhere between Wolfgang Voigt and Will Bevan, apparently already mastering the ambivalent sonic space of subterranean atmospheres and cityscapes straight out of the gate.
Silver – Say She She
Another trio to find prodigious epithets thrown their way by critics and fans alike are this transatlantic purveyors of post-disco ebullience, this second album of theirs recorded live on cassette and filled to brim with the kind of warmth and feelgood factor that could only come from music made from a collective possessed of as much kinship and respect as they are talent.
Sit Down For Dinner – Blonde Redhead
Some seriously good stalwart energy this way plays on the tenth album from the alternative rock trio, continuing to give their followers all the dreamy feels in that most special way of theirs just in time to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary of being.
Teghnojoyg – Babe, Terror
If anyone wants a condensed taster of what my year has been like having listened to nearly 1000 albums, you need only play any track from Sao Paulo’s Claudio Katz Szynkier’s latest album, which represents some of the most intoxicatingly chaotic examples of sound collage you are likely to hear in 2023.
We Buy Diabetic Strips – Armand Hammer
Thanks to artists such as Elucid and billy woods, alternative hip hop is enjoying a particularly thriving resurgence over the past few years, and the duo’s sixth album finds their sharp wit and scalding intelligence on fine, ribald display courtesy of production duties from the likes of JPEGMAFIA, El-P and Kenny Segal.
But yeah, there it is… now if you’ll excuse me, spooky season is coming and I’ve got a milestone to take care of first…
xxxo
