Hi! Hello! I’m not dead or I’m back from the dead or did anyone notice that I was dead? Am I dead?
Anyway, I’ve been M.I.A. from the site for some time now (years?) and I wanted to get back into the swing of things by sharing my favorite music I discovered in a particular month. What a way to start by writing my first installment in March for music I discovered in January! Seems fairly fitting. This is Editor’s Note January 2023.
Hopefully, the February installment comes in the next few days so we can establish that this column comes out at the beginning of every month with a list of dope tunes from the previous month. Okay, enough of the obligatory opening paragraph that is only here to get to the 300-word count Google requires in order to index a page in its search results (*pulls back curtain).
Best Music of January 2023
the most depressing month of the year
Turbid North – The Decline
Just all-out balls-to-the-wall metal that wraps up almost every genre imaginable. It’s an exhausting listen in the best possible way. Makes your brains scrambled eggs.
ORA77K – C0DESW1TCH 2: Night Owls Only
Genre hoping experimental hip-hop stuff. 12 tracks of just really cool beats with super-smooth flow and vocals on the top.
Land Whales – Libélula
Aggressive shoegaze-tinged hardcore grunge stuff from three kids out of Cuba. Great musicianship, vocals, and song compositions. This might be my favorite thing that came out in January honestly, but that changes from day to day.
ceramic – lost claude
Just a couple of people in France making some cool moody noise rock-type shit. Nothing groundbreaking, but just solid if you love overdrive bass and drums.
Kota the Friend – Lyrics to GO, Vol. 4
Some good ol’ boom-bap hip-hop. This is my first exposure to Kota the Friend, love his flow a ton. 10 songs in 16 minutes, a really satisfying short listen.
Mulva – Seer EP
Progressive noise rock with soaring type vocals out of Providence, Rhode Island. Looking forward to more from this band.
sear – Grief in V Stages – EP
From one Seer to the next sear. Blackened-noise-rock-metal type stuff. A five-song EP, about the loss of a dog and a fitting tribute to what was probably a kick-ass dog at that. R.I.P.
Papo2oo4 – PAP on P.E.D’s
More boom-bap, but this time with that dusty vibe like Wu-Tang Clan. Pap could easily fit right in with the Wu as well. He kills it!
Riot Stares – Sounds of Acceleration
Do you like 90’s east-coast hardcore? If you have a Snapcase, Quicksand, or Orange 9mm forehead tattoo you will love this band. Just shreds! Orange 9mm even guests on one of the songs so it even has that OG endorsement. Holy shit where is my Progressions Through Unlearning vinyl!
Old School Music Deep-Dive of the Month
I’ll use this section every month for either a revisit of an album or an artist from the past that I spent time listening to. Might be a band I already knew, might be a band that is new to me.
Tricky (Circa 1996-1998)
Tricky is trip-hop royalty and he should be. His music is very hit-and-miss for me, but he was absolutely on fire from 96-98. His second official album 1996’s Pre-Millennium Tension is so menacing and cool, just off-tempo grooves and rhythms with disjointed vocals and pessimistic gravely grumbles from Tricky. He dropped another album in 96 under the pseudonym name, Nearly God which kept the creepy experimentation going. The crown jewel of this output though is 98’s Angles with Dirty Faces. This album might be the best trip-hop album of all time, maybe even over Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and that’s saying a lot because Mezzanine is an all-timer. Angels is super long but it keeps the mood so well. For some reason, the first two tracks are missing on most streaming services so go steal a copy from somewhere or hit me up for the super-deluxe Europe mix with extra bonus tracks. Haha! This song is so fuckin good!
