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Album Ratings 217
Objectivity 48%
Last Active 10-05-17 4:41 am
Joined 12-11-16
Review Comments 41
| albums i loved in 2023
some albums i loved this year in no particular order | | 1 |  | Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya
Orbweaving
I’m obsessed with this album. I’ve spent some time with Midwife’s music, especially the album Luminol, and while Orbweaving might not evoke the same sense of beautiful dread (Heaven Metal) that I find in Madeline’s music, there’s something else here. What an amazing collection of strange, dark dreamscapes. I haven’t spent any time with Melinkolya’s music before this, but from what I understand, their shoegaze influences and Mifwife’s circular, brooding riffs/writing compliment each other perfectly. This album is deep and dark and full of mind bending beauty, feels like the songs that a black widow sings to you as you die from their venom high out of your mind and hallucinating. | | 2 |  | Lankum
False Lankum
I have loved Lankum for a while now, especially their album Between the Earth and Sky but what they have created here is just unbelievable, brilliant and pushes everything they’ve been doing to an extreme. Just a visceral and genius take on traditional folk music. I’m confident these songs have never sounded like this before, like Go Dig My Grave is this grief stricken tune (apparently compiled of many different verses and stanzas, dating back to 1611) which is transformed into a totally punishing funeral dirge that feels closer to metal than traditional folk music… Or has folk music always been a bit metal.. Anyway Lankum’s “DOOM-
FOLK” is actually great because it is extracting some kind of narrative focus from these songs in a unique way… Like, pushing the feeling of the original tune to an extreme, to the point of catharsis. | | 3 |  | kitchen
Breath Too Long
Admittedly I haven’t gotten into this album as much as Kitchen’s last album Halloween in August but I’ve been listening to Breath Too Long more and more. Kitchen’s production is so unique, I love the use of tape and old gear to introduce tons of noise, and I feel that the wobbly, unsure-ness of tape really reflects the themes and feelings in the music too, feelings of being unwanted and out of place, at least from my perspective. The lo-fi tape stuff is interweaved with more hi-fi recordings as well, creating a really dreamlike space for the music to live in. And the production works because the songs are just great too, Kitchen does a lot with really stripped down chords and song structures. And the lyrics are beautiful, nostalgic and simple pictures of life. | | 4 |  | grave market
what is nothing to the rest of us
What is Nothing to the Rest of Us is genuinely stunning This is probably the piece of music I’ve returned to the most this year; appropriate as the last lyric on the EP goes “I’ve awaited this return.” How did they know. These are intimate meditations on memory, appearances and trauma where the music rises and falls to meet the lyrics which form the heart of these songs. The relationship between the simple, floating instrumentation and the intimate, poetic lyrics generates this beautiful feeling of tension which I find really unique and, yeah I just keep coming back. I can’t overstate it though these are some of the most beautiful, well written heartfelt and rich lyrics I’ve listened to this year, my personal favourite song is Threads which goes: “there’s the sacred/and then there’s what’s behind it/the knowledge that/forever is sometimes/unless none or both die/because memories fade like your rattling sigh.” EP of the year for me! | | 5 |  | Tim Hecker
No Highs
Tim Hecker has been a musical hero/legend for me for a long time and No Highs is a great and dizzying addition to his discography. I’ll maintain that you’ll never have an experience in your life like listening to Tim Hecker’s music on headphones in the dark, whole worlds are contained in these albums. I closed my eyes and watched a city spin and disappear into dense fog then the fog transforms with the pulsing bass frequencies into impossible shapes… Colin Stetson’s unbelievable saxophone also transports the music deeper into, well, it feels so much like concrete and fog and neon, I can’t explain it. | | 6 |  | Youth Lagoon
Heaven Is a Junkyard
This album is just an absolutely lovely pop record that is constantly surprising and beautiful, I cannot get over the production and writing here. These songs are really really catchy but they manage to bring this edge of darkness, strangeness, it is actually a really weird album. I love the weird vocal sampling, the recurring vinyl crackle, the stunning piano sound, the dreamy/nightmare-y lyrics, all the strange production choices that make this feel like an old dusty record you found while exploring a decrepit house in Wonderland. I know I’ll return to this many many times. | | 7 |  | flatsound
You Can’t Impress Anyone with Normal Pictures of t
