The Reason for the Season
Happy Listidays
It’s that time again, list-making season. For me, personally, it’s always something I enjoy. A lot of writers and critics have a less positive view of this process, but I find that it does a few things:
Forces me to closely listen to albums that have been floating in and out of my queue
Gets me excited again about albums that I hadn’t spent time with in a few months
Reminds me how much is waiting to be listened to
And so, the last two months of the year tend to be high-impact (re-) listening. I maintain a couple playlists every one, one of music released that year, one of music released that remains unplayed, and one where I drop in albums I feel pretty confident will be in the long list for my personal year-end list.
Since we’re not yet up to publishing our short lists, I thought I’d go ahead and share my current long list. Things may change still in the next week, but I feel pretty confident somewhere in these albums are the ones that’ll end up in my top ten. And yes, at Free Jazz Blog we do still rank 1–10, and yes I do yearly stand by my top pick being what I would call the best album of the year. (When that does come out, feel free to reach out and fight me.). One other thing I do, purely for myself, is try hard not to repeat labels or musicians. However, all bets are off when it comes to the long list.
What I try to do with this first round of listing is find the albums that spoke to me most deeply. In some cases, say Paul Dunmall, it’s been a challenge to parse which one I most enjoyed. His duet with Olie Brice is one of those small-scale, intimate improvised albums that I’m such a sucker for. Similarly, his New Quartet and Ensemble albums are brilliantly exciting, especially where the Ensemble expands on his group from last year’s fantastic Yes Tomorrow. However, in the end, if a Dunmall album ends up in the final 10, the one currently leading the pack is Bright Light A Joyous Celebration, which has in its favor a lineup with five of the most brilliant players: Soweto Kinch, Xhosa Cole, Corey Mwamba, Dave Kane, and Hamid Drake. The album is playful, exciting, and a true joy, something very much needed.
All that said, the current long list is below, 105 albums with many duplicate artists and labels. We’ll see how the final turns out, but at this point, I could pick any 10 from this list and feel like I had 10 of the best albums of 2023.
Alex Ward Item 4 - Furthered
Alex Ward Items 6 & 7 - The Recent Past
Alexander Hawkins Trio - Carnival Celestial
Angelica Sanchez Nonet - Nighttime Creatures
Anna Webber - Shimmer Wince
Anne Gillis + XT - Our/s Bouture(s)
Anthropology Band - Scald Live 2022
Art Ensemble of Chicago - The Sixth Decade - From Paris to Paris
Beam Splitter - Split Jaw
Bengt Frippe Nordström - Vinyl Box
Bertrand Denzler, Joel Grip, Sven-Åke Johansson - Excelsior
Bill Orcutt - Jump On It
Brandon Lopez Trio - Matanzas
Brandon Seabrook’s Epic Proportions - brutalovechamp
Camila Nebbia - una ofrenda a la ausencia
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - New Future City Radio
Dan Rosenboom - Polarity
Daniel Levin + Rodrigo Pinheiro + Hernâni Faustino - Rhizome
Darius Jones - fLuXkit Vancouver (
itssuite but sacred)Dominic Lash, Rachel Musson, Phil Durrant, Steve Noble - TRIM
Drew Gardner - The Return
Eclectic Maybe Band - Bars Without Measures
Eddie Prévost, NO Moore, James O’Sullivan, Ross Lambert - CHORD
Gebhard Ullmann Das Kondensat - Andere Planeten
GEORGE - Letters To George
Gerald Cleaver - 22 / 23
Gerald Cleaver, Brandon Lopez, Hprizm - In the Wilderness
Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra - Flying a Kite On an Empty Beach
Glass Triangle - Blue and Sun-lights
Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas - Juno 3
Illegal Crowns - Unclosing
Ingebrigt Haker Flaten & Paal Nilssen-Love - Guts & Skins
Ingrid Laubrock - Monochromes
Ingrid Laubrock - The Last Quiet Place
Ivo Perelman - Molten Gold
Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley - Polarity 2
jaimie branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet - For Mahalia, With Love
James Ilgenfritz - #entrainments
James Ilgenfritz, Sandy Ewen, Michael Foster - Ekphrastic Discourse
Jen Baker, Ty Citerman and Shayna Dunkelman - Time Phase Trio
Jessica Pavone - Clamor
João Almeida + Rodrigo Pinheiro + Vasco Furtado - Linae
JOBS - Soft Sounds
Joe McPhee / Mette Rasmussen / Dennis Tyfus - Oblique Strategies
John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble - Fathom
John Zorn - Bagatelles, Vol. 13 Speed-Irabagon Quartet, Vol. 14 Peter Evans, Vol. 15 Ben Goldberg 4, Vol 16. Sam Eastmond
John Zorn - New Masada Quartet, Vol. 2
John Zorn - Parrhesiastes
John Zorn - The Fourth Way
Karl Evangelista feat. Alexander Hawkins, Tatsu Aoki, Michael Zerang - What Else Is There?
