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

mix-tape # 262

Illustration by Karl Stephan [as by H. Albrecht] for German magazine Utopia 272 (1961).

Recalibrated  (a duct-ape electro/idm mix-tape)

***VIDEO MARC DORCEL***

Buy vinyl: https://bit.ly/3uaTJDW

Follow on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/dj_stephanie
https://soundcloud.com/superpitcher_official
https://soundcloud.com/lakeofconfidence

Become a member of Suprematic Sounds pool to receive exclusive unreleased high quality tracks every week + bonus access to 200+ tracks catalogue for all subscribers: http://gum.co/suprematic

Follow Suprematic Sounds:

✖ Bandcamp ▸ https://bit.ly/3vU2JPJ
✖ Membership ▸ https://bit.ly/2E9IKCH
✖ SoundCloud ▸ https://bit.ly/2I1OW0g
✖ YouTube ▸ https://bit.ly/3nqP2DS
✖ Spotify ▸ https://bit.ly/suprematic
✖ Facebook ▸ https://bit.ly/2Th3BNY
✖ Instagram ▸ https://bit.ly/2MqfZc7

Buy Vinyl

PREMIERE: Stephanie — Unchain (Superpitcher Remix) [Lake Of Confidence]

Grab a slice of the Xmas pie

@angelocruzman

https://www.instagram.com/jackoby.freeman/

FRÉÉ D~L

Xmas Wonderbits [Angelo Jacoby Edit]

Hey folks!
We are pleased to present our next reference. 
Surely one of the most special albums of recent years:

Lee - 'For Emma' [AI-003]

- 12" Special Limited Edition, 180 Gr. Translucent Green Vinyl.
- First 50 purchase orders on Bandcamp get one sided glossy art insert by Black Moon.

Mastered by Xergio Cordoba at Eternal Midnight Studios.
Artworks & Designs by Black Moon

* Thanks Ever... Lee & Emma <3
https://soundcloud.com/leeboiacid

AVAILABLE NOW https://artificialintelligencercrds.bandcamp.com/album/lee-for-emma

Tracklist

-A1 'Emma's Song'
-A2 'Infinity+1'
-A3 'Varigated'
-B1 'Affirmation'
-B2 'Untitled Acid'
-B3 'Wild Child'

* 'Kellers Keep' (only available on bandcamp purchase orders)

Artificial Intelligence™

Distributed by Clone, Rotterdam
https://clone.nl 

Lee - 'For Emma' [Vinyl Snippets]

Arpmixtape Jacobus

PRE-ORDER NOW:
https://lowfish.bandcamp.com/album/grey-with-breaks

ARTIST: Lowfish
TITLE: Grey With Breaks
CAT / FORMAT: suction058 vinyl LP / CD / digital full-length
RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2023

After a recent, acclaimed EP on Madrid’s Analogical Force label, Suction Records is thrilled to announce “Grey With Breaks,” the 8th full-length album by Lowfish. The electro veteran, who’s been programming 808s since the early ‘90s, returns to Suction Records, the label he co-founded and debuted on in 1997. “Grey With Breaks” is an electro record, with thick analog basslines and TR-808 boom tschak front & centre, but Lowfish’s electro-style stands out from the pack. Not only is the LP devoid of the Drexciya/Dopplereffekt worship that permeates the scene these days, it also rarely hits above 110bpm, oozing with melancholic melody. 

The 9-track vinyl LP comes housed in a stunning reverse-board jacket, and is limited to 400 copies, with 100 copies on CLOUDY-GREY-VINYL. The CD, in a reverse-board digipack, is expanded to 19 tracks, adding previously-vinyl-only cuts from past Suction Records singles and EPs “Hello Tinnitus” (suction023), “C.D.S.N.” (suction038), and “Hypersensitivity” (suction046).

Vinyl tracklisting:

A1. C100
A2. Pooling
A3. Saunter
A4. The 7th
B1. DEP-5 Theme
B2. Mostly Cloudy
B3. Moth
B4. Someone Promised Answers
B5. End Credits

CD/digital tracklisting:

1. C100
2. Pooling
3. Saunter
4. The 7th
5. DEP-5 Theme
6. Mostly Cloudy
7. Moth
8. Someone Promised Answers
9. End Credits
10. Arp294ms
11. Mv37
12. Study for Arp and Other Synthesizers
13. Favourable Reports
14. Hypersensitivity
15. Blood
16. Dead Specimen
17. Scarborough Brutalist
18. Hello Tinnitus
19. A Little Thing Gets By

Lowfish - "Mostly Cloudy" (from "Grey With Breaks" - suction058)

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

"Autopilot"

"Autopilots uz ceļa
autopilots pie stūres

Tas droši vada tavu dārgo mašīnu
Nekļūdīgi uzdod ātrumu un bremzē

Autopilots pie kloķa
Autopilots uz vietas

Abstrakts digitāls mehānisms, kuram tu uztici savas ikdienas gaitas
Anonīmu inženieru izskaitļota shēma, kas atbildīga par tavu drošību

Autopilots uz ceļa
Autopilots pie stūres

Tas taupa gan strāvu, gan ritošo daļu
Neapdraudot citus autopilotus uz ceļa

Autopilots pie kloķa
Autopilots uz vietas
Autopilots uz ceļa
Autopilots pie stūres"

Autopilots v3.0

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

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

Kokokei — Mandarin Three

NEW LAD ON THE BLOCK!
Well, not so new, but new alter-ego. Behind this MROCKI project, you'll find a well known guy — ROBODRUM from Szczecin. This project is still electro stuff, but more melodic with punk rawness. Go for it!

