Young FathersHeavy HeavyNinja Tune
HeartwormsA Comforting NotionSpeedy Wunderground
JellyskinIn BrineWrong Speed
James Ellis FordThe HumWarp
KelelaRavenWarp
MemorialsMusic For Film: Tramps! / Women Against The BombThe state51 Conspiracy
PoiL UedaPoiL UedaDurt Et Doux
JAAWSuperclusterSvart
La TneEcorcha / TailléeLes Disques Bongo Joe
Annelies MonserMaresHorn Of Plenty
Colin StetsonWhen We Were That What Wept For The Sea52Hz
Stetson leads us on a voyage of reminiscence and grief, much like a marine adventure, full of suspended moments, foggy hazy shores, and battles against the stormy sea. A Romantic Sturm und Drang work where beauty and horror, fear and longing can exist at the same in the sublime of nature. Dark abysses open after airy and dilated moments; breathes, touches, and mechanical sounds counterpart abstract movements. The spoken lyrics of ‘The Lighthouse V’, which put the musical images into words and inspired the album’s title, follow a crescendo that rises until ‘The Lighthouse IV”s explosion, where all the tension and misery find their desperate shout.
YaejiWith A HammerNinja Tune
James HoldenImagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All PossibilitiesBorder Community
Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, on the other hand, trades in something else. While no less worthy or beautiful in its way, it is perhaps more obviously beholden to linear timelines and histories, however personal. Holden has called it both "a dream of a rave" and "a dialogue with [his] teenage self," which I think says a lot, maybe all you need. There’s an element of nostalgia at play here, but no corresponding retrograde thinking. Each track is inevitably a wild combination of memories, ideas, and influences – midi-fied sacred harp singers clash with squiggly synthesis, fiddle collides with the most absurd funk bass. Meanwhile, the spectre of prog is everywhere and the club is never far away. Amazingly, it all works.
Brghde ChaimbeulCarry Them With UsTak:til
Some songs are improvised, the two musicians working together with consummate ease. On ‘Uguviu (ii)’, for example, the trance-like pipe drone nags at the back of the skull while pipes and horn duel over the top, somewhere in the clouds, exchanging repeating, minimal phrases. It is a complete world, gone before you know it. ‘Pilliù: The Call Of The Redshank’ and ‘Pìobaireachd Nan Eun: The Birds’ are both inspired by the singing of birds. Chaimbeul’s singing, rarely heard on this album, is a delicate, intricate sound which demonstrates why she believes birdsong is close to the Gaelic language. Traditional tunes tell of repetitive reality as well as wild myth. ‘That Fonn Gun Bhi Trom: I Am Disposed Of Mirth’ is a walking song, sung by Scots women as they beat cloth – repetitive work which spawned a genre of its own. It is music with rhythms as predictable and varied as the weave itself. Chaimbeul and Stetson make it flutter and break free from its earthy origins.
SurgeonCrash RecoilTresor
The eight six-minute tracks of Crash Recoil, also released on Tresor, contain all the hallmarks of those Surgeon classics: the discipline and precision his alias suggests, amid a relentless skitter of programmed drums. He labours under the usual adjectives — industrial, brutalist — but that fails to acknowledge his ability to coax lightness out from percussive pummel. Opener ‘Oak Bank’ is typically fleet-footed, moving from tinny bounce to sweaty-room techno. Equally satisfying is the tactile clatter of ‘Metal Pig’.
Shit And Shine2222 And AirportThe state51 Conspiracy
Of course, whilst those are pseudo-helpful touch points, it also sounds like none of the above. It sounds like Shit And Shine. Which is perhaps best summed up as the chunkiest and most hell-wrought bass playing from Lightning Bolt’s Brian Gibson shucked over a steroid-plunged Prefuse 73 set. Or, in shorter hand, the Bacteria Bitch remix of Nurse With Wound’s ‘Cruisin’ For A Bruisin”.
