Running more late than usual, it’s March 2023’s Recommended Albums. Featured below are some great records that you may have missed, plus a few that were widely praised, such as Fever Ray’s. I’d like to think most are pretty under the radar though. Definitely check them all out!

RECOMMENDED ALBUMS OF MARCH 2023::

Andrea – Due In Color [Ilian Tape]
Sunshine cutting through the dense haze of an uncontrolled urban sprawl, shining into slivers of windows exposed to the sky and into the grates above subterranean marketplaces.

Fever Ray – Radical Romantics [Mute]
An unearthly amount of built up horniness combined with innate social awkwardness mixes like napalm within the psyche of an individual, giving them superhero-like powers they use for comic mischief.

Holly Waxwing – The New Pastoral [PC Music]
Upgrading your brain to the newest operating system and remembering lost memories in ultra 4k.

Kate NV – WOW [RVNG Intl.]
The album you always wanted to make as a kid when pulling up a Dreamcast game sound menu, and arranging all the different game sound effects into mini symphonies.

Masahiro Takahashi – Humid Sun [Telephone Explosion]
From beneath a massive beach umbrella, you watch an ice cube sitting in your hand melt and trickle down into the sand below.

Scree – Jasmine On A Night In July [Ruination Record Co.]
Sitting out on a city balcony at dusk on a warm summer night, watching people take in the night air and street lamps flicker alive. The neighborhood on the verge of a peaceful evening.

Steve Gunn & David Moore – Let The Moon Be A Planet [RVNG Intl.]
Laying down in tall grass and watching the breeze move it like waves on water above you.

Weval – Remember [Technicolour]
Physically inserting yourself into memory and bending its set pieces like clay, forever altering the future perception of cherished moments.

GR8 TRACKS OF MARCH 2023::

Clearly Fever Ray dominated my March, for good reason. This album rocks. If I had to pick two top favorite songs from the month, it’d be “Carbon Dioxide” and early Salami Rose Joe Louis single “Akousmatikous”. Check out the rest of my favs below + on this Spotify playlist.

• Altin Gün – “Rakiya Su Katamam”
• Altin Gün – “Su Siziyor”
• Andrea – “Remote Working”
• Andrea – “Sephr”
• Caroline Rose – “Tell Me What You Want”
• Eddie Chacon – “Holy Hell”
• Eddie Chacon – “Step By Step”
• Fever Ray – “Carbon Dioxide”
• Fever Ray – “Even It Out”
• Fever Ray – “Kandy”
• Fever Ray – “Looking For A Ghost”
• Fever Ray – “Shiver”
• Fever Ray – “What They Call Us”
• Holly Waxwing – “Sister Species”
• James Holden – “The Answer Is Yes”
• Jessy Lanza – “Don’t Leave Me Now”
• Kali Uchis – “Moonlight”
• Kate NV – “confessions at the dinner table (feat. Quinn Oulton)”
• Kate NV – “d d don’t”
• Kate NV – “mi (we)”
• Lucinda Chua – “Echo”
• Masahiro Takahashi – “Sea Fireflies”
• Masahiro Takahashi – “Sweltering Drive”
• Mega Bog – “Love Is”
• Mystic 100’s – “Windowpane”
• M83 – “Fantasy”
• M83 – “Oceans Niagara”
• NOIA – “reveal yourself”
• Overmono – “Good Lies”
• Róisín Murphy – “CooCool”
• Salami Rose Joe Louis – “Akousmatikous (feat. Soccer96)”
• Salami Rose Joe Louis – “Propaganda (feat. Brijean)”
• Scree – “Fatigue”
• Scree – “Half-Death”
• Scree – “Questions For The Moon”
• Sluice – “Centurion”
• Sluice – “Mill”
• Steve Gunn & David Moore – “Painterly”
• Steve Gunn & David Moore – “Paper Limb”
• Symphony Orchestra – “Intersection”
• TDJ – “Levitate”
• TDJ – “Save Me”
• TisaKorean – “SiLlY MoAn.mP3”
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra – “Meshuggah”
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra – “That Life”
• Weval – “Don’t Lose Time”
• Weval – “Forever”
• Yves Tumor – “Lovely Sewer”

MORE MARCH 2023 LISTENING:

I listen to more than just new music (although the new stuff severely outweighs older records, new discoveries and staple favorites). Here’s what made the biggest impression for the month.

