This year, Met Radio is taking part in the time-honoured tradition of the year-end top ten list. Throughout the month of December, Met Radio staff and volunteers will be sharing their personal pop culture favourites from the year gone by. Visit the website every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to check out our best of 2023!
I’m Sean, host of Signal.bin (link: http://metradio.ca/show/signal-bin), and if you’re familiar, I take every opportunity to play new strange, fusion, and international music in all genres, most always with some sort of experimental slant. For that reason, along with possessing a large music collection I’m obliged to propagate, I’m always digging for sounds I’ve never heard before. With that, here are my alphabetically ordered favourite albums from 2023.
Evian Christ – Revanchist (WARP Records)
Link: https://evianchrist.bandcamp.com/album/revanchist
Okay, I’m definitely not much a fan of trance normally, but Evian Christ has strayed off course with some sort of industrial atmospheric techno hybrid. Featuring heavily blown out kicks and basses, serene synth pads and piano runs, and arpeggiated chords, all clearly point to trance conventions, but at the same time, avoiding the overly cheery optimism of the genre that I would normally find tiresome and annoying.
Gezan & Million Wish Collective – あのち [Anochi] (Jusangatsu no Mushi)
Link: https://jusangatsu.bandcamp.com/album/–7
Gezan were first on my map after their wild 2012 psych-noise album, Katsute Uta Tolwaretasore, but over the past few releases, their trajectory has been towards more and more tame structures and sounds. For this year’s album, they have joined forces with a local vocal group (there’s no info in English about the collective outside of this release, so perhaps random friends of the band?) to accompany their aggressive noisy rock psychedelia, adding in chants and in the process, creating one of the more unique and interesting rock albums I’ve listened to in a while.
Goat – Joy in Fear (Nakid)
Link: None available…
Not to be confused with the Swedish psych-rock band that was also making waves in 2023, this year marked the 10th year this Japanese 4-piece had been a band. The album is a high-precision counting exercise that goes on for around 45 minutes. The prog-minimalism/maximalism hearkens back to Glenn Branca, Steve Reich, or Swans, but with a contemporary swagger.
Lucy Liyou – Dog Dreams (American Dreams Records)
Link: https://lucyliyou.bandcamp.com/album/dog-dreams
From the first sounds I heard of this release, I was captured. However, there’s a line in the second track that suddenly commanded my attention, set off alarm bells (trigger warnings would be prudent even), and caused me to re-evaluate the album I’d been enjoying. With the fragile vocal lines, distant melodic riffs, emotionless synthesized speech, and audio collage of chimes, static clicks, and reverb, the easy understanding is that this album is a representation of the artists dreams. However, that line… is the artist trapped in a living nightmare?
Mandy, Indiana – I’ve Seen A Way (Fire Talk)
Link: https://mandyindiana.bandcamp.com/album/ive-seen-a-way
Mandy, Indiana play a style of music that is familiar, all the while fresh. They travel on paths groomed by artists like The Knife/Fever Ray and Gazelle Twin, while also hitting off into brambles hacked at by artists like Health and Gilla Band. The thing about this album that causes it to stand out might be the sprinkling of French pop, à la Stereolab. This combination of hooks, aggression, experimentation, and production that included recordings in unlikely places (apparently a mall, a cave, etc.), have resulted in an excellent album for repeated relistening.
Niecy Blues – Exit Simulation (Kranky Records)
Link: https://niecyblues.bandcamp.com/album/exit-simulation
Kranky records is no stranger to releases that utilize a lot of space, delay, reverb, hosting some of the pioneering ambient greats since the early 1990s. Still, it came as a slight surprise to learn that they’d released a soulful jazzy R&B album, until I heard it, and realized that the songs are coming from another room. Muted instrumentations, fuzzy basslines, and subdued percussion propel the vocals to the forefront, leading an album of stunning production, beautiful songwriting, and laidback vibes that sit somewhere between Grouper and recent L’Rain albums.
Rod Modell/Taka Noda – Glow World (13/Silentes)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuZ5lbwnhggfcbZuWKGGhk7ch2tDxHOvo
To begin with, take a look at the cover of this album. Heading home in the early morning, just before sunlight cracks the sky, from whatever event you might have been at longer than would be advisable, your head in a slight daze, and making that final after hours stop at whatever fastfood counter you can find still open at the hour. This album gives that sensation in ambient techno soundscapes, with a strong presence of jazz snaking throughout. While Noda is new to me, Modell’s various other works often lean a lot harder on techno, but Glow World hits exactly where I need.
Ssabbæ – Le roi et l’oiseau (Few Crackles)
Link: https://fewcrackles.bandcamp.com/album/le-roi-est-loiseau-2
The band is apparently a collective of French artists, which from what I can find, might be involved in the more formal classical tradition. However, there’s a new generation of classically-trained artists, who’ve grown up with Spotify algorithms, which direct them to the current experimental trends. As such, this album crosses expanses. It plays with all genres of experimentation. There are field recordings, improvised jazz, spoken word, minimal acoustic folk, synth drones, electronic meanderings, and an amalgamation of all of these at once. The album becomes a lush collection of vintage timepieces.
Thantifaxath – Hive Mind Narcosis (Dark Descent Records)
Link: https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hive-mind-narcosis
A 2014 release by a somewhat unknown and anonymous Toronto band, Thantifaxath, immediately put them on the map for a lot of people, myself included. However, there was something a little unrefined or maybe too clean about that album. While their following 2017 release honed in on some of the things that bothered me, this year’s release perfected that, adding a thick layer of haze to the already extreme dissonant black metal dread they conjure.
Theo Burt – Automatics Group Remixes – archive 2012 to 2016 (Self-Released)
Link: https://theoburt.bandcamp.com/album/automatics-group-remixes-archive-2012-to-2016
This album is mayhem. I’ll give you the title of the first song on it as a description for what most of the album contains: “Roger Sanchez ‘Another Chance’ divided into quarter-beats and reordered so that each piece is followed by the piece most similar to it from those remaining (2013)”. The track is exactly what it says in the title. The album goes on for 11 more pieces, finding different ways to cut-up and completely reshape popular EDM songs from the 2000s, giving them drastically deconstructed, yet often clearly recognizeable makeovers.