Patrick WolfThe Night SafariApport
During a show he played at London’s Village Underground earlier this year, Wolf prowled the stage in his rather fabulous self-made clothes and was, by turns, honest, witty, bleakly funny ("you’re all going to die… sorry, I am told I am too mean to my audience") and filthy (‘Tristan’ introduced with an ad lib apparently about fisting), and best of all sung in the finest voice of his life. I used to always think that it would only be in another world less tainted by commerce, algorithms and laziness that Patrick Wolf could be a pop star, but I realise I was wrong. He now seems perfectly happy to do popstar as he wants to be, and for that world to be his very own.
KhanateTo Be CruelSacred Bones
To Be Cruel is an incredible record, with three tracks of 20 minutes each pushing the Khanate template outwards in weird and affecting new ways. The production is exquisite. Having had the luxury of living with it for several weeks, I realised that I came to subconsciously appreciate it much in the same way I appreciate a dub record recorded at the Black Ark such is its depth and spatiality. It is a record of fractal depth that bristles with detail at the very borders of perception. But most importantly it achieves all of this without short changing listeners on caustic vitriol, despondent awe and unquenchable agitation.
LankumFalse LankumRough Trade
The astonishing False Lankum has received a hitherto-unseen amount of mainstream acclaim, but it is also the result of many decades that the band’s members have spent exploring the outer limits of folk and trad music, whether as a foursome or in their individual practises. Its vast swings of emotion have always been present in their work to some degree, the juxtapositions more and more pronounced with each record (not least thanks to the influence of producer John "Spud" Murphy). Here – from the overwhelming gothic horror of ‘Go Dig My Grave’ and the tempestuous melodrama of ‘The New York Trader’, to the swooning romance of ‘Newcastle’ and the gorgeous melancholia of ‘Lord Abore And Mary Flynn’ – they supercharge that aspect, taking their music to unparalleled levels of extremity.
The risk, of course, is that extreme mood swings often come at the expense of consistency across an LP. Lankum, however, avoid that pitfall. Recorded in a Martello Tower off the coast of Ireland, they’re tied together by a running theme of the ocean that emerged subconsciously in that location, as well as by a number of abstract instrumental ‘Fugue’ pieces dotted throughout. Cut from the same lengthy experimental jam session, instruments clatter and float around as if suspended in mid-air, providing a binding agent as they gradually arrange themselves into the shape of whatever song comes next. The immediate experience of listening to False Lankum is intense; one minute you’re barraged like a raft in a tempest, and the next floating along serenely in a stretch of calm, warm water. Zoom out, however, and you’ll find a record that captures the sublimity and scale of an entire ocean.
The Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far 2023
- 1: Lankum – False Lankum
- 2: Khanate – To Be Cruel
- 3: Patrick Wolf – The Night Safari
- 4: Shit And Shine – 2222 And Airport
- 5: Surgeon – Crash Recoil
- 6: Brìghde Chaimbeul – Carry Them With Us
- 7: James Holden – Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities
- 8: Yaeji – With A Hammer
- 9: Colin Stetson – When We Were That What Wept For The Sea
- 10: Annelies Monseré – Mares
- 11: La Tène – Ecorcha / Taillée
- 12: JAAW – Supercluster
- 13:PoiL Ueda – PoiL Ueda
- 14: MEMORIALS – Music For Film: Tramps! / Women Against The Bomb
- 15: Kelela – Raven
- 16: James Ellis Ford – The Hum
- 17: Jellyskin – In Brine
- 18: Heartworms – A Comforting Notion
- 19: Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy
- 20: MC Yallah – Yallah Beibe
- 21: Kate NV – WOW
- 22: Wacław Zimpel – Train Spotter
- 23: Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters – Abri Cyclonique
- 24: Oleksandr Yurchenko – Recordings Vol. 1, 1991—2001
- 25: Bruxa Maria – Build Yourself A Shrine And Pray
- 26: Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective – *1
- 27: Nabihah Iqbal – Dreamer
- 28: Philip Jeck & Chris Watson – Oxmardyke
- 29: Fire-Toolz – I Am Upset Because I See Something That Is Not There.
