Dec. 29, 2023
Some albums you come to one way: a good review on a blog you respect, a track appearing on a playlist by someone whose taste you trust, etc and so on. And sometimes you get directed to something multiple times. This is what happened to me this year with the irrepressible “When Will We Land?” by Barry Can’t Swim. Anyway, tracks by “Barry” appeared in mixes a lot this year and the album kept popping up in eagerly anticipated lists.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Barry Can't Swim, Electronic
Dec. 28, 2023
It’s probably no surprise that as we reach the top four (or five if you like) we also get to the two albums The National released in 2023. The first, “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”, was trailed with a big reveal early on in the year, while the second, “Laugh Track”, was dropped all of a sudden in October. Once I got to know both albums, I swung between liking each one more for a while, hence putting them both at the same point in the list and not considering each separately.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, The National, Rock, Indie
Dec. 27, 2023
It would be remiss of me to claim that this is a placeholder for any number of (quite different sounding) song based albums that came out this year (Yves Tumor, Wilco to mention two) but it feels that way. This album came high up my list of listens because it’s a very good breakfast album, one to listen to while getting the Day started - though there are also some bangers on here too.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Nation of Language, Electronic, Indie
Dec. 26, 2023
Grails are one of those bands who always get played a lot at my house. There’s something about their slow incremental instrumental pieces that my brain just loves to get lost in. Anches en Maat, their first album in six years or so, and the first with the entire band in the studio together since 2008, is their most Grails-y album in a long time.
On their last album Chalice Hymnal there were a lot of references to various band members’ side projects like Watter and Lilacs & Champagne, along with continuations of pieces from earlier albums like Deep Politics.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Grails, Rock
Dec. 25, 2023
There isn’t a great deal I can write about The Ancient Truth without sounding vague and anodyne. While I try to come think about different forms of music and go into some analysis of what makes one album more interesting than another, sometimes you end up just saying “this album is great because I like it and I always have a good time listening to it.”
The album has a late nineties early naughties kind of feel, all skittering breakbeats and chilly pads, but it also features a modern chill out vibe perhaps in keeping with recent reappraisals of music by artists like Enya.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Maara, Electronic
Dec. 24, 2023
As you get older nostalgia becomes an ever important part of listening to music. It often feels like the business relies on convincing an aging population of fans to part with their money on new versions of old material. It’s nostalgia, the feeling of recapturing something you loved in your youth, that often makes this acceptable. Of course it’s also nice to get new music from your favourite bands, especially when it’s as good as “Fuse”.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, EBTG, Electronic
Dec. 23, 2023
Radical Romantics, the third album by Fever Ray was released in April. I bought a copy on red vinyl which is a beautiful sight to behold. I listened to a lot when it was released but eased up a bit until listening to it a couple more times while writing this list. It’s a great collection of songs, probably better than their second album “Plunge”. The cover art is just as scary though.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Fever Ray, Electronic
Dec. 22, 2023
Agartha is the debut album by Japanese electronic artist Wata Igarashi. I don’t really know much about him, but I do know that I enjoy releases on the German record label Kompakt and I have really enjoyed Japanese techno in recent years. Over lockdown I discovered Haruomi Hosono’s “Polyharmony” album and re-discovered the work of Shinichi Atobe, particularly their album “Love of Plastic”. Both of those albums could be future understated classics and while both are by Japanese artists working in electronic music, there the comparison ends.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Wata Igarashi, Electronic
Dec. 21, 2023
Another year (nearly) over and so starting from tomorrow, I’m going to count down my top 10 albums of 2023. The rules are:
They have to have to have been released in 2023. They need to be albums. I’m defining this as either more than 7 tracks or songs, or more than forty minutes in length. To make the top ten, they need to have been played the most times. I admit that I don’t have a precise measure of this, as I do still buy vinyl and about four of these albums will have had play counts missed by not being captured through a streaming service.
Tags: Album Digest, Music, Twenty Three, Albums, Blogging, Meta
Jun. 22, 2023
Well, it’s been a while since I wrote my last Civ VI leader post about Amanitore of Nubia and there’s been a whole host of new leaders and personas added to the game since then. Among these the number of Chinese leaders has increased from two to five. Therefore it’s probably a good time to start writing about one of them, and where better to start than the OG himself, Qin Shi Huang.
Tags: Fun, Civ, Leaders, China, Twenty Three
Jun. 19, 2023
It strikes me that it is better to sit and think about what you need to do, rather than endless try out new tools and hoping you end up with a use for them. I’m not saying that innovation is bad, or that you shouldn’t stretch yourself into some new spot once in a while, but you will become more valuable to others if you can identify what it is you are supposed to be doing and then use your existing skills to get that job done.
Tags: Procrastination, Work, Software, Twenty Three
Jun. 8, 2023
So today my random album script picked out “Bright Lights” by Ellie Goulding, an album I wasn’t sure I’ve ever listened to. I looked in my music library and there it was! As a result this is not so much an album revisit as an album _visit.
Anyway, this album was released in 2010 and did quite well. In fact, “Bright Lights” is a reissue of an album that was originally released as “Lights” (February 2010).
Tags: Music, Album Revisit, Ellie Goulding, Pop, Twenty Three