2023 end of year lists

Albums of 2023 part 1. 40 to 26

Don’t listen to Kevin Burgess! This had been another good year for music, I’ve even got albums rated 4 stars on RYM that haven’t made my top 40 of the year. I think I’ve had to dig a little harder this year to find the good shit but happy with these 40 as being the holy grail.

40, Hotline TNT – Cartwheel
Imagine if Teenage Fanclub and Ride had a powerpop shoegaze child but they were American. This is a fairly new one on me but one I keep finding myself coming back to and sounding better on every listen. Slight vibes of the Been Stellar ep from last year that I loved too.

39, Yoni Mayraz – Dybbuk tse!
Debut album from Yoni, an Israeli jazz pianist now based in TCOTU. A lot of the PR for this talks about it combining jazz with 90s New York hip hop. Piano isn’t normally my first choice of lead instrument when it comes to jazz but this really works.

38, Shake Stew – Lila
There’s loads of good jazz about in mainland Europe at the minute and Shake Stew are another fine addition hailing from Austria I believe. These are several albums into their career but this was the first I’d heard of them so I need to dig deeper as I was really impressed by this. There’s some spoken word bits on the opening track which I’m always a big sucker for and the whole atmosphere of this record is slightly dark and foreboding which again is one of my soft spots.

37, Alcynoos – Rewind
Excellent hip hop album with a big jazz vibe going on too. It’s all about the production and beats here. Rapping is fine but prevents it scoring higher.

36, Organic Pulse Ensemble – Formative Stages
One of two releases he’s put out this year. Only heard this one so far as the other isn’t on Spotify but this is really good. It’s spiritual jazz but almost has a slight pastoral folk feel to it too with flute featuring heavily. I need to check out more from the RR Gems record label this is one as the stuff I’ve heard so far has pretty much all been killer.

35, Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Lonnie Liston Smith – Jazz is Dead 017
I got back into the Jazz is Dead series again lately and 017 is the standout of their 2023 releases for me. Hope this project goes on forever.

34, Kool Keith and Real Bad Man – Serpent
I think Kool Keith has had about 5 albums out this year and there’s been some real shit in there. This was surprisingly good though and it is mostly down to Real Bad Man’s beats. The two work really well together here and it ends up being Keith’s best release in quite some time.

33, Holiday Ghosts – Absolute Reality
I don’t think it has been a great year for guitar music at all, especially for new bands with debut albums. This was a rare one that stood out to me though. Nice jangly indie pop with a Velvet Underground vibe. Reminds me a bit of bands I used to love like Veronica Falls. This would have been a top 10 album for late 00s JP.

32, The Toads – In the Wilderness
Australian version of Holiday Ghosts really though this time leaning more on a post punk influence. Good shit.

31, The Murder Capital – Gigi’s Recovery
I was initially really disappointed with this but then saw them live at Latitude where they smashed it and then this all made sense. I then hammered this for a few weeks after Latitude and thought this was going to place really highly but have kinda forgotten about it again since. A lot more subtle than the debut and benefits from repeated listens. Some big tunes here though.

30, The Good People – A Good Year
The Good People have ended up being one of my favourite hip hop acts of recent times. Basically because all their records sound like fun party records that could have been released in 1991. It’s total throwback but I love it.

29, Pardoner – Peace Loving People
Saw this described as “90s inspired indie rock” so had to check it out instantly. I think one of the reasons guitar music has suffered a bit the last year or so is the lack of new American bands coming through but I’ve finally found one here that I love. Apparently their earlier stuff is a bit more punky so not all fans were down with this but this is my entry point and I’m loving it. To my ears it has a mix of the three Ps – Pixies, Pavement and Parquet Courts. I think there could be some soapy fans of this if you haven’t yet heard it.

28, Drop Nineteens – Hard Light
What a pleasant surprise to have these back. I’m really hoping they make it over to the UK for some gigs. Delaware has always been one of my favourite shoegaze records and this follows on nicely.

27, Raw Poetic – Away Back In
Raw Poetic and Damu the Fudgemunk team up again here for another great album. I love the rapping and beats here but always find the guitar from Raw Poetic slightly unnecessary as it tends to be fairly generic. They just about get away with it here though and it doesn’t ruin a great album.

