Oh, hi, it’s albums of the year time.
It was a pretty good year for bosh, with bangers a’plenty from Roza Terenzi & D Tiffany, E-Saggila, and Nite Fleit. I enjoyed a couple of startlingly good noise collaborations from KMRU & Aho Ssan and from Merzbow & Lawrence English. And I spent many somewhat quieter but equally happy hours with Félicia Atkinson, Ian William Craig, Loren Rush, and Christina Vantzou. But the records which made my top five are:
- O’Flynn & Frazer Ray’s Shimmer. This is a stonkingly good set of floor-friendly styles with upliftingly nostalgic vocals which I can’t get enough of.
- Leda Maar’s Stairway 13. This is darkly atmospheric ambient-adjacent stuff, with some ace Greek chorus style poetry. There’s a wonderful sense of going on a journey with this one.
- Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman’s Funeral Folk. Folk/drone laced with doom metal and traditional Finnish lamentations? I mean, obviously I was going to love this, and love it I very much do.
- Lady Neptune’s Noz. I honestly wasn’t expecting one of my picks of 2023 to be face-melting gabba. But this has brought me so much pleasure over the last few months that it clearly earns its place on this list.
- Matchess’s Sonescent. This combines elements of folk, drone, classical minimalism, and hauntology, and what I called at the time “a peculiar alchemy which seems all her own”. The way the melodies float in and out of the miasma is utterly bewitching.
dogrando writes about some records 