Welcome to our selection of our favourite albums of 2023. As you might expect, it is the discovery of new, exciting records that makes life rewarding at Phonica, as we open boxes from labels and distributors to find mind-blowing music from all over the world. Albums are a little easier to choose for a year best-of than singles & tracks, there is some consensus as to what constitutes a 'good' album and there was far more agreement here than in other categories. Here you will find staff favourites, bestsellers and those records we just couldn't get enough of, both in appetite and physically, no doubt, due to small vinyl runs of some of these great releases......
Sitting at the top of our Best of 2023 round-up, and many others too, is the outstanding debut album 'Black Classical Music' from Yussef Dayes on Gilles Petersen's Beechwood Recordings label - easily our jazz release of the year, the album is littered with featured guests (Shabaka Hutchings, Tom Misch, Chronixx to name a few) and is influenced by Miles Davis & Rahsaan Roland Kirk. A visionary album from the multi-instrumentalist.
It has been hard to choose between the top albums as we are huge fans of James Holden's rave opus 'Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities' - its his fourth album but he has created the vintage rave soundtrack we have all been wanting.....And as rave soundtracks go, you can't do bigger than Overmono's 'Good Lies' - the sound of 2023 as the Russell Brothers combine UK garage, rave, drum & bass and electronica to create the best stadium sound of the year. Our favourite ambient album of 2023 is Anthony Naples' stunning 'Orbs' as the New York house & techno producer channels 90s chillout and dub for this year's downtempo album of choice. Also worthy of a mention is Pangaea's 'Changing Channels , available on vinyl in 2 parts (both listed below), it's a ribcage rattling, bass-heavy club soundtrack that still sounds intricate in its production....
Sault may have given us the live perfomance of the year (at Drumsheds) but its their main vocalist Cleo Sol who leads the way with her excellent Badu-like 'Heaven' - and yes, we are still waiting for the vinyl - it's been so long that she's even snuck out a new album, 'Gold', digitally in the last month....and not to mention all of Sault's 5 albums which got a vinyl release in 2023 !!
There's a lot of records here for you to check for yourself but the hidden gems that have been played a lot on the Phonica decks include Martinou's dub deep house delight 'Chiral', Eli Escobar's opus 'The Beach Album' (which includes the Phonica single 'Find A Way 2Day'), Valerie from the Galerie's Larry Heard-esque 'Long Time Listener First Time Caller'. Further down the list, you will find a multitude of artists, styles and genres from pure pop to hip hop, jazz to electronica. We hope this introduces you to some gems from 2023....
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