The Best Music of 2023
This was a year where I almost felt more jealous than judgemental towards the people for whom the biggest news story of the year was that Taylor Swift is dating a football player. While the war in Ukraine has remained a constant source of tragedy, a more divisive conflict in the middle east emerged with perfect timing to tear at the seams of the very thin fabric that struggles to hold us together.
Just as these plot threads have emerged to define our present day, a new thread has been introduced that promises to define our future. This is also the year in which artificial intelligence went from being fodder for science fiction writers to being an inescapable component of our upcoming reality. While levels of concern range from our jobs being made redundant to not entirely unrealistic concerns more suited to an installment in The Terminator franchise, life on earth is increasingly starting to feel like watching a movie where the plot unravels itself in a way that you start to realize that the lead character is going to die in the end.
Maybe in the light of these existential concerns, considerations of the best music of the year seem inconsequential, but for the moment I’m willing to consider music to be the only liferaft within swimmable distance of this sinking ship. I can’t imagine a more apt moment for a mode of human expression free of violence, divisiveness, and hate; something that speaks to our better angels and lets our worst demons take an overdue nap.
Track List
Niecy Blues - Exits
Maxo - What 4
King Krule - If Only It Was Warmth
Kali Uchis feat Omar Apollo - Worth the Wait
Nourished By Time - Rain Water Promise
Freak Heat Waves - Off My Mind
Actress - Child (h 2)
Knopha/ Fishdoll - The Light
James Blake - Asking to Break
Aiden Ayers x Yu Su - It’s Not Enough
Mac Demarco and Ryan Paris - Simply Paradise
Y La Bamba - Hues
Jamie Branch - World War (Reprise)
Carlos Ni - Eightspace 082222
Being Dead - Oklahoma Nova Scotia
Sonic Boom, Panda Bear - In My Body Dub (Adrian Sherwood Dub)
Faye Webster - Lifetime
Rainy Miller & Space Afrika - Bobbies Reprise
Josiah Stenbrick - Tomorrow
Lana Del Rey - Judah Smith Interlude
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - How Can I Keep From Singing
Brian Eno & Fred Again - I Saw You
Burial - Unknown Summer
Avalon Emerson - Dreamliner
Bella Boo - Orange
CHAI - Game
Ariel Pink - I Wanna Be a Girl
Yves Tumor - Echolalia
Liv.e - Ghost
SBTRKT - Rain Crush
a.s.o. - Love in the Darkness
Robbie & Mona - Sherry Prada
Jayda G - Interlude: It Was Beautiful
Masahiro Takahashi - Silky Lake
Yu Su Counterclockwise
Blake Mills - Unsingable
Baba Stiltz - Stockholm
Leisure, Night Tapes - All the Good Times Never Die
Misha Panfilov - Dawn
Maya Ongaku - Approach
Oneohtrix Point Never - Memories of Music
