Top 2023 (Part 4)
And so we come to the last batch of this disjointed 2023 retrospective. These are ten tracks that represent the sound of my summer and autumn, getting played in basements, on beaches and at afterparties, and creating those moments that stick in the memory.
But enough picture postcard blurb. I hope you have found something new to graze on in this annual round-up — and here’s to new sonic pastures in 2024.
Index: Part 1 / Part 2.1 / Part 2.2 / Part 3
Aphex Twin - Blackbox Life Recorder 21f [Warp]
Intensely satisfying to fit this into a set, even if you know it’s going to put a few people off. Screw them! Nights out need moments of ambiguity, even uncertainty, and every time I played this I watched the crowd’s initial diffidence — and mine — gently melt into the tune’s enveloping embrace. As a teenager I was an Aphex completist but over the years I’ve let that slide, only dipping into his releases since Syro. I’m at peace with that though: it’s like going to the theatre once a year, it’s always a special occasion. And sometimes a moment of unsettling drama is just the ticket.
Chico Blanco - NOT SORRY [Mareo]
This fucking tune, and this fucking artwork! Since Chico Blanco took my 2022 by storm with ‘tyy’ I’d been waiting patiently for him to return with another banger. His intervening releases — leaning into progressive house and pop edits — didn’t hit the spot. Then came this EP and ‘NOT SORRY’ in particular, loping out of the speakers without a care in the world. Going by the lyrics, Chico has flourished since the melancholy of ‘tyy’: he’s grown out of the heartbreak, he’s no longer stuck “not forgetting, only remembering”; now he’s the one suggesting the threesome as a fun diversion from boyfriend drama. This newfound swagger is mirrored in the music, the snares slapping sexily and Chico’s ‘yeahs’ and ‘uhs’ echoing around the dry, reduced beat and raunchy guitar riff. And that artwork..!
Davis Galvin - Tessings EP [Self-released]
Davis Galvin’s description of their own music is better than any I could come up with, so click through to their Bandcamp page and have a read. As Davis says: “We are multifaceted people, and it should only make sense that our art reflects that.” This EP is indeed the definition of range, making it a satisfying challenge for any DJ also aiming for range: where will each of these tracks fit in? I played the carnivalesque ‘Insee E’ at peaktime in Sheffield and Brussels, and can confirm it is indeed “supremely goofy” in the best possible way. I also brought out ‘Tem Lasa’ to finish the night at Doka on New Year’s Eve Eve, bringing smiles to everyone still left on the 5.30am dancefloor.
Jacob Meehan - Hier [Major]
It’s only today, after five months of playing this tune relentlessly, that I’ve actually sat down and read the promo blurb. Of course, the ‘Where Love Lives’ connection now becomes blindingly obvious, and this just makes me love it even more. I’ve said before that I wasn’t sure about ‘Hier’ on first listen to the clips: apart from the immediately catchy drums the track felt overpopulated, even overproduced, and I rather discounted it as a result. Then I heard it in a recording of one of Jacob’s sets and it suddenly made sense. Since then it’s become a staple: a driving, uplifting moment full of rave signifiers (pianos, arpeggios, rushes) that could come off as hackneyed, but here sound refreshingly skewed, almost improvised. The different synth lines strike up curious conversations with each other, while the overarching song structure crests and breaks like a wave. This is the kind of big-room euphoria I can get on board with.
John Barera & Brian Abelson - The Arc [Toucan Sounds]
This LP was my introduction to John Barera so you’ll have to forgive me for being late to the party — it seems he’s been putting out pristine hybrid house/techno/other for over a decade already. This mini LP with Brian Abelson is the second release they’ve put out together and there’s not a track on it that I haven’t played. What I love about it is the live feel, from the loose broken beat funk of ‘I Believe’ and ‘The Return’ to the delicate beatdown of ‘I Am Free’ and the fast, propulsive title track — everything has a palpably human touch to it. The song, ‘Another Night’, became a bit of an anthem for me this summer, providing a moment of pure twilight seduction on the Dimensions beach in early September.
Jorg Kuning - BH007 [Bakk Heia]
If Jorg Kuning isn’t on your end of year list for 2023 then you haven’t been paying attention. The elephant in the room of my ‘mnml revival’ thinkpiece for RA, Jorg has been single-handedly making vintage Claude VonStroke happen (again) since his first release on Bakk Heia back in 2019. BH007 represents the newest evolution of his preternaturally mossy sound, now accessorised by panoply of inventive noises: “an interdimensional Klarinet” (‘Klarneto’), “chaotic staccato liquid” (‘Rodeo Romeo’), “trans-dimensional machine elves” (‘Robotomy’) and, my favourite, “twisting serpentine resonance” (Quirl). (The BH promo blurb is, as ever, on point and then some.) With Jorg’s live show gaining devotees wherever he performs it, I predict world domination by around early May.
Lupone - Cuando Nos Vemos [Muy Muy]
This tune was my bittersweet banger of the summer. I won’t argue with Lupone’s presumably half-ironic description of the music as “cursi” (corny, over-romantic), but for me that was something to lean into it every time I played it. Sometimes you just need a bit of a happy-sad cry and this track provides it. I don’t know what the lyrics are saying exactly, something about wanting more but seeing how things go? That’s pretty good as life philosophies go, but it’s the music that really gets across all those ambivalent feels, including the expectancy and release when, four minutes having already elapsed, the broken beat slips elegantly into 4/4.
Michael Cignarale - Dance Like We Are Lovers (BASHKKA’s Unholy Hour Remix) [Spotlight]
I’ll quote the feedback I gave when I received this utter smanger as a promo:
“This is incredibly contagious and propulsive, and it has an undeniable funk to it, but I wish it didn’t have the big breakdown in the middle with the strings and snare rush and the big explosion and silence etc. It really doesn’t need it. The late 90s/early 00s tech house tunes this remix evokes for me didn’t rely on those kinds of tricks, or at least the good ones didn’t. They just rode the groove and if they had a breakdown it wouldn’t be at all showy. I think it would have been a big statement for a very current track like this to forgo such a cliched ‘moment’. (Of course I'm aware these kinds of extravagant breakdowns are all the rage right now, and it will surely be effective in the club.)”
I remain firm in my belief that breakdowns should be OUT for 2024, but of course every time I’ve played this in a club the breakdown has gone down an absolute storm.
Reformed Society - Touch-And-Go [Basic Moves]
I’ve already described the context in which this track recently came into its own for me, so I suggest you just go and check that newsletter out if you want to understand the ‘Touch-And-Go’ mood. I for one will be bringing even more of that late 90s/early 00s UK tech house back to my sets in the coming months, and this is a new track that stands with the best of them.
Will Hofbauer - Hoot Flute (Knopha Remix) [Third Place]
The remix package of Will Hofbauer’s modern classic (yes I’m calling it that) Where Did All The Hay Go?, released on his own Third Place label, features new versions from a couple of personal favourites (A Psychic Yes and Davis Galvin) and Will himself in jolly Christmas mode, but it’s the remix by Knopha that has had the most plays around here. The soft percussion and haunted noises say ‘suspense’ but the fanfares say ‘drama’, and it’s that contrast between tension and release that carries the track forwards. Oh — and that all-encompassing, almost spherical bassline. I remember dropping this in the Dalston Superstore basement in London, at the Arroz Estúdios anniversary in Lisbon and, best of all, slowjammed late into a 6-hour all-night set at Mansions in NYC, mixed out deftly (if I do say so myself) into Ali Berger’s ‘Hihat Mood’.