After covering several hundred releases in 2023, many notables—including links to their respective Igloo reviews or release pages—are cataloged at igloomag.com/features/best-of-2023. As usual, there are no winners or runners-up as the lists are alphabetized by artist and selected tracks are featured on our Soundcloud playlist.

Igloo Magazine :: Best of 2023

Marbert Rocel - Wide Awake (lilabungalow - Vocal Remix)

www.instagram.com/trentemoeller/
www.facebook.com/TrickyOfficial/
www.facebook.com/inmyroom.page
www.instagram.com/inmyroom_label/
www.twitter.com/inmyroom_label
www.youtube.com/InMyRoomRecordings
www.trentemoller.com/index.php/in-my-room

Over his career, multi-instrumentalist Anders Trentemøller has crafted songs steeped in adumbral elements , evoking images of gorgeous, balmy, Scandinavian summers and bleak Nordic winters, sometimes within the same song.
His new song "No One Quite Like You” features Tricky reciting a six word mantra over a five note passage. The entire song is bathed in intimacy, from studio vérité elements like the mechanical noise and hammer clacks of the piano, to Tricky’s weary delivery, which falls somewhere between a lullaby and a warning. Add to this Byzantine string arrangements by fellow Danish violinist Maria Jagd arrive, and you have yet another mesmerising release from Trentemøller.
The reflective piano figures of ‘Vesper- tine’ manifests this subtle yet powerful prologue to the A side of the second and last stand alone single release of 2021 by Trentemøller.

Trentemøller
No One Quite Like You
02.07.2021 on In My Room

01. No One Quite Like You (feat. Tricky) 
02. Vespertine

No one quite like you (feat. Tricky)

Trentemøller - No One Quite Like You (w/ Tricky) [CLIP]

Beings of Light

(In The) Rain

Long time collaborators Meat Beat Manifesto (Jack Dangers) & DHS (Benjamin Stokes) get together on fresh new 12” EP ‘Man From Mantis’. Both artists have rich musical histories, Dangers having released an extensive collection of music as MBM since the late 80s including pre-hardcore/jungle breakbeat touchstones (Helter Skelter/Radio Babylon) & late 90s masterpiece ‘Prime Audio Soup’, released on Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records and recognisable from its use in The Matrix. Stokes on the other hand has a smaller back catalogue but no less influential, having been responsible for all-time-classic foundational techno blueprint ‘House of God’.

Dangers & Stokes have always played around beyond the edges of the familiar and this EP is no different: 4 tracks of breakbeat techno future-sound that live in a world of their own. ‘Pandemic’ opens the EP with squeaky-clean mechanical acid, intentional and direct, tight and well-controlled, underpinned by a revolving, bubbling acid line. ‘Aggressive Mantis Squad’ comes bearing weighted breaks and hinterland bleeps, spanning the past and the future. B-Side opener ‘Automatic Mouth’ is a twisting chugger, occasionally breaking down to reveal a whirring & stuttering machine-spirit before the EP closes with the drum-fest dream sequence of ‘International Sound System’. 

These are lab-grown rhythm bombs, finely tuned off-kilter grooves, razor sharp crucial beats ready for the future, out on Love Love Records, May 2023

Meat Beat Manifesto & DHS - Aggressive Mantis Squad

The Nation's Most Central Location

Just Off The M56 (J12)

This Stolen Country of Mine (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Ritual

Pentagrams of Discordia Side A

Track Mandarin Three by @Kokokei from new EP "Mandarin"

bandcamp and all streamings link
https://mestnostrecords.com/releases/KokokeiMandarin

Kokokei — Mandarin Three

Broken Head by Cluster/Eno (Automat Rework)

By This River (Brian Eno Cover)

This track comes from Adagio for the Blue, released on November 9th 2015.

Rhododendron – Trigg & Gusset

Cover version of "Until Then" I recorded with Benoit Pioulard this week. Benoit and I were working on our collaborative project this week and decided to record one of our favorite songs as a tribute. We were both extremely saddened by Trish Keenan's untimely death. She was a brilliant, talented artist and her music became a huge inspiration to both of us. R.I.P. Trish, we'll miss you.

Until Then (Broadcast cover)


A beautiful live recording taken from last year's Punkt festival featuring a remarkable line up of musicians


jan bang - exile from paradise / undertow

(bang/ endresen/hassell)

jan bang: samples
lars danielsson: double bass
sidsel endresen: vocals
jon hassell: trumpet, keyboards
arve henriksen: trumpet
erik honoré: live sampling

recorded by geir østensjø at punkt, september, 2010.
mixed by erik honoré and jan bang at punkt studio kristiansand.

see also:

... and poppies from Kandahar (http://www.samadhisound.com/janbang/)

exile from paradise / undertow

Igloo Magazine is an electronic music e’zine publishing articles about current, classic and upcoming music from around the globe. Our mission is to introduce readers to the burgeoning undergrowth of electronic musicians by covering a wide range of genre’s including ambient, experimental, dub, dubstep, shoegaze, electro, techno, drone, IDM, industrial, post-industrial, and all the debris in between. Pulling together a vast tapestry of like-minded contributors, the virtual Igloo doors officially opened December of 2000. We consistently seek to provide coverage for musicians creating left-of-center music that is not necessarily covered in general music media. Igloo Magazine publishes articles in the capacity of Newswires, Reviews, Features and Profiles for artists that wouldn’t normally receive the light of digital ink.

Ritual

alva noto

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