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Music

Prins Emanuel – Ruach

For the next few weeks the newness of the music featured here will take a back seat as I trawl through the many (many) end of year list and discover everything I missed. But hopefully much of it will at least be as new to you as it is to me, so we can still be friends. Popmatters’ ambient selections are always especially strong, and so it proves once again as they’ve introduced me to this beautiful piece from Sweden’s Prins Emanuel, taken from him album Diagonal Musik II.

https://prinsemanuel.bandcamp.com/album/diagonal-musik-ii

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Music

Golf Trip – Killing Flowers (Pale Jay Remix)

Pale Jay is probably my favourite new musical discovery of 2023, and his album Bewilderment is one of the best albums of the year. I’m not familiar with the original Killing Flowers so not sure exactly how much he’s done here, but the results are lush.

https://golftrip.bandcamp.com/album/tranquility-float

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Features Music

Feature: The 50 Best Albums of 2023

Given how many people are likely to read this, the amount of time I spent deciding which albums made the cut this year is frankly ridiculous. I’ve listened to hundreds of albums this year, and barely feel like I’ve scratched the surface. And despite my best efforts, there’s still no metal.

My preference for meandering ambient, breathy female vocalists and nostalgia-inducing electronica still continues to dominate. If you’re into any of this, lucky you!

I’m genuinely relived to be putting my own selections out there so I can now start the far more enjoyable process of going through all the other end of year lists and finding everything I missed.

Here are my favourite albums of 2023.

TPW xx

Continue reading “Feature: The 50 Best Albums of 2023”
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Music

Clark – Dolgoch Dry As Ash

After the soaring, organic beauty of 2021’s A Playground In A Lake, Clark’s new album Cave Dog is a bit of a hard landing back on digital earth, but not necessarily in a bad way. Take the very weirdly named Dogloch Dry As Ash, which comes in like a hybrid of Mylo and Boards of Canada with a sprinkling of the (original) Tron soundtrack; and if that sounds like an unlikely mix, then I agree – but there you have it.

https://clark.bandcamp.com/album/cave-dog

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Music

Sun Kil Moon – Mindy

Mark Kozelek goes full lounge on his latest single. It might be a joke, but I really like it.

https://www.sunkilmoon.com

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Music

Traumprinz – extra life

Traumprinz / DJ Healer / whoever continues his annual tradition of releasing new music as we enter the festive season. This time it’s some additional material from 2022’s life, presumably recorded around the same time, alongside weltenbrände, which is an “associative prose poem” in German. So fairly niche, that one, but extra life at least is a welcome reminder that he’s still the undisputed king of emotional techno.

https://soundcloud.com/planet-uterus

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Music

Kamaiyah – No Pape

Another Summer Night seems to have landed at least six months too late; I can’t really think of a title (or vibe) less suited to the general mood in the UK right now. However Kamaiyah is as bouncy as ever, and although this doesn’t really compare to her divinely brash and boisterous debut A Good Night In The Ghetto, it’s a diverting change from the rain-lashed misery we’re all currently sucking up.

https://www.instagram.com/kamaiyah

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Music

André 3000 – I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time

Who’d have thought we needed an ambient flute album from Outkast’s Johnny Vulture, but here we are.

https://andre3000.lnk.to/NewBlueSun

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Music

Rozi Plain, Hannah Miette – Let me know

There’s absolutely nothing online about this except a very minimal Reddit thread, so I’m not entirely sure it even exists. Although: here I am listening to it, and writing about it, so I suppose it must. Rozi Plain’s Prize is one of the best albums of the year (official ranking coming soon!), and this follows its folksy-electronica footsteps, starting small and breaking down into increasingly weird whimsy in its final third.

https://www.roziplain.co.uk

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Music

Spencer Zahn – OST

Landing last week, Statues II is the culmination of a double album that began with his Statues I, released in August of this year, both of which follow his incredible collaboration with Dawn Richard on Pigments; one of the best album of 2022. Leaning hard into both ambient and jazz, OST is a fuzzy, celestial, faintly ominous delight.

https://spencerzahn.bandcamp.com/album/statues-ii