A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #49
ACL 2023 (part two)
Dear Listeners, Joseph here as always for our final roundup of 2023, our second and final installment of ACL 2023 End of Year Lists! I’ll have my own Sound Propositions 2023 year in review the first week of January, before ACL’s Richard Allen runs down our ACL 2024 Winter Music Previews. So let’s get right into it.
The usual caveats apply: to be eligible, the release had to have been reviewed by ACL in the previous 12 months. All lists are alphabetical and unranked, save for the Top 20, which is ranked based on staff votes.
For each of our lists, I’m going to include the prefatory comments and the full list, but I don’t have space for the blurbs for each entry on the list, so please head over to the blog to read more.
Table of contents:
Top Ten Ambient
Top Ten Drone
Top Ten Electronic
Top Ten Experimental
Top Ten Field Recording & Soundscape
Top Ten Modern Composition
Top Ten Rock, Post-Rock, Folk & Jazz
The Top 20 Albums of the Year
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Ambient
By our estimate, there was enough ambient music released in 2023 to fill every waking minute of every day. How does one stand out in a genre that values slipping beneath the surface? These ten artists found a way, whether through distinctive textures, hybrid tones or sheer compositional quality. In addition, many of these releases bear intriguing backstories. Each possesses a quality elusive in ambient music: memorability. After playing these albums multiple times throughout the year, we returned to them at year’s end. Depending on one’s perspective, we are currently experiencing an ambient torrent or an ambient renaissance; R. Keane’s cover art for Clare Deak’s Sotto Voce suggests both. We hope you’ll enjoy our selection of the year’s best ambient music!
Antonymes ~ The Gramophone Suite
aus ~ Everis (flau)
Claire Deak ~ Sotto Voce (Lost Tribe Sound)
Heinali ~ Kyiv Eternal (Injazero)
Hollie Kenniff ~ We All Have Places That We Miss (Western Vinyl)
Karen Vogt ~ Losing the Sea/Losing the Sea Remixes (Mare Nostrum)
Mary Lattimore ~ Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Ghostly International)
Penelope Trappes ~ Heavenly Spheres (Nite Hive)
Tim Hecker ~ No Highs (Kranky)
Tujiko Noriko ~ Crépuscule I & II (Editions Mego)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Drone
Of the ten album covers below; four are mostly black, two black and grey. This year’s drone list is dark and foreboding, a reflection of uncertain times. Even the brightest cover portrays NASA data from a warming earth. The titles follow suit: Before We Lie Down in Darknesse, Setting Fire to These Dark Times, Of Shadow and Substance, Whilst We Fall. In recent years, we’ve been amused by the number of sites who sell drones and link back to our site, oblivious that there is a difference between drone music and aerial drones; but perhaps there is a connection after all. As war continues to ravage multiple territories, the sound of an aerial drone can produce a Pavlovian feeling of dread. Our drones, on the other hand, are meant to warn, to relate, even to soothe. Darkness multiplied by darkness sometimes equals light.
Chaz Knapp & Mariel Roberts ~ Setting Fire to These Dark Times (figureight)
Dronal ~ Whilst We Fall (Supple9)
Galya Bisengalieva ~ Polygon (One Little Independent)
The Inward Circles ~ Before We Lie Down in Darknesse (Corbel Stone Press)
KMRU ~ glim
Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci ~ Chthonic (American Dreams)
Lea Bertucci ~ Of Shadow and Substance (Cibachrome Editions)
Pauline Hogstrand ~ Áhkká (Warm Winters Ltd.)
Richard Skelton ~ selenodesy (Phantom Limb)
Siavash Amini ~ eremos (American Dreams)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Electronic
This year’s top ten electronic albums run the gamut from quirky and fun to industrial and dark. These albums cross boundaries, incorporating drone, pop, hip-hop, and modern composition, while the themes include death and vulnerability, gender roles and climate change. A debut album is just as likely to be included as an album from a seasoned veteran. This remarkable variety is a sign of health in the industry, demonstrating that electronic music runs far deeper than EDM.
