Another year in the books already, can’t be many left to go now. Even so music still has the capacity to surprise even those with jaded palates. Did anyone expect new releases from Bob Dylan, The Stones, plus a new song from The Beatles in the same year, and in 2023? I’ll have the EuroMillions numbers for the next draw if you did. Even better all three feature in my end of year best releases and songs lists.

As per usual this list is in alphabetical order, and includes reissues and compilations. I’ll freely admit I don’t listen to enough new albums anymore to do a list significantly longer than ten. Exhaustive, longer lists can be found elsewhere by people who get paid to do that for a living. If these little cockmonkeys ever start whining about not getting paid enough, then let me know, I’ll happily go Billy Ray Valentine and trade places with them.

I’ll publish my favourite ten songs of 2023 in-between Christmas and New Year. RIP Shane MacGowan. Have a Merry Christmas and try not to resent having to eat stodgy food and spending time with your folks, even if their farts and inane conversation become unbearable.

Aphex Twin – Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760

Another stellar release in Richard D. James’ epic discography. The title for the lead track hints at James being in a retrospective mood, as well offering it as a dedication to his mum and dad who died recently. The video’s peculiar collages serving as a mind’s eye of memory fragmenting, and the past, present and future technologies colliding, a feature which James’ music has always carried. Most impressive is that it adds to James’ sui generis output, nobody else makes music that sounds remotely like this.

Bob Dylan – Shadow Kingdom

Not new songs from his Bobness (he’s one of the few who can get away with this), but new versions of a selection of (mostly) his sixties to early seventies classics. As Keith Richards’ said to Dylan in a Live Aid bootleg for Voices of Freedom “after a while you start to rewrite your own songs”. It would be a stretch to say these are re-written, more reimagined with a sager, defter touch. There’s no percussion here, just Bob’s weathered voice with accordion and sublime string arrangements. Most of these songs had wisdom and insight beyond the age Bob was when he penned them, now in his eighty-second year, these versions have a grounding to them that fit the legend better than ever.

James Holden – Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities

A sonic odyssey of lush IDM melodies. There’s a lot of influences here, new and old – Tangerine Dream and The Soft Pink Truth are prominent touchstones. Holden has an impeccable track record of churning out quality bits and pieces since the early 2000’s, but this is his most comprehensive long player.

John Coltrane – Evenings at the Village Gate

Someone’s making a killing, as there seems to be a new Coltrane reissue/remaster every year. Still, let’s not complain that new gems keep being unearthed. Eric Dolphy and Elvin Jones feature here and help produce the best live versions of “My Favourite Things” and “Impressions” (at pace) that I have yet to hear. There may be complaints about the sound quality and that Coltrane’s playing isn’t well isolated. One for AI to figure out. My take is it sounds authentic, as though you were there, and isn’t that the whole point of recording a live gig?

Les Rallizes Denudes – Club Citta February 17 1993

Badly cut ketamine. Sinewy limbs. Dreadful helmet bowl emo haircuts. Wearing sunglasses inside. All black outfits. Air thick with green ciggie smoke. This is conclusive proof that these are necessary to create the ambiance where an epic psyche rock gig occurs. Made me all angsty and moody enough to want to brick the window of the local chippy. I’m in my early forties.

Nourished By Time – Erotic Probiotic 2

Sonically magpie R’n’B but earworms aplenty. Think a mix of Dean Blunt, Frank Ocean, Duval Timothy and Robbie M. Sounds as if it was recorded in a dingy home studio with knackered equipment, and, reading the Bandcamp bio, there’s every chance it was.

Richard Sen presents Dream the Dream: UK Techno, House and Breakbeat 1990​-​1994

Brilliant comp of spaced-out tech house from the best Blairite around. Think early Underworld but with a smidge of acid. A lot of good niche stuff I’d never heard, always up for that. Call it a mode of borrowed nostalgia for those who were a bit too young to remember the early nineties. It even assists the narrative of the bores who were there and then. You know them, who insist Human Traffic was a lie, that this music represents clubbing when it was purest, before aspiration and corporatisation (read yuppies and yobs) moved in and homogenised the scene.

The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds

Jonathan Meades was exaggerating when he said that the Stones haven’t produced a good album since Mick Taylor quit. Some Girls and Tattoo You came after he was replaced by Ron Wood. But this is certainly the best Stones offering since the early eighties. We all joke about what world will we leave to Mick and Keith, but they’re both eighty now, and we may not get another Stones album. There’s a lot of anthemic stuff here, “Live By The Sword” wouldn’t be out of place on Exile On Main St. and the last two tracks on the album, in particular, are worthy entries in the Stones’ canon.

Slowdive – Everything is Alive

Had a binge on other guitar bands who were in the pomp in the early nineties earlier this year: Pavement, Silkworm, Red House Painters, Fishmans, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr. etc, but not Slowdive, only for Slowdive to release another record that fits perfectly within the genre and the time I find it synonymous with. This one’s also very Cocteau Twins and The Cure in places.

Synthesized Sudan – Astro​-​Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground

Over the last fifteen years or so we’ve had a number of compilations released documenting (unearthing? At least to us in the Global North, doesn’t anyone else find the term the Global South demeaning?) electronic music from Africa in the seventies and eighties. Synthesized Sudan sits alongside other excellent compilations showcasing Francis Bebey (African Electronic Music 1975 – 1982), William Onyeabor (Crashes In Love, Body & Soul and Who Is William Onyeabor?) and Mammane Sani (La Musique Electronique du Niger). It also has some serious swag.