Bowery Electric – Bowery Electric [1995]
I’m currently reading You’re With Stupid: kranky, Chicago and the Reinvention of Indie Music by kranky co-founder Bruce Adams, and it’s making me 1) want to see a show at The Empty Bottle but more importantly 2) so interested in going through the entire kranky catalog. Admittedly I’m more familiar with their mid-00s to present catalog, like Grouper, Deerhunter, Tim Hecker or Stars of the Lid. There’s a lot on their first  release from Labradford and going into other early signees like Bowery Electric. Before this I was only familiar with their album Beat, so I was happy to find their self-titled debut was stellar. Definitely not the best “spring” listen, but one I’m happy I checked out regardless.

Emahoy Tsegue Mariam Gebru – Ethiopiques, Vol. 21 [2006]
RIP Emahoy, the piano-playing nun of Ethiopia. I first listened to her Ethiopiques compilation back in 2015 when I discovered the series (via the Mulatu Astatke collection – a classic) but hadn’t revisited it until last year when I came across “Homesickness, Pt. 2” while making a playlist and was stopped in my tracks immediately. Astonishingly beautiful music. Purely solo piano. Ethiopian scales are hypnotizing to say the least, and her nimble / patient playing will make you melt.

Joanna Newsom – Divers [2015]
Joanna Newsom is back baby. Well, she opened for Fleet Foxes in Los Angeles and played mostly new songs. The return definitely sparked a Joanna Newsom obsession with my partner and I, both of us playing her music in the apartment, and me listening to her 2015 album Divers through a few times after news of her playing the show broke. Will new Joanna music break me out of this anxiety prison I’ve found myself in the last few years? We’ll have to wait and see.

Miles Davis – Dark Magus [1977]
2023’s breakout artist for me is Miles Davis, which I’m sure is funny to a lot of jazz heads out there. But what’s funny to me is that I’ve already gotten into the headiest of his stuff, aka his 1970s jazz funk live albums. Dark Magus is an absolutely incredible record with insanely deep grooves, radical playing and should be more of a pillar in the psychedelic music community than it already is. What stumps me too is that this album in particular was recorded at a performance at Carnegie Hall. I’m just thinking about all the stuffy jazz heads (or even music fans in general) that went to that show and were just blown back by this insanity. It’s an album that I am so thankful I’ve finally found, as its already taken up special, hollowed ground within my library, and has accompanied to MANY walks around NYC already.

The Sea and Cake – “New Patterns” [2012]
Yep, it’s more The Sea and Cake. I listened to their 2012 album Runner maybe three or four times as I traveled to and from Austin, TX for SXSW. The album is fantastic and I’ve listened to it A TON over the last year, but “New Patterns” was especially standing out to me in this stretch.

Sun Araw – “Deep Temple” [2010]
I’ve been vocal about my love of late 00s / early 10s Sun Araw for a long time now, and albums like On Patrol, Heavy Deeds and Ancient Romans along with EPs like Off Duty and Beach Head stay in semi-constant rotation for its highly-bruised, blissful psychedelia that I’ve seldom found anywhere else (except for the recent discovery of Miles Davis’ 70s material!) put me into a zone that nothing else can. Albeit a bit dorky, it absolutely helps me focus on writing, so many moments in March where I’ve had to really focus on writing a ton of work reports, “Deep Temple” was blasting. Skin-ripping, deeply psychedelic, totally center-of-the-earth grooves with whacked out guitar freakouts just lends itself to productivity.

Unwound – “Were, Are and Was or Is” [1993]
I had the fortune of seeing one of Unwound’s reunion shows in NYC, and it exceeded all expectations. I’m not the most well-versed of fans so I don’t know the deep cuts, but I was enthralled the entire time. They played two sets, both full of tracks I not only recognized but struck a chord deep within me that I normally no longer feel at most post punk shows these days. They closed their set with Fake Train‘s “Were, Are and Was or Is”, which was a cathartic, trance-like capper to an amazing night. Shout out to my buddy Alex who happened to be in town for the show + we got to witness it together.