26, The Sherlocks – People Like Me and You
LADS. I really like these. They’re proper squares without much charisma which is unusual in the ladrock game but they make wonderful anthems for real lads so all is forgiven.

25, Pale Jay - Bewilderment
Stunning soul record from a mysterious masked and bucket hatted American singer. I tend to love anything on Colemine and its subsidiaries and this keeps that record going. Jay has a falsetto even higher than Burgess on Wonderland and this album is all killer no filler. It’s just a bit too short.

24, Squid – O Monolith
Found it difficult to place this album. I think it varied from top ten to being out of the top 40 completely at various points in the last few months. I love Squid and clearly it is a great record and a more coherent record than the debut. I just prefer the debut more and have more fun with the highlights of those early eps and album than I do anything on this.

23, El Michels Affair and Black Thought – Glorious Game
Not as good as Cheat Codes but still wonderful. I think that’s the general perception of everyone on this right?

22, Object Heavy – Love and Gravity
I’ve been really into funk and soul this year and this is another great release from that genre. It isn’t on Colemine but sounds like it probably should be.

21, Sufjan Stevens – Javelin
Carrie and Lowell was my album of the decade. I’m not sure I’d quite go that far now but I do love that record. This is more of the same but just not quite in that league.

20, Baxter Dury – I Thought I Was Better Than You
He’s just brilliant but this is too short. Give me another couple of songs Baxter and you have a top ten record on your hands.

19, The Sextones – Love Can’t Be Borrowed
Yet another wonderful soul record from this year. Ignore the awful band name, this sounds like a classic soul record from the early 70s. One of my biggest moments of 2023 is posting this on the gram and Dan “horiz(e)n” Franklin liking it so much he bought a copy on cd. I mean who the fuck buys cds? Its nice to know I still weld such power.

18, Flyying Colours – You Never Know
This really got under my skin. I’d seen the name about before but not properly listened until this year. I’ve delved back into their earlier releases and while all good this is a career highlight for me. It’s a shoegaze record but will a big dose of indie pop too. There’s a handful of tunes here that I could see fitting in on the Pains of Being Pure at Heart debut lp which we all know is one of the all time greats.

17, Gaz Coombes – Turn the Car Around
I’d never been overly arsed with his solo stuff before but this is just great. He fucking sounds like Thom Yorke at times. Just a consistently excellent piece of work and one that will rightly be in the soapy top 3 I reckon.

16, Isaiah Collier – Parallel Universe
Checked this out purely because I saw the cover and it looked cool as fuck. This properly excited me. It was about midnight when I saw it and I had to be up at 5am the next day so needed to sleep but I stuck the opening tune on and it blew me away so I had to listen to the whole thing there and then. The opening song is still by far my favourite but the whole thing is a wonderful live straight to disc mix of jazz, gospel and soul. Could have been even higher if it wasn’t such a new release.

15, Afflecks Palace – The Only Light in the Tunnel is the Oncoming Train
I had a bit of a weird year this year where I’ve spent the past few weeks listening to nothing but jazz but in reality spent ¾ of the year hammering the ladrock. The Afflecks Palace lp was one of the ladrock records I spent a lot of time with earlier in the year and really enjoyed. It is a Stone Roses tribute act making their own material and sounds exactly like what you’d expect from that.

14, Tom Meighan – The Reckoning
Big Tom! Genuinely a wonderful return after being booted out by weird Serge. He’s stuck it to them and made an album better than anything Kasabian have done in years. #notomnoparty

13, Durand Jones – Wait ‘til I get Over
I love his work with The Indications but must admit wasn’t overly excited about the prospect of a solo record – until I heard it! This is just a wonderful soul record that is full of emotion and tenderness. It’s not completely throwback though like some modern soul can be and sounds fresh and modern. I think I now prefer this to anything he has done with The Indications so high praise.

12, Sleaford Mods – UK Grim
They’re just brilliantly consistent and keep doing their thing to high levels. I like all the guest spots here even your man from Janes Addiction. Feels like a bit of the aggression is back with Jason too. Hopefully he will be back on the booze soon.

11, Anohni and the Johnsons – My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
Only checked this out fairly late in the year (not sure why as her Hopelessness lp was a highly ranked album by me in 2016 too) but it blew me away instantly. A really soulful and beautiful album that is creative and interesting but also really accessible.

