Top 2023 (Part 2.1)
I thought I could get this whole recap done in just two parts but then I started getting very excited about the top 10. So here’s Part 2.1 aka the first half of the top ten, all records that speak to me on a deep level and which have been helping me create and fix memories in my mind this year.
Part 1 can be found here and Part 2.2 will follow shortly.
Alison Goldfrapp - The Love Invention LP [Skint]
Goldfrapp were the soundtrack to a crucial time in my life: from Black Cherry through Supernature and Seventh Tree, and going back to Felt Mountain, they covered the end of school, leaving home for university and then moving to London. So Alison’s return 15 years later to soundtrack another period full of life changes feels only natural. Of course Goldfrapp were active during that time — and I’ve been playing out ‘Fly Away’, ‘Ride A White Horse’ and ‘Slide In’ on and off for years — yet, ‘Rocket’ aside, my attention to their new material has been scant.
But with The Love Invention, co-produced with Richard X and James Greenwood, Alison took centre stage again with a bang, right from the Claptone remix of ‘Digging Deeper’ released as a promo back in January. I played it at my gig in Brussels and it was such a moment that I have been patiently waiting for the next time it feels right to play it again. Then came Paul Woolford’s version of ‘Fever’, which felt flat and generic by comparison: I just don’t think house pianos and Goldfrapp belong together. So that left us wondering, in which direction would the album-proper take us?
Thankfully, the answer is pure Alison Goldfrapp. Synthetic, sexy, perfectly poised and for the most part nonsensical, this is what we expect and love from her. The dancefloor tracks are compact parcels of euphoria that play with over-accessibility yet have enough history and musicality to avoid it (a balance Richard X has always excelled at). I’ve played ‘NeverStop’ in Pittsburgh and Berlin, the title track at Love Muscle in Leeds, and ‘So Hard So Hot’ when warming up my first ever label party. The original of ‘Fever’ is a headrush, its modulations bearing that trademark Goldfrapp uncanniness that Woolford neutralised in his version.
As I’ve got to know the album, though, it’s the slowjams that have worked their quieter magic, from the electro-boogie beat and bassline on ‘Hotel (Suite 23)’ to the italo chug of ‘Gatto Gelato’, which lifts off gloriously in its back third. I get a huge kick out of hearing the classic Goldfrapp vocal melodies on ‘The Beat Divine’ and ‘In Electric Blue’, while ‘Subterfuge’ represents a rare foray into half/double time. The original of ‘Digging Deeper Now’ is my current obsession, a feather-light anthem for taking drugs and/or making a change — feather-light, that is, until that textbook Black Cherry bassline comes in. Alison rounds things out on an impressionistic note with ‘SLoFLo’, the gentlest of landings after a perfectly paced love-trip.
Beppe Loda - ‘Elettronica Virtuale (Ivan Berko Remix)’ [Sonic Dream]
A steamy 95bpm journey through some scorchingly hot environment, that wavy effect of the heat on the horizon present in every guitar twang and pulsing synth. It’s an ostensibly Balearic remix of an Italian legend but to me it sounds — like a Western movie, or Ivan Berko himself — quintessentially American. Amid all the cinematic flourishes and multi-instrumental counterpoint it’s the walking bassline I keep returning to: warm yet somehow implacable. File alongside Alex Kassian’s remix (to follow in Part 2.2) in the category of sleeper slowjam anthems for the summer.
Couple Looking - For You EP [Funnuvojere]
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” could be the motto of this EP from Massimiliano Pagliara and Chris Cruse, a wildly inventive and frequently astounding set of four contrasting tracks drawing on acid house, (nu) disco, hi NRG, new beat and much, much more. The two tame this frenzy of influences and moods just enough to make the tracks cohere, but without ever losing that slightly unhinged edge. ‘For A Snack’ and ‘For K+’ feel like the more straightforward pair from the pack, the former of a piece with Chris’s earlier remixes of Drance or Seth Bogart, the latter a sumptuous dance-punk/nu-disco odyssey in the Out Hud mould (a welcome throwback and one I’d like to hear more of).