MROCKI - Sample Od Legowelta (elektrobass Edit)

2 Commuter - The One Armed Man - AOC06

The Brvtalist is pleased to premiere a new track from Somnolent Works. "Lost Transmission" comes off the new EP, 3-Terminal, forthcoming on Portugal's  Ovelha Trax. For this release, the artist reigns over societal tumult with an electrifying fusion of robust mechanical undertones and jarring frequencies. Yield to the cacophony and allow the voice to lead you through a realm where the distinction between humanity and machinery is obliterated. Set forth on an unyielding odyssey into the core of a technology-dominated terrain, where the throbbing rhythms echo the intertwining of humanoids and machines.

3-Terminal is out on vinyl + digital March 8th. Pick yours up at: https://ovelhatrax.bandcamp.com/album/3-terminal

instragram.com/ovelhatrax
soundcloud.com/ovelhatrax
ovelhatrax.bandcamp.com

PREMIERE: Somnolent Works - Lost Transmission [Ovelha Trax]

votrax, the speech synthesizer, this is a test....what are you looking at?? ;p

Robodrum - Votrax

How does it feel on the side 
of the world when the war is on?
we're still looking for a place
but in between the dark void is deep

Uh I'm walking in a graveyard 
I say goodbye
Uh the sunshine is still there
it's a gift, it's amazing grace

Even if we felt in chains 
we were at our best and alive
You're vanishing like dust
when it blows your memories out

Uh I don't forget to thank
for each second that I have
Uh the weapons will now rest
'cause we blend this amazing grace

Religion has destroyed churches
Flashes in the dark
In the sleeplees city of fuzz

From that day we always bring
ematite bracelets and seeds
we meditate and observe
the tiny details of the sphere

Uh no time left to waste
a stranger has come
Uh we stipulate a pact
under the sign of a brand new day

Andrea & Alexander - Amazing Grace (feat. Cid Hohner)

Past midnight. Empty streets. From an ill lit doorway a sound. A woman. Shadow. A scent. Drawn into one. Smoke and synthesizer music swirls. Bionda E Lupo. Crossing the threshold, tripping into twilight. Analogue emotion, styles twirled like garlands. Nervous shuffles and the touch of fingertips. Weaving, bodies twirl as morning shoulders into night. The realisation. The edge of eyes. Curl of lip. The click of heels with creak of floor. Feeling flows, ebbs, cascades and floods. Lipstick and heavy perfume. Two forms swimming in currents, bending to one another in the warm glow of aging speakers. Breath and pulse quicken. Electricity spiked with passion. The final embrace. Whispered promises. A kiss.

Bionda E Lupo - Ton Rire

A quick remix of the Marc Dorcel sound branding I've done for a contest organized by Arte-Tracks
Original song is produced by https://soundcloud.com/sixieme-son-design-musical and can be heard here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6RI8LZ5si4

Marc Dorcel - You Make Me Lose My French (Hiérophante Remix)

Order Vinyl & Digital:
https://antinoterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/miniatures-de-auto-rhythm

August 2018: It’s already been three years since Domenique Dumont made its entrance in the music world with a debut EP named Comme Ca. Despite a seemingly very quiet musical activity (the opening song to Antinote’s compilation Five Years Of Loving Notes was the only song released by the band in 3 years) a few things have changed in-between these two summers: Domenique Dumont is no more the mysterious lone French producer we introduced last time but a Latvian duo, Arturs Liepins and Anete Stuce, which has been collaborating with “an enigmatic French artist whose existence cannot be confirmed nor denied” (sorry, but it sounds like there’s still some mystery in the air, and, again, we’re just as clueless as you might be), the duo have been touring live and, most importantly, they kept on broadening their musical palette experimenting in a definitely pop field. Eight of these experiments are now tied together in Miniatures de Auto Rhythm.

The record probably begins where Comme Ca ended: frantic but light drum programing backbones a solar and slightly melancholic melody on Le Début De La Fin (“the beginning of the end”). However, the scope gets enlarged as soon as one reaches the second tune, Quasi Quasi, or Quand, on the flip side, perhaps the most overtly pop-rock oriented song on the record with its Mediterranean guitar and emotional bridge.

The road towards the apex of the record, Le Soleil Dans Le Monde, is a narrow and windy one, punctuated by toy instrumentals like Ono Mambo Haiku or the Donkey Kong Country-friendly Message Of The Diving Bird; however it never departs from its original tongue-in-cheek attitude. It’s quite pleasant to imagine these eight “miniatures” as field recordings from an enchanted world of pop music designed by some Pierre & Gilles’ disciples – or are there
musical interpretations of half-mechanical, half-organic creations from a certain Otto Rhiesem (who might have inhabited the Locus Solus villa)? There might be no definitive answers to this second set of riddles by Domenique Dumont.