10, Blur – The Ballad of Darren
I loved The Narcissist instantly and the whole album just doesn’t disappoint. Yeah it sounds like an Albarn solo lp (while being better than any of his actual solo lps) but this is just a fantastic bit of work and an album I have played time and time again this year. Even my Mrs loves it and she normally listens to exclusively American indie shit.

9, Jalen Ngonda – Come Around and Love Me
Another incredible soul album for 2023. I first heard of this guy through his support slots with Stone Foundation a few years ago. Interesting journey in that he is American but now based in Liverpool I think. Anyway he has finally got his debut lp out on Daptone and it blew me away. Yeah it sounds like Marvin but the voice and the songs are so strong he gets away with it. Can’t wait to see him live and see what he does next.

8, Thysenterprise – Essential
Rucksack Records are a small Dutch label that have put out some of my favourite hip hop records of recent years. This is something they put out a few months ago from a Dutch guy who is now based in Barcelona called Thysenterprise. It is a jazz record first and foremost but has a real under layer of hip hop vibes going on but in quite a subtle way mostly with the drums and percussion. It’s an album made in tribute to his late Father who apparently got him into jazz and they used to listen to the greats together. He revisits and reimagines melodies from classic jazz records like Coltrane, Sanders and Davis and manages to make an album that while looking back also sounds incredibly modern and forward thinking.

7, Dexys – The Feminine Divine
I loved this from first listen. It’s a bit weird but it made me love it even more. Long live Kevin Rowland.

6, Stik Figa and The Expert – Ritual
Another Rucksack Records release. Longstanding fans of the JP end of year list will remember The Expert from the album he did with Jermiside last year that also featured highly. This is similar in that it is another hip hop album that clearly has 90s boom bap influences but isn’t entirely throwback and also sounds very 2023 too. You can keep your Billy Woods, this is where I’m going for my modern hip hop.

5, DMA’s – How Many Dreams?
I fucking love this record. Lots of DMA’s fans didn’t as it is quite over produced and poppy sounding but for me the big production actually really suits their sound. Had this belting out of the house all year long.

4, Lonnie Holley – Oh Me Oh My
MITH was my album of the year a few years ago. This is his proper follow up to that and initially I wasn’t that impressed. It’s a lot more subtle than MITH but with repeated listens this really got under my skin. He has some big names feature here including Michael Stipe and Bon Iver so it is good to see him getting that level of respect. A great album.

3, The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds
The Diamonds!! My word what a journey this album is. I nearly didn’t bother with it at all as I didn’t like Angry and thought it sounded like Status Quo. I remember vividly my first listen to this. My bus to work was on a huge diversion and I stuck this on and it just sounded huge from first listen. I kept expecting the quality to drop but it didn’t and it was just banger after banger. I love sticking this on and doing a Jagger strut around the house. Get Close might just be my song of the year.

2, Slowdive – Everything is Alive
So fucking happy to have these back again. I kinda get why some of the reaction to this record has been lukewarm as it doesn’t necessarily have any big singles but as a whole piece the atmosphere and ambience it brings is like nothing else. It’s a great headphones record and one that has benefitted from darkness and winter. I love listening to this early in the morning on my bus to work sat in the pitch black. Long live Slowdive.

1, Yussef Dayes – Black Classical Music
So, this album is basically responsible for kickstarting my love of jazz again these past few months. I’m not even sure why I checked this out in the first place as I had been binging on a diet of purely ladrock for ages. There was something in the write ups about this on release week that caught my attention though and I gave it a go the weekend it came out. Instantly I knew there was something special about this record, it was the slight funk it had to it that initially appealed to me I think, but I did find the length a bit overwhelming and thought it ran out of steam by the end. It was only on second listen I realised that it wasn’t the record that ran out of steam at all but just me. The whole thing is truly epic was so much going on and I still discover new things every time I listen to it. You can clearly pinpoint Dayes’ influences but it is in no way at all a backwards looking album and if anything sounds almost futuristic at times. The drumming is as you’d expect, incredible, but everything going on here just works and seems really well thought through. Gutted to see he played Norwich a few years back before he was on my radar. I definitely need to see him in 2024. A worthy winner of my album of the year and worthy of the hype this record has been getting elsewhere.

