Clark: Sus Dog
“You’re never gonna know for sure” where Clark will go next. Even in the space of one album he can switch from rip roaring rhythms for the club to curious cinematic, orchestral manoeuvres. It's all too fitting, then, that his tenth studio album is not only a milestone culmination of his work, but yet another first added to his varied repertoire, as well as Bleep’s Album Of The Year for 2023.
VHS Head: Phocus
With his long-awaited third album Phocus, VHS Head constructs an elaborate, otherworldly mythos for a “low budget thriller”, opening up yet another CRT screen treasure trove.
Kelela: Raven
Raven has only gotten stronger the longer it has accompanied us throughout 2023, displaying Kelela’ incomparable artistry in full force as she explores her own identity and ancestry as a Black femme, both in music and in life.
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics
Fever Ray’s highly anticipated third album is an examination of what humanity has been infatuated with perhaps since its very beginning, written in jittery dance beats like the new sparks of young love, and full-bodied synth chaos razed with doubt.
Oneohtrix Point Never: Again
Like the alluringly visceral artwork made by similarly multidimensional artist Matias Faldbakken, Oneohtrix Point Never clenches and crushes sound firmly in his fist, then outstretches it in his palm as he details life condensed into an hourlong nonlinear slipstream on his latest album Again.
African Head Charge: A Trip To Bolgatanga
Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah & Adrian Sherwood have operated as African Head Charge at a scintillating intersection of Jamaican, Ghanaian, and British music since forming in 1981, and with their first new material in over a decade, the band present some of their most outgoing music to date.
Overmono: Good Lies
Overmono’s debut album is “really a letter of love to the journey so far”, marking a milestone in their career that is well worth the wait as the continued evolution of their raw club sounds electrify all senses.
Kali Malone (Featuring Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton): Does Spring Hide Its Joy
There is an inherent timelessness to much of drone music, made for meditation and immersion, for getting lost in and losing sense of the hours passing by. Kali Malone leans into these ideas with a far more emotional perspective, taking her longform compositional sensibilities to new heights on her greatest work yet Does Spring Hide Its Joy with cellist Lucy Railton and Stephen O’Malley on electric guitar.
James Holden: Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities
James Holden bends electrical arcs into mesmerising wavelets, creates reverent breakbeats for alien beings, and constructs sand, air, and fire from synthesis alone. His fourth studio album is an epic collage of all these energies, culminating on his history as an artist so far.
Nondi_: Flood City Trax
Nondi_ comes full circle to her admired Planet Mu with vibrant, lo-fi, and oneiric flavoured footwork beats warped through a hazy internet radio transmission. Taking the label’s legacy of bringing juke to the world with comps like Bangs & Works, Triplin runs the genre to its hypertactile, soakingly textured conclusion on Flood City Trax: a footwork fever dream made manifest.