To quote Men Without Hats, you can dance if you want to ~ but alternatively, it’s okay to just listen, to drink in the textures and luxuriate in the tones. We hope you’ll enjoy our selection of the year’s best electronic music!
Aho Ssan ~ Rhizomes (Other People)
CORIN ~ Lux Aeterna (UIQ)
Croatian Amor ~ A Part of You in Everything (Posh Isolation)
Francesco Gennari ~ Frammenti (imprec)
Grand River ~ All Above (Editions Mego)
Kate NV ~ WOW (RVNG Intl.)
Lyndhurst ~ Platforms
Odalie ~ Puissante Vulnérabilité (Mesh)
WaqWaq Kingdom ~ Hot Pot Totto (Phantom Limb)
Zoë Mc Pherson ~ Pitch Blender (SFX)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Experimental
If not for experimental musicians, music might never move forward. These artists challenge what is while wondering what could be. They ask if instruments might be played in a different manner, or they make their own instruments – in one instance below, using multiple parts of a horse. They stretch their voices in unusual ways, reaching for dissonant notes, looping, layering and pitch-shifting. They seek juxtapositions of seemingly unrelated timbres. Not everything will work, of course; the very nature of experimentalism is the possibility of failure, although in most cases the experiment itself is the success. The ten artists below succeed in both senses of the word, producing sonic documents of great originality. We hope you enjoy our selection of the year’s best experimental music!
Cruel Diagonals ~ Fractured Whole (Beacon Sound)
Flora Yin Wong ~ Cold Reading (Modern Love)
Giuseppe Ielasi ~ Down on Darkened Meetings (Black Truffle)
Jan Matiz ~ II (tier.debut)
KING VISION ULTRA ~ SHOOK WORLD (PTP)
Matana Roberts ~ Coin Coin Chapter Five: in the Garden … (Constellation)
Matthew Herbert ~ The Horse (Accidental Records)
Maud the Moth + trajedesaliva ~ Bordando el manto terrestre (Time Released Sound)
Paavoharju ~ Yön mustia kukkia (Fonal)
Sabiwa ~ Island no. 16 – Memories of Future Landscapes (Phantom Limb)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Field Recording & Soundscape
Some field recording artists travel to the ends of the earth to capture sounds many of us will never hear in person. This year’s selection includes magma, ice and hydrophone recordings. But field recording can be as simple as recording the sounds of one’s own backyard, twisting the dials on a hotel radio station or returning to a favorite town. One artist listed below creates a soundscape of nature sounds out of real instruments. Whether the sounds are real or surreal, they reflect the nature of our site: to listen carefully to the music of the world, even when it isn’t labelled music.
On one of the albums below, we are fortunate to hear the final recordings of Philip Jeck, an artist who made an indelible impact on the experimental music scene. We dedicate this column to his legacy.
Aki Onda ~ Transmissions from the Radio Midnight (Dinzu Artefacts)
Francesco Fabris & Ben Frost ~ Vakning (Room40)
Jana Winderen ~ The Blue Beyond (Touch)
Kate Carr ~ false dawn (Flaming Pines)
Lucie Páchová ~ Крънджилица (Skupina)
Manja Ristić ~ water memory – mnemosonic topographies of the Adriatic
Marja Ahti ~ Tender Membranes (Black Truffle)
Natasha Barrett ~ Reconfiguring the Landscape (Persistence of Sound)
Philip Jeck & Chris Watson ~ Oxmardyke (Touch)
Philip Samartzis ~ Atmospheres And Disturbances (Room40)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Modern Composition
The year’s most beautiful music can be found here, from soft piano to soaring strings, humble ensemble to booming orchestra. This was a banner year for modern composition, which even recruited one of the world’s biggest post-rock bands into its fold (although the band had always embraced modern composition in its recordings).
