Half Past One
A belated round-up of my favorite records from the first half of 2023... that I haven't written about previously
According to my always-open-in-a-browser-tab Google spreadsheet, I’ve listened to just over 250 new-to-me albums during the first six months of 2023. While a good chunk of my listening has been devoted to City Pop records I brought back from Japan and weeks-long dive into Italian prog rock (the early Premita Forneria Marconi LPs are a trip), I’ve managed to mostly keep up with the new records released by artists and labels that I follow and spend plenty of time scrolling through Bandcamp.
Since listening time is finite (if there’s an afterlife, I hope in contains a streaming music service that pays decent royalties to artists), I don’t spend a ton of time re-listening to newer records. But there are exceptions to that rule… and they’re mostly the albums I decided to write about in this week’s edition of Attenuator.
If you’re the kind of person who is grateful for a mid-year list that’s delivered around a month-and-a-half late, hit the subscribe button below and prepare for even more overdue lists to hit your inbox in the coming months!
My Favorite Albums of 2023… so far
I planned to publish this list about a month ago, closer to the year’s actual halfway point, but the extra month or so has given me a bit more time to get my thoughts in order. Because I don’t really like repeating myself, I decided to disqualify records that I’ve previously written about in earlier newsletters — look to the Attenuator archives if you’re in search of some additional recommendations. Here are the eight albums released during the first six months of 2023 that I’ve found myself returning to with some frequency.
Rozi Plain - Prize
Release dates are a somewhat arbitrary thing, but the latest album from Londoner Rozi Plain sounds like a January record to me. Filled with subdued, slowly-building songs built around gentle guitar lines and gradually swelling synths, Prize is a record that resolutely smolders, perpetually easing into an unhurried groove — much like the early days of a new year. The six months since its release have offered plenty of time to consider its subtleties, like the breathy sax flourishes from Alabaster Deplume that grace “Agreeing For Two” or the bouncy, intersecting synths melodies (some courtesy of The Comet is Coming’s Danalogue) on “Painted the Room.” Combined with the mantra-like quality of Plain’s calmly-delivered lyrics, there’s something mesmerizing about the way that Prize centers simplicity and tenderness.
Dishwasher_ - Dishwasher_
Contemporary Belgian jazz is a genre that I’ve spent a lot of time exploring in 2023 — so much so that it’s one of the first things I decided to write about when I launched this newsletter. The debut album from Ghent-based trio Dishwasher_ is indicative of what makes the current Belgian jazz scene so exciting, showcasing a band with a crystalized sound that’s unafraid of pushing the stylistic envelope. Building tracks around taught saxophone, bass, and drum grooves that often embrace the staccato rhythms of Balkan brass bands, Dishwasher_ fleshes out its vision of self-described “kraut jazz” with stabs of synth and effects-laden sax licks. Whether they’re finding the outer limits of a riff (“Blue Bridge”) or stretching Middle Eastern-inspired melodies into an 11-minute jam (“Terra”), there’s very little about Dishwasher_ that could be described as “rinse and repeat.”
Modern Cosmology - What Will You Grow Now?
Stereolab’s ongoing reunion hasn’t yielded a new album (yet?), but the latest record from Modern Cosmology — a collaboration between Brazilian band Mombojó and Stereolab vocalist/instrumentalist Laetitia Sadier — might be the next best thing. What Will You Grow Now? could nearly be mistaken for a lost Stereolab record, falling somewhere between the jazzy chords of Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the bossa nova-inflected pop of Dots and Loops. Sadier’s effortlessly cool voice sounds at home amid undulating bass lines and twinkling synths, and What Will You Grow Now? makes it abundantly clear that the folks in Mombojó have a firm grasp of the sonic palette that suits her best. Yes, I’d love to hear some fresh tunes from The Groop, but I really admire how Modern Cosmology manages to capture the spirit of Stereolab while simultaneously creating music that’s distinct and special in its own right.
Alfa Mist - Variables
You’ll only hear Alfa Mist’s voice on two of the tracks that make up Variables, but the influence of years spent as a hip-hop producer and emcee is present throughout the rhythmic, shapeshifting jazz that populates this album. Like so many of his London contemporaries, Mist clearly appreciates the breadth and possibilities of the genre, flitting from extended cosmic jams to rhythmic fusion numbers. Variables is often feels looser and less conventional than 2021’s Bring Backs, but it’s better for it — Mist’s self-admitted prolific tendencies yield a record that seems as if it’s consciously building on what came before it. There are memorable hooks and rhythms galore, but my favorite moments are contained within the closing track “BC,” on which Mist’s simple-yet-satisfying electric piano riff drives the tune forward amid a swirling cloud of synth, sax, and guitar solos.