#4
#8
#5
#4
#3

Diamonds certainly are forever

Fuzzy, get the wheels in motion. Start asking around for contact address for Sir Mick's publicist. I feel we could get an award sent to him & have him hold the Eddie Murphy award like a precious baby on his Instagram.

Damon Albarn's publicist has been in touch to say that he is willing to recreate this photo by the grave of Charlie Watts whilst holding the Eddie trophy if things end up going his way.

A great number one JP. It'll be quite high on my list. Nice to see Yoni Mayraz get a nod too.

Getting round to the lists and writeups now.

Nice to see the likes of Crocodiles, Connections and Osees on your list tux

Right done.

Top 10 gigs in no order:

TCOTU Brew- The Barbican
Peter Brotzman, Steve Noble, John Edwards, Jason Adasiewicz- Cafe Oto
Makaya McCraven- The Barbican
Les Savy Fav- Rotondes, Luxembourg
The Walkmen- APE
The Delgados- Shepherd's Bush
Weyes Blood- Le Trianon, Paris
Aircooled- Lexington
Big Thief- Motel Mozaique, Rotterdam
Comet is Coming- Jazz/Blues Rallye, Luxembourg

At times this year it felt like nothing decent was being released, certainly in terms of what you'd loosely describe as guitar bands. The UK post punk thing seems to have run out of steam and very little of note was coming out of the states.

But when I finally got down to sketching out a list it seems that there was a whole heap of great shit released- just not in the areas mentioned above.

Gilles Peterson has been a mainstay on my radio this year- both his Saturday 6music show and his stuff with Worldwide FM, and my list probably reflects that. Although the new jazz scenes, especially in the UK and California are well established, there seems to be a non stop stream of good releases either directly from those scenes or involving characters from them. Also, music loosely from the East has been creeping into a lot of music this year- from North and East Africa, Turkey, India, Pakistan and more broadly the Middle East. Sometimes made in the West alongaside Western artists.


40-21

40. Yalla Miku - Yalla Miku:
North African psychedelic part electronic, part traditional krauty mash up. Via Geneva

39. Avalon Emerson- & The Charm:
Dream pop from one time DJ/Electonic artist. This is really lovely.

38. TEKE:TEKE - Hagata:
Canadian/Japanese collective with a bonkers record that could loosely be described as psych rock. Lots of Japanese influences as expected. Big grooves.

37. Speakers Corner Quartet- Further Out than the Edge:
Born out of a Brixton club night, now defunct, where as far as I understand the band (4 stalwarts of the TCOTU Jazz scene) invite spoken word artists, poets, rappers to put words to their music. And now it's been packaged into a quite excellent album. Kae Tempest and Sampha both pop up.

36. Nostalgia 77- The Loneliest Flower in the Village:
British Spiritual Jazz album with nods to Africa.

35. Willie J Healey - Bunny:
A bloody lovely lesson in 70s nostalgia. One part Laurel Canyon, one part soul/funk, one part George Harrison. Lots of hazy melody and grooves by way of Oxfordshire.

34. Sarathy Korwar - KAL (Real World):
Electronic Jazz follow up to KALAK, released last year. From Cali via India and TCOTU. Dunno it's material left over from last year's record or a totally separate piece of work. Either way it's bloody great.

33. David McAlmont & HiFi Sean- Happy Ending:
Simply a beautifully produced, unashamedly joyous pop record.

32. Yoni Mayhraz - Dybbuk Tse!:
Spiritual fusion Jazz with Middle Eastern bits and some hip hop beats. Beautiful album.

31. Rider Shafique & Ishmael Ensemble - New Era:
Dub tinged jazz spoken word splendidness. Might be an EP. Sorry

30. Salami Rose Joe Louis- Akousmatikous:
A hard one to pin down. Dream Jazz might do it. An album that doesn't keep still, yet seems to have a stillness to it.

29. CV Vision- Im Tal der Stutzer:
Psychedelic Electronic Motorik/Jazz hybrid from Germany on Hamburg's Bureau B records.