For its part, ‘For The Remote’ sounds fun enough the first time you hear it but then gets weirder and weirder with repeat listens. Galloping along at a surprisingly fast pace (130bpm), the beat pivots around a pronounced slam on the 4, every four bars, a supremely satisfying effect that is undermined somewhat by the occasional introduction of a farty snare sound on the offbeat. (Thankfully this latter noise doesn’t come through too strongly in the club.) Then there’s the acid bassline, which has a strange tone to it as if it’s being squeezed out of a tube. Pinwheeling synth stabs, sustained pads and Mouth To Mouth-style sirens (it’s happening!) stoke the tension before everything drops out, only to build up again for the finale. Any track that simultaneously makes me think of ‘Monotone Fantastique’ and hi-NRG rhythm tracks like this one must be doing something right.
And that’s not even as weird as it gets. ‘For You’ saves the wackiest for last, opening like a Bam Bam track with the little-girl-laughing from Klein + MBO’s ‘More Dirty Talk’ over a stripped Chicago beat, but then it takes a sudden left-turn into, uh-oh, ‘Inspector Norse’ territory? More charitably it’s the kind of oompah found on OG italo (‘Fotonovela’, for example), onto which they then dollop layers of toppings in the form of bright-eyed synth melodies, more ‘More Dirty Talk’ vox, birdsong (?), strings and, in the final stretch, sweetly diffident backing vocals. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is, but another relevant motto comes to mind: “the proof is in the pudding”. When Chris closed the For You EP release party two weeks ago with this tune, it wasn’t too much or too little. It was just right.
DJ City – Black Nikes EP [Permanent Vacation]
With every record DJ City expands on the confessional world he has been building since his early releases on Public Possession (like ‘Important Message’ and ‘City Of Sex’) on which he first began speaking/singing in both Swedish and English about dancing, drugs, sex and boys. He’s always managed to transform the superficial simplicity of his lyrics — by turns mundane and mystical — into something more profound, either through the music he pairs them with, which is consistently excellent, or through regular injections of a deadpan wit. A good example of this is the ‘Important Message’ mentioned above, which informs a love interest:
I hope you don’t die doing drugs tonight
I want to get to know you and I think I just might
As long as you can make it through until tomorrow
While on ‘New Dawn’ the bathos is off the scale:
Have you ever seen the sun setting in the sea
Ending what is now so what comes next can be
I wanna take you to where Easyjet don’t fly
Break virgin ground with you, together you and I
The Black Nikes EP takes all of these familiar elements and packages them into an explicitly dancefloor-rushy release in the vein of 2021’s cover of ‘Clocks’ or 2022’s Lord’s Prayer-intoning ‘Matthew’. This time we have the delusions of a lovesick bedroom poet on Bobby O banger ‘Desperate Lovers’, or the intrigue of a potential hookup with the title track’s Nike- and golden chain-wearing protagonist:
Black Nikes and a golden chain
Around your neck catch the sun
You’re tired but you’ve got to move
Can’t host but want some fun
Then there’s ‘Dead Brain’, with my favourite lyric on another staple DJ City theme, morning- (or evening, or the next morning)-after regret:
This is the last time
I know I’ve said it before
I really mean it this time
I’m not doing drugs no more
At the end of the first refrain that “no more” precedes an incredibly druggy bit of acid, while at the second repetition it introduces a euphoric lead line that spirals up into a a kind of trance. The juxtaposition is simultaneously funny and a little heartbreaking — in other words, DJ City at his best.
DMX Krew - Return To Jupiter EP [Gudu]
I wrote about the religious experience I had seeing DMX Krew perform on the Sunday night of Waking Life festival a few weeks ago. Much of the music he played in the first half of that set spoke to this EP, particularly the Detroit techno funk of ‘Return To Jupiter’ and ‘I Love Juan’. To a certain extent they come off as genre exercises but when they’re done this well I really don’t mind. DMX Krew nails the effortless swagger of the originals and the tight logic of their arrangements, while adding a few contemporary flourishes of his own in the sound design and effects. ‘Altered Chords’ and ‘U Ain’t Really Down’, meanwhile, bring the two moods of the MAAD classic Boo Williams vs Glenn Underground 2xLP, itself a kind of second-wave Chicago nod to Detroit. The distortion on those kicks alone is a history lesson.