Kuf - Yield
Berlin-based trio Kuf operate like an MPC being prodded by six sets of hands, triggering skittering rhythms and wobbly synth lines with the same precision as the (actually MPC-bound) samples that populate much of their music. The programmed quality of the group’s music is a stylistic feature, not a bug, testing the meticulous limits of producing electronic music in real-time. I can’t help but listen to Yield and hear a band preemptively challenging itself to eventually recreate the buoyant bass, drum, and synth interplay of tracks like “Patterns” and “Swim” in a live setting. Naturally, they’ve already nailed it.
Mammal Hands - Gift From the Trees
“Jazz inspired by the structures and textures of electronic music” is a sub-genre that I gravitate to and Mammal Hands are just one of the many UK-based groups that specialize in it, alongside current and former labelmates like GoGo Penguin and the Portico Quartet. Eschewing some of the studio gloss that was applied to the group’s past records, Gift From the Trees is meant to capture the energy (and occasional spontaneity) of a live set — and it mostly succeeds. As much fun as the requisite piano-as-arpeggiator tracks are (“Riser” and “Labyrinth” might be the best of the bunch), it’s the tunes that find the trio slowing down and stretching out that are most interesting, with the album’s sparse production making the subtle interplay contained in “Deep within Mountains” and “Kai” even more captivating.
Wata Igarashi - Agartha
Named after a mythical inner-Earth realm that pretty much equates to the hollow Earth theory (or the Depths, if you’re a Tears of the Kingdom fan), Agartha is the first full-length LP from Tokyo producer Wata Igarashi, who has been churning out singles on digital labels for more than a decade. One of my favorite Igarashi tracks is a tribute to a river in Japan, so it’s interesting to hear how he puts his synths and drum machines to work creating soundscapes that evoke an imagined locale. Igarashi’s psychedelic techno production is well-suited for the task, channeling the sound of ‘80s movie soundtracks (“Searching”) and early-aughts video game scores (“Burning”). It’s just as imaginative as Mile Davis’ late-career tribute to a subterranean world, the 1975 live album Agharta — a record that was also recorded in Japan.
Mega Bog - End of Everything
There’s nothing lighthearted about the personal hardships and ecological destruction that inspired End of Everything, but there are some joyous moments to be found in the synth-pop arrangements that frame each track. Pitting jaunty melodies against solemnly-delivered lyrics, Erin Birgy’s latest record is an exercise in contrast, bringing to mind the work of contemporaries like Cate Le Bon and Jenny Hval. And even though it gets a little proggy (just listen to the shifting tempo and wailing sax on “Anthropocene”), End of Everything manages to squeeze a lot of experimentation and fussed-over synth tones into a tidy 33-minute runtime. There’s something to be said for creative efficiency.
A Fistful of Links
With the summer movie season slowing down (and studios pushing back fall release dates), it’s a good time to dive into the back catalog. Letterboxd editor Mia Lee Vicino’s conversation with Greta Gerwig about the films that inspired Barbie provides a lot of great recommendations — and the folks at Polygon aggregated it into a convenient list, complete with streaming options.
While we’re on the subject of movies to watch after taking in a contemporary blockbuster, here’s another: For Nerdist, film writer Lindsey Romain assembled eight Japanese movies that provide a fitting coda to Oppenheimer. From a kaiju classic to contemporary anime, there are a variety of cinematic ways to confront the consequences of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Christopher Nolan’s movie pointedly decided not to depict.
I’ve been digging Dustin Wong’s new record Perpetual Morphosis (it would have made this list if it’d been released a few weeks earlier) and loved learning a bit more about his process in this interview with A Closer Listen writer David Murrieta Flores. Skip to the end for some great music recs.
Jeremy Gordon wrote an amazingly thoughtful and profound profile of musician/engineer/poker champ Steve Albini for The Guardian, reflecting on his controversial past and unpacking the motivations behind his decision to address some of his most transgressive actions.
Tokyo-based writer James Hadfield compiled a great list of recent notable Japanese records (mostly experimental, with a few J-pop releases for good measure) on his excellent blog, Tokyo Dross.
For WBEZ, I recently spoke with some of the folks behind Chicago’s Silver Room Sound System Block Party about the event’s history, the challenges it has faced, and the decision to bring the party an end after one final edition.
Thanks for stopping by to catch up on some of my favorite tunes of 2023, thus far. If you know of someone else who might enjoy reading (and then listening) through this list, you know what to do with that big orange button below. I hope you found something interesting to listen to!