28. Lisa O'Neill- All of this is Chance:
Lisa O'Neill follows on from 2019's brilliant 'Heard A Long Gone Song" with another album of hugely atmospheric modern Irish
folk (that could easily sit in another century).

27. Marcus Strickland Twi-Life - The Universe's Wildest Dream:
Afro-Futurist Jazz deliciousness.

26. EABS meets Jaubi- In Search of a Better Tomorrow:
EABS (Polish Jazz musicians) join up with Jaubi (Pakistani traditional musicians) to produce a vital east meets west
spiritual jazz piece.

25. Ivan The Tolerable - Black Water/Brown Earth:
Best artist name of 2023. Psychy, ambient, spiritual jazz rooted in nature. Super laid back. Go on, you know you want to.

24. Maps - Counter Melodies:
Warm and often euphoric electronica.

23. Web Web & Max Herre - Web Max 2:
Accessible spiritual jazz from the German Jazz outfit Web Web teaming up again with Hip Hop producer Max Herre. Following on from their brilliant part 1 of the same name a couple of years back. Expect lots of Harp and Flute. Nice.

22. Trees Speak- Mind Maze:
5th album from Arizona's Trees Speak; all of which have been put out by Soul Jazz. More genre bending brilliance in the same vein as previous albums.

21. Rose City Band- Garden Party:
Lightly psychedeleic Americana/Country. Sun soaked loveliness from Ripley Johnson (Moon Due and Wooden Shjips). A proper transformative album that takes you to somewhere- probably California- other. Soundtracked BBQs and summer get togethers this year.

Completely agree on the Gilles Peterson thing. I've become a bit obsessed with him the last couple of months listening to his radio shows and watching interviews and dj mixes on YouTube. It's helped me finally transition out of this horrible ladrock phase I'd been stuck in for way too long.

Quite fancy the Cross the Tracks festival in Brockwell Park in May and if I go it will be mostly to fawn over his dj set. Just a shame he's a gooner.

JP- he curates the We Out Here festival. Check out the 2023 line up and then cry into your beer that you (and I) never knew about it in time.

weoutherefestival.com/2023/02/our-line-up-is-here/

Yeah I know of that festival. When it first started it was in Cambridgeshire so not too far from me at all. I probably should have gone. Moved to Dorset now so quite a bit further away. Cross the Tracks seems like the one day TCOTU alternative though as far as soul and jazz festivals go.

Looking forward to part 2 of your list. Glad you've split it after tuckers' silly little outburst.

20-1

20. The Coral - Sea of Mirrors:
I know some mourn the loss of the weird, more psychedelic/experimental stuff from the first two or three albums, and I do too, to an extent. But at the same time think their more straight forward songwriting is easily underrated. The two versions of the band could almost be two different bands altogether, but I love both. I thought there were some cracking songs on all the intervening albums and feel that Coral Island and this both veer slightly back towards the psych sound, if a little psych lite. Bill Ryder-Jones was involved in this album again, although it doesn't jump out at you. As a collection of songs and as a coherent album I think this might even be their best. It flows beautifully and I don't think there's a weak song on here. Will be interested to see what happens next and if BRJ is involved in a more overt way.

19. Yussef Dayes- Black Classical Music:
Jazz drummer Yussef Dayes' monster of a solo studio debut, released on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood imprint. He's been around a while (part of the south TCOTU Jazz scene). and worked with some of the names you see mentioned elsewhere (Binker Golding, Moses Boyd, Shabaka....again....and again he pops up here along with Theon Cross). It's LONG and can take some getting through, but it's worth spending time with. Influences and sounds from all over, as with so much stuff this year. Apparently he sells out big venues these days- including the Royal Albert Hall earlier this year and the Sydney Opera House coming up). If you're interested in dipping your toes into the 2020s UK jazz scene, this is probably as good a place as any to start.

18. Kofi Flexxx- Flowers in the Dark:
A pseudonym for Shabaka Hutchings, who must surely be the hardest working man in music. He's hanging up his Sax at the end of the year to concentrate on various other wind instruments. It's unclear what he does and doesn't play on this but his stamp is all over it. Rhythms and styles from all over the world come together to form a Jazz/Hip Hop/Spoken Word work piece, again in the same spirit as a few other albums in my list. Billy Woods (who also seems ubiquitous this year) and Anthony Joseph (...and him too) feature along with MCs and Poets that I'd not heard before.

