2023 musical recordings

BDPhones | Songs For The Fall

This is one of my favorite albums to come out in a long time. I’m biased… but it is just very, very good.  Quite possibly the best album in a career chock full of great ones.

It’s hard to pick favorite tracks from a record that contains nothing but fantastic songs, but in no particular order I’d highlight the twangy muddy country jams (Down on the South, Souled Out, Thick Delta Fog), perfectly crafted, melodic pop music (Montford Mirrors in the Park, Sometime Summertime Baby), nostalgic beauty (Tell Me I'm Dreamin', Summer with the Sultanes of Sin, Elizabethton), and the one-off brilliant street rap confessional delivered through a folk music lens that somehow still feels at home on the album (RIP Crawley).

If you like any of the genres described above, or just pretty folk guitar music in general, you owe it to yourself to pick up this album. Ten thumbs up, 15/10, legit contender for my AOTY 2023.

John Cale released a new album today called Mercy.

I don't really know where to post this because this just came out but none of it is new BUT it's also basically never been heard by anyone before so...

Is there a band or an artist you love that pretty much no one else is into? Or some obscure album that came out ten or 20 years ago that you love but has just gotten zero attention over the years?

Kids Indestructible was a duo from the UK who made music that was too electronic and sample-heavy to be called "rock" but were obviously not going for anything resembling dance or techno. There's a lot of shoegaze and ambient elements in their music but they never really go all in with either so it's hard to pin down exactly what they're doing. They put out one EP on a small French label 20 years ago that kind of seemed to be going places but then just stopped putting out music right when it seemed like they could have been picked up or noticed more by the bullshit indie music press that was crowning the winners and deciding who would live or die. I really don't know what happened. M83 put out their first album on the label but then Dead Cities got some kind of co-release through Mute and they would never look back and Gooom Records would just kind of disappear after that. So then that was the end of Kids Indestructible too.

https://kidsindestructible.bandcamp.com/album/trans-pennine-express-ep

This is so good. I feel like I've recommended it before over the years but I have no idea how to get anyone to actually listen to it. Maybe that's fine, maybe they can just be something I like and no one else has to know about it. But it feels weird to live in a world where Sweet Trip are HUGE online and somehow that happened (perhaps not for the best of everyone involved but that's a whole other matter) but there's so much other music from that time that is still also really great but no one seems to care about it anymore.

The EP got like one review, unfortunately it was on a site that wasn't long for this world: https://cokemachineglow.com/records/kids-indestructable/

I've been subscribed to Kids Indestructible on Bandcamp because I eventually bought the EP on there but never expected them to put out anything else again. And then last week I got an email about this.


https://kidsindestructible.bandcamp.com/album/store-in-a-cool-dry-place-archive-tracks-1998-2006

This band had only ever released 35 minutes of music (a quarter of which was just remixes from other artists) but now there's nearly 2 more hours of stuff from them and almost all of it is amazing IMO.

Very fun and playful psychedelic stuff like The Orb with a wry sense of humour to it. But the closest comparison I keep coming back to is Flowchart, who were probably the one band I "got into" more than any other last year and was exactly the kind of music that I've been searching high and low for for a long time--and I know, it hasn't been hiding from me or anything, they put put out albums on Darla just like Sweet Trip, they were very much a known entity-- and sooooo much of this music on this compilation feels like it's exploring the same zone. It's such a fun vibe and it goes places you never really expect from the simple beginnings of so many of the tracks.

Reminder to myself to make a thread about Flowchart someday.

It's very possible that no one else here is going to feel this stuff but I just wanted to share this because this coming out is like THE biggest surprise I've ever had aside from some big cultural event like mbv or In Rainbows or something.

@bgwaves, c-poots, techno raj

I will certainly give this a listen. I saw your post yesterday and didn't want to respond to such a write up with a meaningless one-line response cause I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet but also I didn't want it to feel like that write up was falling on deaf ears so here we are.

But yeah, will give it a listen thanks for recommending.

I listened to this on Sunday but forgot to post about it. It’s pretty cool, does really sound like Flowchart, Pram, Loop, and any other band you wanna compare from the post-stereolab era. The drums are pretty heavy, almost like that band Secret Machines that was popular in the early 00s. Good record

An amazing ambient techno release from my peoples at Constellation Tatsu. This is part of their winter batch which has two other great albums, but this one stands above those two. Smoldering, Smokey, spacey, Strategy.



Strategy - Graffiti in Space

https://ctatsu.bandcamp.com/album/graffiti-in-space

I found this via a bandcamp article, Best Field Recordings, and while this album features some stretches of field recordings, it’s much, much more. I recommend this to everyone here. It might not be everyone’s taste but if your looking for lovely, euphoric, fogged out spaces to be in for about 40 minutes, this is the place to be. Highly Recommended!



https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/long-drove

I don't like looking at this guy

Spoiler:

BGwaves wrote:I found this via a bandcamp article, Best Field Recordings, and while this album features some stretches of field recordings, it’s much, much more. I recommend this to everyone here. It might not be everyone’s taste but if your looking for lovely, euphoric, fogged out spaces to be in for about 40 minutes, this is the place to be. Highly Recommended!



https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/long-drove

This is great.

The first track sets up some expectations for a certain kind of pastoral ambient music that I kind of like but doesn't really hold my attention for too long. And then every other track on the album just goes in totally different directions I wasn't prepared for.

undo wrote:I don't like looking at this guy

Spoiler:

Was thinking this was gonna either be Fever Ray or Mac DeMarco.

I'd heard the name Fever Ray before, but never realized it was half of The Knife.
I'm assuming this is worth listening too for fans of that other project?

I listened to that Long Drove album tonight. It was cool. I could see getting more into it in the coming weeks.

I only have a passing familiarity with either act but that is my impression, yeah.

Little Neddy goes to war wrote:I'd heard the name Fever Ray before, but never realized it was half of The Knife.
I'm assuming this is worth listening too for fans of that other project?

The Fever Ray self-titled is an excellent album that should definitely appeal to anyone who appreciates the chillier, spookier elements of The Knife.

Yes new Fever Ray is very good and I’m enjoying it more with each listen.

my best friend colin is clanton's drummer now. that's him in the video

I received my copy of Anoyo today and it reminded me that I wanted to ask, who has listened to the new Tim Hecker album No Highs?

I have a few times at this point and I must admit, I’m not a big fan. It’s a bummer to listen to, the mood is dark and sad with no respite. Konoyo and Anoyo had those elements as well but there was something tender in a few of the tracks on those two albums whereas No Highs seems just sad. Also, the music feels less than innovative for an artist that I’ve always admired for their forward view. I’m off tomorrow, so I’m gonna give it another shot but at the moment, not for me.

I wonder what SpiritofEden thinks about the “AISIS” album. Enjoyed listening to it while sitting in morning traffic.



:mindblownoldmanstaringatmoonpie gif

The new Bell Witch “album” is a single track running well over an hour. It is super dark & doom-filled, moves at a glacial pace but has crushing riffs & cool vocals that are mostly indecipherable. Everything you’d want from Bell Witch!

what the fuck

I think this is an Orb album that I want to buy but .. the CDs are sold out on Bandcamp and the vinyl isn't?

The coding on your embed disagreed with the board somehow, CPoots. Maybe post a link instead?

Lets try this - this is my song from 2023. I still don't have any idea how to find listeners. Its on Spotify and stuff too.

Nice to see US Girls get some attention these days, but man, the more I listen to Bless This Mess the less I want to hear it.