A few years ago Flatsound created the album Somewhere in the Distance, Somewhere toward the Mountains which in my opinion is a serious contender for greatest ambient album ever made. And this year he said fuck it I’ll do it again! While personal circumstance at the time of Somewhere’s release is really what has cemented that album as one of my favourites, it’s easy to say that this album is not only a worthy successor but adds so much to Flatsound’s… sound. Sure these are ambient-genre-songs but certainly not just background music, there is so much detail and love poured into every second; moments of heartbreak and love and wonder are all contained here. Most memorably, I listened to the song Forgive Me not long ago while outside at 2am under bright stars and truly felt that the music was coming from up there like each little star was blinking with the pulsing synth, and I got completely lost in this feeling until it got too cold and I had to go inside. | | 8 |  | Black Country, New Road
Live at Bush Hall
Some of the things they’ve created are just impossibly powerful and devastating and this album is honestly no exception. Even as some live representations of songs that are actually unreleased, their unparalleled songwriting is still on display. I love these songs, and I love that each member gets a chance to
show off their songwriting. This is a genuine supergroup of overwhelmingly talented people whose songwriting styles all work remarkably well together. I can’t stress how locked in this band is, it’s easy to forget this is a live album sometimes, except for when the odd cough during a silence sneaks in or the crowd
is going crazy. So much perfect, beautiful storytelling in the lyrics, I can’t even get started on that. They were also insane live! | | 9 |  | Ben Howard
Is It?
Ben Howard continues to carve out this unique place and sound with this album. In fact, while it might not be my favourite of his albums, I think it’s the most Ben-Howard record so far. Beyond the absolute genius of the recording here which would take far too long to dive into with words, he just has this way of making
songs that always feel like water, flowing and rolling and tumbling over itself… Everything moves in this fluid way in the soundscape, it’s like a constant waterfall that you’re falling through in slow motion watching the water move around you. Dense, deep, and overflowing with surreal wonder. I listen to the song Days of
Lantana all the time. | | 10 |  | Agriculture
Agriculture
After listening to Agriculture quite a lot, I’m making it a goal to get even more into extreme metal next year. Listening to tracks like The Glory of the Ocean is straight up a spiritual experience where the band conjures the weight and dark of the ocean itself through massive walls of guitar noise and pummelling drums. This music is so visual and evocative of, I don’t know, impossible experiences like soaring at dizzying speeds through the absolute depths of the ocean out into the sky, into blinding light. I just find it so beautiful, and the fact that the music has this dark, crushing sound but generates a lot of light through the chords that are played and the structure of the songs. I can’t wait to hear their next project. I love the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal by the band Agriculture! | | 11 |  | Keaton Henson
House Party
Keaton Henson releases a concept album about a pop star writing happy songs about being deeply miserable. No surprise that it is great. I didn’t quite get it at first and the songs didn’t really resonate with me, but it really grew over time. It’s really cool to hear Keaton writing and singing art-pop songs since it’s so different than what I’ve heard from him, and I came to really love the friction between the lyrics and the music, everything has this sardonic and almost toxic quality once you start listening to the lyrics. Sometimes, the music drops the act and we get a soul-baring moment from Keaton, and those are my favourite moments, like the song The Mine is one of his most well written songs in a history of powerful lyrics. | | 12 |  | Parannoul
After The Magic
If I got talk to any artist at all in the world and get to pick their brain for a while, there’s a good chance I would choose Parannoul so I could ask him how the FUCK he makes this music from his bedroom and using mostly VST’s. It’s beyond impressive, but more than that the music is just purely heartfelt and exciting and inspiring. Maximalist-shoegaze-pop that is just packed with beautiful, beautiful melodies. Parannoul is so creative and imaginative with how he writes melodies and songs, everything is so freeing and heart-opening, and everything feels in its right place despite the unpredictability of almost every song here. It is really hard to describe the feeling this music gives me… Yeah it just feels like your heart bursting open half the time and then it feels like floating through a snowy city or forest watching everyone’s lives happen in front of you. Waves of shoegaze guitars and noise transport me into what feels like distant memories like old grainy photos. | |
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