17. Lana Del Ray- Did You Know There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard:
She just seems to get better and better with age. This is right up there with Norman Fucking Rockwell for me. The songwriting is tremendous. Something as delicate and pretty as Grandfather Please …sits easily alongside the 7 minute long schizophrenic A&W that switches from ballad to twitchy hip hop beats without blinking (it's such a great track). Only criticism is the length of the thing at nearly an hour and twenty minutes, but even then it only just outstays it's welcome.

16. Carlos Niño & Friends- (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire:
Carlos Nino was a new name to me this year, but definitely shouldn't have been- he's been around for some time. He's been a mainstay on Gilles Peterson's 6 Music show throughout the year and has worked with a veritable who's who of the US Jazz/Hip Hop/Soul scene both this year and in the past. Apparently a long time collaborator of Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, who's also deep in that Californian scene. This album is spiritual jazz at it's most relaxed. There's spoken word, there's laid back hip hop beats, there's a vast array of instrumentation, there's field recordings and it's all super chilled. Andre 3000 pops up, flute in hand as does Kamasi Washington. It's a beautiful thing.

15. Jim- Love Makes Magic:
A quite brilliant album that moves effortlessly from pure Laurel Canyon sounds to stuff that wouldn't sound out of place in a 70s disco- all super sun drenched.

14. Harper Trio- Passing by:
Achingly beautiful harp and sax led spiritual jazz. Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda is an obvious touch point.

13. CAZAYOUX - CAZAYOUX:
Utterly brilliant release from this big multi nationality band out of Austin, Texas. Jazz Funk, Afro, Psychedelia and more.

12. Anohni & The Johnsons- My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross:
I've not paid much attention to Anohni since the I Am a Bird Now album from 2005, but on the strength of this, need to dig into the back catalogue. This album is somehow dense but still accessible, packed full of brilliantly written songs. And Anohni's voice is more potent than ever. A pure soul voice and a number of the songs are stuffed full of deep soul. The themes are personal and of protest and politics.

11. James Holden- Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities:
I saw this described as rave music. It definitely has it's roots in dance music and would almost certainly sound amazing on the right drugs , but to call it rave is a bit reductive and does it a disservice. It's electronica that probably fits better at an after party- not unlike something Leftfield or early Mowax or even DJ Shadow might have come up with, but at the same time perhaps more like the ambient, folky techno of someone like Pantha du Prince- but really, trying to use other artists as reference points is useless cos I've never heard anything quite like it before and it doesn't really sound like any of them. It's warm, atmospheric and beautiful.

10. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - Les Jardins Mystique Vol 1:
The LA polymath finally releases a solo album. He released a distilled version of this earlier in the year called "selections of Les Jardins Mystique" and it was brilliant. I haven't dug properly into this huge release (three and a half hours long and 14 years in the making!) but look forward to sitting down and absorbing it all. If the selections were anything to go by it will have a lot of very beautiful jazz and classical pieces. Lots of sweeping and soaring strings; downtemp delicate almost ambient moments with a forensic level of detail and a lot more inbetween. If he'd released this in January instead of November it would be very near the top of the list.

9. Islandman, Okay Temiz, Muhlis Berberoglu- Direct to Disc Sessions:
I need to explore more of these Direct-to-Disc sessions. From what I can gather a group of musicians gather in a studio above a pressing plant in Haarlem, Netherlands and as they play the record is cut direct live and then taken downstairs and pressed. On this occasion, Balearic producer Islandman rounded up some musicians including Turkish legend Okay Temiz and produced this fucking wonderful piece of eastern and Turkish influenced, dancy Jazz. The track FIDAYDA was on my playlists all summer.

8. Irreversible Entanglements- Protect Your Lights:
Monster of a jazz record featuring some heavyweight free jazz names and spoken word goddess Moor Mother. Like a fair bit of Jazz this year it has overtly political themes that comes out in Moor Mother's words. This is less of a free/experimental affair, with definite structure, but none the less breathtaking for it. This was Gilles Peterson's record of the year and they featured regularly on his shows throughout 2023.

