Listening Clark :: Class Of 2023 :: Module Eight
What up…
Firstly, Happy Pride Month! If you could do as well as you can to make sure transgender people are protected and safe, that would be what the kids are calling The Right Thing, Thanks.
Secondly, before carrying on with this extensive cataloguing of 2023 music releases, I’d like to offer a few words to illustrate further my madness in curating these listicles.
As I have mentioned previously, it involves selections made highlighted by Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, The Guardian and Metacritic, as well as recommendations from friends and trying to keep up with sequential releases from artists that for whatever reason are not featured on these respective sites.
Thereafter, I try to listen to a block of five albums per day, twice, trying to avoid weekends as much as possible because social life and stuff. I mention this because this past week, I’ve had a day where I listened to both Ed Sheeran and The Smashing Pumpkins‘ new albums in a single day, which is more than any person should ever have to deal with honestly (the latter mainly due to its interminable length, the former because Ed Sheeran).
But hey, it didn’t quite break my mettle, and thankfully like every other facet of the world we live in, there is much more rewardingly good things out there than there are bad, if you look hard enough.
And with that admission out of the way here is…
Listening Clark :: Class Of 2023 :: Module Eight
& The Charm – Avalon Emerson
Nearly ten years since her first extended play was released, Avalon Emerson’s debut album finally arrives riding a decade-long wave of well-received remix assignments for the likes of Robyn and Christine And The Queens as well as high-profile DJ gigs across the world, a warm and inviting tonic of dreamy synthpop that eschews the hedonistic intensity of commercial dance music for something a little more contemplative but no less hypnotic.
amaXesha – Bongeziwe Mabandla
Described as “the enigmatic spirit of African Soul”, Mabandla has worked for over a decade to reimagine his homeland of South Africa’s indigenous folk music with a modernised twist; after suffering a setback in not being able to tour with his third album back in 2020 (because… well, 2020), he is back with a new long-player full of gorgeous soul that combines acoustic instrumentation with subtle electronic beats and signatures.
Bastard Jargon – Nakhane
Staying with musicians from South Africa for the time being, Nakhane’s third album is one of the most anticipated releases of the year, not least since their previous longform found enough favour to receive plaudits from both Elton John and Madonna; and just like You Will Not Die, Nakhane’s latest work is bristling with anger, soul, forgiveness and, most crucially, pop-tastic moments of sway, with the unique voice at its centre no less unfettered and salient throughout.
blómi – Susanne Sundfør
Despite keeping busy with film score work and managing to appear on each instalment of her fellow countrymen Röyksopp‘s Profound Mysteries album trilogy last year, Norwegian folk-pop stalwart Susanne Sundfør had kept quiet on the album front for six years before the release of blómi, a tenderly spellbinding paean to her family that at times reaches the swoonsome heights of Carole King‘s best work in terms of its high quotient of blue-eyed soulful richness.
Daystar – Beta Librae
And boom, back to some spacey techno vibes now, courtesy of producer Bailey Hoffman’s Beta Librae project, whose third album is a transportive collection of deep house electronica that makes as much of its moments of quiet and rumination as it does of its more propulsive sequences, lending the whole affair a beatific aura that proves that audio serenity does not necessarily come at the sacrifice of bopworthy beats.
Dreamer – Nabihah Iqbal
The front cover of Nabihah Iqbal’s second album finds her wearing a Jeff Buckley T-shirt, which ought to give the listener a clue as to where The Artist Formerly Known As Throwing Shade’s sound has since travelled; using acoustic instruments to reinforce her soundscapes with an earthier feel, Iqbal appeals for a more transcendent sound on Dreamer, resulting in a genre-spanning LP that offers cuts that could find favour at both a shoegaze party and a techno rave.
Maps – billy woods & Kenny Segal
With this follow-up to their 2019 collaborative album Hiding Places, underground hip hop artist woods and producer Segal prove that sometimes a sequel can be both bigger AND better than its predecessor, though admittedly that has as much to do with both Segal’s beat-making abilities and especially woods’ hard-hitting rhymes technique not having dulled since their last endeavour but rather growing almost deathly sharp as it does a head-turningly impressive roster of featured guests.
Sovereign Bodies / Ritual Taxonomy – Adjunct Ensemble
The website for progenitor Jamie Thompson’s musical project reads thusly: “For operatic soprano, turntablist, spoken word poet, jazz punk trio”. And that genre-deflecting bait doesn’t even begin to scratch at the depth that this album has, charting the beleaguered histories of migrants across the world by taking in modern contemporary classicism, electronic dissonance, fee-form jazz and fraught sound collage to create a potent, frightening tome of human experience.
Spalarkle – Felicita
Meeting the futurepop quota for this edition is PC Music alum Felicita with their second album of jittery, hyper-sugared audio playfulness, featuring 2023’s Newly Crowned Princess Of Pop herself Caroline Polachek on the title track, a standout amongst an equal bevy of darkly bright leftfield dance pop that strikes the right balance between otherworldly experimentalism and giddily anarchic ravey nonsense.
Through And Through – Baby Rose
Finishing up the set for this edition we have the tremulously gorgeous vocal stylings of one Baby Rose, an alternative-soul star whose second album cements her position as one of the most charismatic singers of her generation, able as she is to give bend the ears of music fans both old and new with an intoxicating voice that takes in equal amounts rapt ecstasy and caustic remonstration in a single melismatic note.
And that is your lot for today! Feel free to let me know of any misgivings/commendations/omission below if it so moves.
For now though, must dash…
xxxo