These composers try to make sense of the world, translating moods and colors into sound. Reflecting emotion with sonic mirrors, they turn private musings into public performances, while asking big questions about war, climate change and our place in the world. Most of all, they invite listeners to dream of a better planet, insisting that such a thing is still possible.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ella Ollikainen ~ ARCHORA / AIŌN (Sono Luminus)
Cicada ~ Seeking the Sources of Streams (flau)
Erik Hall ~ Canto Ostinato (Simeon ten Holt) (Western Vinyl)
Jessica Pavone ~ Clamor (Out of Your Head)
Less Bells ~ The Drowned Ground (Meadows Heavy Recorders)
Natalia Tsupryk ~ do nestyamy
Quatuor Bozzini ~ Éliane Radique: Occam Delta XV (Collection QB)
Rone with Orchestre National De Lyon ~ L(oo)ping (InFiné)
Sigur Rós ~ ÁTTA (KRUNK)
Violeta Vicci ~ Cavaglia (Fabrique)
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Rock, Post-Rock, Folk & Jazz
2023 was an extremely healthy year for post-rock, which takes up half the spots on this year’s list. The surprise is that some of the biggest names in the field didn’t make it, while newcomers crashed the party in their stead. One of the greatest facets of the industry is its unpredictability; one can never predict where the next great album will come from, and sometimes they seem to arrive out of nowhere (even when the artists have been active for years). This year’s chart also includes some sparkling folk and jazz, and one musician who moves from modern composition to post-rock, which offsets the move of Sigur Rós in the opposite direction. We hope you’ll enjoy this year’s selection of the best rock, post-rock, folk and jazz as we await tomorrow’s unveiling of the year’s twenty best albums!
Anoice ~ unerasable fire (Ricco)
Bex Burch ~ There is only love and fear (International Anthem)
Blue Lake ~ Sun Arcs (Tonal Union)
The Boats ~ 2 Bears
Grails ~ Anches en Maat (Temporary Residence Ltd.)
Hammock ~ Love in the Void (Hammock Music)
J.S. Bach / Dan Tepfer ~ Inventions / Reinventions
Mirek Coutigny ~ Through Empty Landscapes and New Beginnings (Icarus)
Spurv ~ Brefjære (Pelagic)
Star of Heaven ~ Live from Öregrund
ACL 2023 ~ The Top 20 Albums of the Year
This year’s Top 20 list is noteworthy for its variety, a reflection of the wealth of music on the market. For every 200 albums submitted to ACL, only one makes our final list. This makes it all the more remarkable that our Album of the Year was a runaway favorite.
2023 was a great year for music, marked by creative genre blends and instinctive collaborations. Our top artists hail from different continents, but share a love for experimentation. Whether exploring glaciers or volcanos, commenting on social issues or global war, or adopting tones from nostalgic to euphoric, these artists captured our attention in 2023 and prompted repeat plays. We hope that you’ll enjoy our selection of the best albums of the year!
1) Tujiko Noriko ~ Crépuscule I & II (Editions Mego)
2) Aho Ssan ~ Rhizomes (Other People)
3) Matana Roberts ~ Coin Coin Chapter Five: in the Garden … (Constellation)
4) Hollie Kenniff ~ We All Have Places That We Miss (Western Vinyl)
5) KMRU ~ glim
6) Zoë Mc Pherson ~ Pitch Blender (SFX)
7) Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci ~ Chthonic (American Dreams)
8) Bex Burch ~ There is only love and fear (International Anthem)
9) Philip Jeck & Chris Watson ~ Oxmardyke (Touch)
10) Mary Lattimore ~ Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Ghostly International)
11) Giuseppe Ielasi ~ Down on Darkened Meetings (Black Truffle)
12) Heinali ~ Kyiv Eternal (Injazero)
13) Kate NV ~ WOW (RVNG Intl.)
14) Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Ella Ollikainen ~ ARCHORA / AIŌN (Sono Luminus)
15) Galya Bisengalieva ~ Polygon (One Little Independent)
16) Marja Ahti ~ Tender Membranes (Black Truffle)
17) Cruel Diagonals ~ Fractured Whole (Beacon Sound)
18) Francesco Fabris & Ben Frost ~ Vakning (Room40)
19) Grails ~ Anches en Maat (Temporary Residence Ltd.)
20) Matthew Herbert ~ The Horse (Accidental Records)
And with that… See you in 2024! Happy New Year!