Karl Evangelista’s Apura - Ngayon
Kate Gentile - Find Letter X
Kaze & Ikue Mori - Crustal Movement
Kodian Plus - Disengage
Kris Tiner, Tatsuya Nakatani - The Magic Room
Kyle Quass, Damon Smith, Ra Kalam Bob Moses - The Harmony of Things as They Are
Lina Allemano - Canons
Lina Allemano / Axel Dörner - Aphelia
Lina Allemano Four - Pipe Dream
Marc Ducret - Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne
Marcelo dos Reis - FLORA
Mariam Rezaei - BOWN
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Five In the Garden...
Matt Mitchell - Oblong Aplomb
Matthew Shipp - The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp
Moss Freed / Union Division - Micromotives
Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet - Hear the Light Singing
Nate Wooley - Four Experiments
Natural Information Society - Since Time Is Gravity
Nava Dunkelman, gabby fluke-mogul - Likht
Nicole Rampersaud - Saudade
Pascal Niggenkemper - blòc
Paul Dunmall - Bright Light A Joyous Celebration
Paul Dunmall New Quartet - World Without
Paul Dunmall / Olie Brice - The Laughing Stone
Paul Dunmall Ensemble - It’s a Matter of Fact
Perch Hen Brock & Rain - Elegiacal
Peter Brötzmann, Heather Leigh, Fred Lonberg-Holm - Naked Nudes
Polyorchard - scree/n
Mette Rasmussen, Paul Flaherty, Zach Rowden, Chris Corsano - Crying in Space
Rodrigo Amado The Bridge - Beyond the Margins
Satoko Fujii & Otomo Yoshihide - Perpetual Motion
Scott Clark - Dawn & Dusk
Scott Fields Ensemble - The Songs of Steve Dalachinsky
Sei Miguel - The Original Drum
Sei Miguel Unit Core - Road Music
Seth Andrew Davis, Alex Cunningham, Damon Smith, Weasel Walter - Branches Choke
Seymour Wright - RITES (Seymour Wright alto-saxophone solos 2003-2023)
Simon Nabatov - Extensions
Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music - For Jemeel - Fire From the Road
Susan Alcorn, José Lencastre, Hernâni Faustino - Manifesto
Susan Alcorn Septeto Del Sur - Canto
Susan Alcorn, Patrick Holmes, Ryan Sawyer - From Union Pool
Sylvie Courvoisier & Cory Smythe - The Rite of Spring — Spectre d’un songe
Tale Tellers From a Timeless Tribe - Talk of the Town
Tamarisk - Plays a Word for Wind
Tatsuya Nakatani / Rob Magill - A Falling Moon
The Hatch Expansion - Texas Edition
The Necks - Travel
The Rempis Percussion Quartet - Harvesters
Vasco Trilla / Ra Kalam Bob Moses - Singing Icons
Weston Olencki / Anna Webber - Several
ZĀM - Waves of Seeing
Zoh Amba & Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt - The Flower School