- 30: Mandy, Indiana – I’ve Seen A Way
- 31: Autechre & The Hafler Trio – ae³o & h³ae Box Set
- 32: Babybaby_explores – Food Near Me, Weather Tomorrow
- 33: Free Love – Inside
- 34: Desire Marea – On The Romance Of Being
- 35: Benefits – Nails
- 36: Fever Ray – Radical Romantics
- 37: Natalia Beylis & Eimear Reidy – She Came Through The Window To Stand By The Door
- 38: Skull Practitioners – Negative Stars
- 39: Squid – O Monolith
- 40: Cicada The Burrower – Blight Witch Regalia
- 41: Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM
- 42: Overmono – Good Lies
- 43: House Of All – House Of All
- 44: Paszka – Lapton
- 45: A.P.A.T.T. – We
- 46: Otto Sidharta – Kajang
- 47: Ruth Anderson & Annea Lockwood – Tête-à-tête
- 48: Pere Ubu – Trouble On Big Beat Street
- 49: Synthfreq – Vol. 1
- 50: Marta Salogni & Tom Relleen – Music For Open Spaces
- 51: Lunch Money Life – The God Phone
- 52: Martyna Basta – Slowly Remembering, Barely Forgetting
- 53: 3Phaz – Ends Meet
- 54: Upsammy – Germ In A Population Of Buildings
- 55: Sourdurent – L’Herbe De Détourne
- 56: Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps
- 57: The Stargazer’s Assistant – Fire Worshipper
- 58: Bell Witch – Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate
- 59: DeVon Russell Gray / Nathan Hanson / Davu Seru – We Sick
- 60: Lia Kohl – The Ceiling Reposes
- 61: Godflesh – Purge
- 62: Yossari Baby – Inferiority Complex
- 63: Yfory – Yfory
- 64: Crimeboys – Very Dark Past
- 65: HMLTD – The Worm
- 66: Lana Del Rabies – Strega Beata
- 67: Šarūnas Nakas – Ramblings
- 68: BIG|BRAVE – Nature Morte
- 69: Sheng Jie, aka gogoj 盛洁 – Review
- 70: KASAI – J/P/N
- 71: Left Hand Cuts Off The Right – Free Time/Dead Time
- 72: Fire! Orchestra – Echoes
- 73: Hermann Nitsch – Das Orgien Mysterien Theater
- 74: Rezzett – Meant Like This
- 75: Bulbils – Map
- 76: Shirley Collins – Archangel Hill
- 77: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Land Of Sleeper
- 78: JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown – Scaring The Hoes
- 79: Sabrina Bellaouel – Al Hadr
- 80: Katie Gately – Fawn / Brute
- 81: Rosso Polare – Bocca D’ombra
- 82: Jacques Puech – Gravir / Canon
- 83: Seaming To – Dust Gatherers
- 84: 23wa – Rorschach
- 85: Richard Skelton – Selenodesy
- 86: Jam City – Jam City Presents EFM
- 87: Unperson – Spiritual™
- 88: Wallowing – Earth Reaper
- 89: Poison Ruïn – Härvest
- 90: Paul St. Hilaire – Tikiman Vol. 1
- 91: Wolf Eyes – Dreams In Splattered Lines
- 92: Aksak Maboul – Une Aventure De VV (Songspiel)
- 93: Oozing Wound – We Cater To Cowards
- 94: Liis Ring – Homing
- 95: Little Simz – NO THANK YOU
- 96: Rian Treanor & Ocen James – Saccades
- 97: Karlowy Vary – La Femme
- 98: ABADIR – Melting
- 99: Historically Fucked – The Mule Peasants’ Revolt Of 12067
- 100: Liv.e – Girl In The Half Pearl