7. Jaimie Branch- Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)):
A posthumous release from Jazz trumpeter Jaimie Branch who died young in 2022. Like so much good jazz this year this moves through a few different styles/grooves/genres (there's even a country tune call The Mountain). Despite being quite dense in production (in places) it's surprisingly accessible and for a large part feels like a party album full of melody and celebration. I'm gutted I never got to see her live because 1. She was a fantastic trumpeter and 2. This would have sounded amazing on stage.

6. Noname- Black Mirror:
The only Hip Hop album I really fell for this year. I'm surprised that she's not bigger in 2023. I don't know a female rapper with a better delivery- maybe a throwback to her spoken word days. She takes aim at plenty of targets here including the US, her fellow artists (especially those playing at the Superbowl), herself and even Barack Obama. JAY ELECTRONICA, Jinetta Rose, Common and Billy Woods pop up as guests.

5. L'Rain- I Killed Your Dog:
A lot of stuff released recently defies labelling and I love that. This is essentially a soul record I think, but crosses folk, indie, dream pop and other bits. In places in reminds me of what Dirty Projectors were doing around Bitte Orca. I love how she uses her voice throughout- often multi-layered, occasionally on it's own, sometimes as background instrument and sometimes autotuned, but always soulful. I love this more each time I listen.

4. Dave Okumu & The 7 Generations- I Came From Love:
A beast of a record from TCOTU jazz guitarist, songwriter and producer Dave Okumu . This is less obviously Jazz and I guess more in the blues tradition, but a modern take on it. It reminds me a bit of Anthony Joseph's brilliant record from a couple of years ago that Mr Mahoney put a few of us on to- in so much that it's main theme is the plight of the black man. Anthony Joseph pops up on this indeed, as does Grace Jones and Tom Skinner. Powerful stuff. Oh, and the 7 Generations of the band name is an imagined collaboration with his ancestors. And considering the weight of the subject matter it's pretty accessible.

3. King Creosote- IDES:
King Creosote had passed me by completely until a couple of years ago and then I heard Melin Wynt from his last album and have been a bit smitten ever since. This album is just beautiful. The lead single (Blue Marbled Elm Trees) is my favourite track from this year- it's melancholic but joyous..which I guess it what he's all about and probably best sums up the record. Death features quite prominently throughout the album, and at first I thought he might be trying to tell us something (a bit like Bowie and Blackstar), but I think really he's just embracing late middle age and looking back without regret. Oh, and the digital version contains a genuinely excellent 36 minute drone/ambient/proggy track.

2. Lankum- False Lankum:
I've only got round to this recently. Never has this esteemed forum been so wrong about 1 thing.
This is a genuine fucking colossus of a record. At times devastatingly beautiful, at others it sounds like it's been hewn straight from the rocks of the Cliffs of Moher. With more time it might have threatened TCOTU Brew for the top spot.

1. TCOTU Brew- TCOTU Brew:
This album was never supposed to happen. Originally, the concept was just a one off live performance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bitches Brew. I can't remember the name of the person who's idea it was, but he wanted to get a load of the best young jazz talent in the UK to get on stage and just play and see where it went- in the same way that Miles Davis did in the studio for Bitches Brew. Then COVID hit and the performance was put on hold. In the end they decided go into the studio to record an album in the spirit of Bitches Brew, and this was born. The credits read like who's who of UK and especially TCOTU Jazz talent (Shabaka Hutchings, Tom Skinner, Nubiya Garcia, Dave Okumu, Theon Cross amongst others). It got it's release this year and eventually a one off show followed at the Barbican as part of TCOTU Jazz festival, that I went to with popular forum members KrBurg and Mahoney. The album itself is the kind of breathtaking, immersive journey that you'd expect when a load of stupidly talented musicians are let loose to do what they want.

Lovely stuff Jamie, a nice read!

The more I read I was getting nervous expecting some major Blur points but no, THE DIAMONDS still reign!

That's how it's done Kevin Burgess you prick!

Jamie's list ruined by Lankum

I don't think Gilles would do such a thing!

Just had a look at the Cross The Tracks fest. Looks decent. That Saturday falls very handily at the start of the school hols here and it super close to my Birthday. Might be one for the calendar.

King Creosote? I thought we had finally got over that Fence Collective wooly jumper rubbish

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz