At last! The wait is over. Here is my round-up of favourite releases from the previous calendar year. 2023 felt richer than ever and there were so many wonderful records to choose from.

As usual, I’ve spared myself the agony of ranking the selections: democracy rules and the list is in alphabetical order, by artist surname. The main image accompanying this post is my album of the year.

Quick overview if you’re just passing through…

Classical: Mary Bevan; Katharina Konradi & Ammiel Bushakevitz; Heike Matthiesen; Arvo Pärt; Rowan Pierce, Roderick Williams, & Christopher Glynn; Anthony Romaniuk; Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton; Sean Shibe; Dobrinka Tabakova; Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Iain Burnside, & Craig Ogden; Xuefei Yang.

Non-classical: Daniel Bachman; Belbury Poly; Matt Berry; Botanist; Olivia Chaney; Dengue Fever; Lucie Dehli; Flesh & the Dream; Barb Jungr and her Trio; Jo Quail; Raf and O; Robbie Robertson; Smoke Fairies; WITCH.

I’ve included YouTube videos where possible to give a flavour of each album, as I know Spotify can offend. However, I’ve resorted to using it where a YouTube option wasn’t available, and also to provide a complete playlist of the tracks at the end.

I hope you enjoy reading and listening your way through the list, and that you find something unfamiliar that captivates you.

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Daniel Bachman: ‘When the Roses Come Again’

Bachman continues to use his grounding in American Primitive guitar as a starting point to explore elements of ambient composition and abstract sound art. This startling album is essentially a collage of melodies, rhythms and drones, played using a mixture of technology and modified, rebuilt instruments, then assembled with intricate skill. Inspired by birth, death and re-birth, these re-animated machines offer roots music from another planet, one very much – but not exactly – like ours.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Belbury Poly: ‘The Path’

Belbury Poly is one of the core acts on the Ghost Box label, home to other like-minded, primarily electronic artists like The Advisory Circle, The Focus Group and Pye Corner Audio. They all share a (well-realised) retro-rural aesthetic where folk-horror visuals mesh with library music and esoteric soundtracks: paranormal meets pastoral. Early album sleeves all resembled a series of occult Penguin paperback covers. This ‘Path’, though, is new and intriguing. Belbury Poly are now a full band, with live bass and drums putting the soul into the soil. Spoken word passages courtesy of poet Justin Hopper add incantatory weirdness. 

Buy from Ghost Box.

Matt Berry: ‘Simplicity’

After his album of lovingly-rendered TV themes, perhaps it’s no surprise that the esteemed label of library music, KPM, invited Berry to create a whole album’s worth of tracks for their catalogue. Anyone who has taken part in the retro/rediscovery of these modest recordings will adore this. Berry has the idiom and atmosphere exactly right, a uniquely British blend of reserve and razzmatazz: each tune starts on the edge of pastiche, until by the end you’re convinced you’ve just heard another classic jazz/funk/what-you-will instrumental from the past miraculously come to light in the present. Even the titles – a mix of gentle wordplay and useful indications of how the tracks might be used (‘Driving Seat’, ‘Good Sport’) are spot on.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Mary Bevan: ‘Visions Illuminées’

As she explains in her liner notes, Bevan wanted to record Britten’s ‘Les illuminations’, while at the same time explore French art song more deeply. So, she filled out the programme with mélodies that shared the illumination theme. Also, one of the reasons the album is so fresh and involving throughout is the choice of musical colleagues: pianist Joseph Middleton, the Ruisi Quartet, and the orchestra 12 Ensemble all feature, in different combinations according to the material. A chain of great ideas leading to a brilliant, and quite beautiful, recital disc.

Buy from Presto.

Botanist: ‘VIII: Selenotrope’

Botanist is a one-man black metal band with a few amendments to the formula. There’s an entire SF concept to the project that revolves around a fictional scientist who has embraced isolation in the forest in the hope that nature will take the world back from humanity. (As openly extreme music, black metal is often an outlet for dark or violent thoughts – self-loathing, withdrawal – and it’s intriguing to hear the form serve a positive, environmentally-conscious message.) The powerful, hyperactive drumming is present and correct, but there are no furious guitars – instead, all the melody and riffs come from treated hammered dulcimer. With clean, massed harmonies or whispered vocals (and less emphasis on old-school screaming), this is a heavy album that chimes; it’s growing towards the light. (Extra points for creating a companion album of ambient pieces that can be played separately, or simultaneously, with the main record. More of this sort of thing.)

Buy from Bandcamp.

Olivia Chaney: ‘Six French Songs’

A spontaneous recording made over a few New York summer evenings, this EP is a miniature to savour. One of folk music’s most beautiful voices, covering a handful of ‘chansons’ in sparse, delicate arrangements. Modest, utterly magnificent. Fans of the exquisite take note: Chaney’s new full-length album, ‘Circle of Desire’, is due in the spring. 

Buy from Bandcamp.

Dengue Fever: ‘Ting Mong’

For those unfamiliar, Dengue Fever are a (mostly) American band formed by two brothers from LA to play music in the style of the vintage Cambodian rock they had fallen in love with. In a stroke of genius, they recruited an established Cambodian vocalist, Chhom Nimol, to sing in Khmer for them. This is their first album in eight years, preserving their catchy, psychedelic vibe, but with an especially mellow, reflective feel. One for when you’re feeling both relaxed and funky. 

Buy from Bandcamp.

Lucie Dehli: ‘Homam’

Before this release, I had mainly heard singer Lucie Dehli perform live and on record with kindred spirit Jo Quail (who guests here). A confirmed fan of Dehli’s bold, virtuosic improvised vocals, I wondered what a fully-realised album proper would sound like. Now I know. Everything about ‘Homam’ is powerful and uplifting: Dehli references rituals celebrating the feminine, the divine, love and nature. Recording most of the instruments herself, then co-producing with Lee Lebens, their full-on, driven arrangements underpin Dehli’s thrilling voice; you feel she’s in total control, yet utterly unleashed. 

Buy from Bandcamp.

Flesh & the Dream: ‘Choose Mortality’

It’s a rare and exciting treat when two artists you’ve liked individually for ages collaborate. Flesh & the Dream is singer and pedal-steel guitarist Heather Leigh (though voice-only here) and electronica ace Shackleton. Both artists strain at the leash in their own work – Leigh’s sensual, searing songs are compellingly, authentically raw (try her masterpiece, ‘Throne’), while Shackleton travels ever further from an early dubstep style to experimental, esoteric rhythms and effects. Together, they’ve made an uncompromisingly ritualistic album, very much a headphones trip: phrases repeat, evolve and blend across a constantly shifting percussive landscape. In particular, Leigh’s voice – rich, robust and ravishing – has a seductive grandeur in perfect service of these incantations.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Barb Jungr and her Trio: ‘My Marquee’

One of our greatest interpreters, with an uncanny ability to find a hidden dimension to even the most well-known songs and make you hear them with fresh ears. Here she leads a superb band through songs by acts associated with the famous London club – but you have not heard ‘Substitute’ or ‘No Regrets’ performed with this level of sensitivity and insight before. Possibly Jungr’s finest album yet.

Link to retailers here. (Although I’d also advise you to see Jungr live if at all possible and buy a copy direct from the artist.)

Katharina Konradi & Ammiel Bushakevitz: ‘Insomnia’

A Schubert recital with a slight twist. Bushakevitz is an accomplished guitarist as well as pianist, and has arranged seven of the songs accordingly. So, these are versions you haven’t heard before, but more importantly, they suit the disc’s theme perfectly. The title tells us this is dreaming-in-the-dark Schubert, and – as Konradi notes in the booklet – the quieter guitar settings draw us into the pieces in an even more hushed and intimate environment. The rhythmic, rolling riffs of selections like ‘Romanze’ and, of course, ‘Nacht und Träme’ sound like whispers beneath Konradi’s elegant renditions. A lovely CD.

Buy from Presto.

Heike Matthiesen: ‘Guitar Divas’

I was shocked to read that Matthiesen passed away in December: a musician who foregrounded women composers through researching, performing and recording their music, herself now silenced. But ‘Guitar Divas’ stands proud without any extra layer of poignancy. It’s a deliberately delightful, exuberant recording that rescues guitar compositions by four women who might otherwise be forgotten due to the constraints of the time. The stunning virtuosity on display is only enhanced by the sense of brio running through almost all of the work. A final recording, then, but full of joy.

Buy from Presto.

Arvo Pärt: ‘Tractus’

To me, this is always a special combination: compositions by Pärt, performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, or an orchestra conducted by Tonu Kaljuste (often the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra), or both… and recorded for the mighty ECM label, produced by Manfred Eicher. Accordingly, ‘Tractus’ – which has a strong focus on works adapted for chamber performance – sounds magnificent, Eicher bringing pin-sharp clarity to the Estonians’ aura of glacial stoicism.

Buy from Presto.

Rowan Pierce, Roderick Williams, & Christopher Glynn: ‘Schubert in English, volume 4’

This was a delightful surprise. Pianist Glynn’s ‘Schubert in English’ project, using clever, appealing translations by Jeremy Sams, had up till now consisted of the three great song cycles (‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’ with Nicky Spence, ‘Winter Journey’ with Williams, and ‘Swan Song’ with John Tomlinson, all on Signum). This final release of stand-alone lieder brings together Glynn’s sensitive playing and two singers with a particular interest and affinity with English art song, making their renditions especially natural and immediate.

Buy from Presto.

Jo Quail: ‘Invocation’ / ‘Supplication’

Jo Quail usually plays live with just electric cello and a loop station, building up layers of melody and rhythm, her driving orchestral sound swirling round the audience. Just as she breaks free of the cello’s conventional constraints onstage, on record she takes the same approach to composition, scoring to her imagination as if the player and writer are both inside her vying for supremacy. After her epic work ‘The Cartographer’, this new release still explores the hinterlands where heavy rock music can meld seamlessly with avant-garde classical. However, here Quail bottles the lightning, honing the focus to two companion song-cycles, packaged together as a double EP. The twist this time is that each EP is written with a vocalist from the prog metal world in mind, Maria Franz from Heilung guesting on ‘Invocation’ and Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari (or LEF) from O.R.k. on ‘Supplication’. With the range of the cello and human voice famously aligned, it’s no wonder that Quail writes such beautiful material for her two guests, and wields their voices with as much virtuosity as her own instrument.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Raf and O: ‘We are Stars’

Taking inspiration – in attitude as much as performance – from their heroes David Bowie and Kate Bush, Raf and O make music that disregards any normal pop/rock timeline or template. They write delicate, melodic songs, chasing a sound that evokes past and future all at once: the acoustic warmth of piano and double bass married to electric guitar and synthesised effects, then finessed with an otherworldly ‘feel’ all  own. ‘We are Stars’ is the latest, greatest stop on their journey.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Robbie Robertson: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Soundtrack

Another sad loss during 2023. I love The Band and much of Robertson’s solo music (his self-titled debut still sounds extraordinary) – but this parting gift must be among his very best work. A longtime collaborator with Martin Scorsese, Robertson seemed especially well-placed to score this film. Channelling in part his own First Nation ancestry, he layered guitars (along with a range of more esoteric string instruments) over an instinctive tribal pulse, adding to the movie’s soul and tension.

Buy digital from Presto. CD/vinyl versions generally available elsewhere.

Anthony Romaniuk: ‘Perpetuum’

Pianist Romaniuk has brought together pieces linked by their ‘perpetual motion’, a sense of propulsion that drives you through the album. The choices career across the canon (whatever that might be): Adams, Bach, Ligeti, Purcell, Stravinsky and more all hurry each other along. There are further surprises. Romaniuk uses six instruments that make a kind of continuous keyboard timeline then plays with it – so, for example, we hear Satie on both fortepiano and electric piano. By the final track – an improvisation on Kapsberger using piano and synth patch – fans of jazz and electronica will be fully on board. (And Penguin Café Orchestra connoisseurs shouldn’t miss Romaniuk’s beautiful arrangement of ‘Perpetuum Mobile’.)

Buy from Presto.

Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton: ‘but I like to sing…’ 

This recital disc is Sampson’s 100th release as a soloist. To celebrate the occasion, she put together a fascinating programme of repertoire, all newly-recorded, that still represented her personality and artistry over her whole career. Bernstein to Brahms; Wolf to Wallen; Parry, Poulenc, Pritchard; Saariaho, Strauss and Strohl. Women’s perspectives and voices are heard and amplified. Full of beauty, wit and grace, it’s a perfectly achieved record, endlessly playable. (You can read more about Sampson’s 2023 releases, including this one, here.)

Buy from Presto.

Sean Shibe: ‘Profesión’

Shibe returns to the acoustic guitar with a South American programme of Barrios, Villa-Lobos and Ginastera. The virtuosity is dazzling, the programme building into intoxicating intensity. I love the ‘in-the-room’ production – while Shibe is impeccable, you can still hear occasional movement, breathing – the concentration and effort are, rightly, audible in the mix. Extreme in its way, it’s a magical follow-up to his electric, ecstatic album, ‘Lost and Found’.

Buy from Presto.

Smoke Fairies: ‘Carried in Sound’

It’s hard to believe this duo have now been going for 15-plus years, and now here comes one of the albums of their career. Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies have always sounded startling: hailing from Sussex but honing their craft over a formative year in New Orleans, their vocals are crystalline UK folk, but harmonising over their blues-soaked electric guitar lines. This record was entirely home-recorded during lockdown so moves away from an expanded, live-style feel but allows the duo to build in some unexpected layers. The arresting chill of opener ‘Vague Ideas’ foregrounds their two-voice/two-guitar set-up before soaring into a kind of lush intimacy, heralding the whole. Alluring.

Buy from the artist.

Dobrinka Tabakova: ‘Concertos / Earth Suite / Orpheus’ Comet’

This fantastic release celebrates Tabakova’s season as Artist-in-Residence at the Hallé, and these performances show what a perfect match of composer with orchestra – conducted here by Delyana Lazarova – the collaboration proved to be. Inspired by science and nature, Tabakova conjures up scenes of elemental heft, alongside fleet-footed passages that combine to make truly exciting music. If you were blown away by the first performance of ‘Timber and Steel’ (forming the third part of Tabakova’s ‘Earth Suite’) at the 2019 Proms, you’ll want this without delay. But really, every home needs a copy.

Buy from Presto.

Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Iain Burnside, & Craig Ogden: ‘Unveiled’

An impassioned, important disc thoughtfully programmed by Thomas as a survey of male homosexuality, mostly during a period when it necessarily remained hidden. It’s exciting stuff – highlights include Britten’s ‘Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo’ in new Jeremy Sams translations and Tippett’s startling ‘Songs of Achilles’. Thomas himself sets a series of poems, ‘Swan’, by Andrew McMillan, closing out the album in proud theatrical fashion.

Buy from Presto.

WITCH: ‘Zango’

A mere 39 years after their previous album, these titans of Zamrock (full name ‘We Intend To Cause Havoc’) returned with a vital record as energetic and infectious as anything they put out in their original heyday. ‘Zango’ was fully emblematic of the genre’s hallmarks – a heady brew of Afrobeat rhythms, funk basslines and riffs straight out of stoner metal – with an extra dose of adrenaline. Euphoric.

Buy from Bandcamp.

Xuefei Yang: ‘X Culture’

Short but very sweet. This album from the celebrated guitarist – available on digital only – is a half-hour recital of exquisite pieces, all sharing the theme of each composer taking inspiration from another culture into their own work. Highlights for me include the wondrous ‘Koyunbaba’ suite by Domeniconi and Yang’s solo guitar arrangement of Sakamoto’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’.

Buy from Presto.

Continuous playlist on Spotify:

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