About this item

It’s not an easy feat nowadays to get a record pressed in time for the end of year when there’s so much good music coming out every week, but we’ve once again managed to collect a stylistically diverse, cohesively sequenced collection of our 2023 favourites onto vinyl for your cut-price record buying pleasure.

Opening up the collection, and responsible for me asking an embarrassing amount of times ‘who is this?’ is the soaring “Kisses” from Slowdive’s new offering, and our well-deserved album of the year, ‘everything is alive’. I couldn’t imagine a better follower than “Failsafe” from Catatonic Sun’s self-titled album, as it takes the spine-tingling heft of the former and slides a little into more psychedelic territory.

The Nabihah Iqbal album came out of leftfield for me, and once again the eponymous track here is my top cut on the album, providing the perfect segue into Beach Fossils’ “Don’t Fade Away”, which reinforces the lysergic drift we’ve established while adding a little more structure. Closing the side, both bar italia’s “Nurse” and John’s “Service Stationed” provide a move towards more dynamic, post-punk indebted minimalism, with bar italia’s thoughtful garage groove setting up perfectly for John’s undeniable blast of power.

Jungle keep bringing the goods, and there couldn’t have been any other choice than the funkiest cut on ‘Volcano’, the brilliant “Candle Flame”. This funky banger sets the perfect opener to the B-side, with the melodically pristine “Good Lies” from Welsh duo Overmono bringing us to the dancefloor before shop favourite Matthew Hallsall leads us to the chillout room with his keyboardy jazz odyssey “Mountains, Trees And Seas”.

There are few tracks that could close out a compilation more perfectly than JIM’s anxiolytic melody-rich “Phoenix”, J-Walk’s brilliant “Cool Bright Northern Morning” (from Aficionado’s essential retrospective compilation) or Jalen Ngonda’s swinging, soaring wonder “Come Around And Love Me”, and here you get them all in one stretch. You lucky people.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Good Ol' Picco Recs eh? Once again bringing you a lovely selection of some of our favourite tracks of the year, on vinyl, for a ruddy good price! What joy. Soak in that tracklist. Feel it.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
Slowdive “Kisses”
Catatonic Suns “Failsafe”
Nabihah Iqbal “Dreamer”
Beach Fossils “Don’t Fade Away”
Bar Italia “Nurse!”
John “Service Stationed”
Side B:
Jungle Featuring Erick The Architect “Candle Flame”
Overmono “Good Lies”
Matthew Halsall “Mountains, Trees And Seas”
JIM “Phoenix”
J-Walk “Cool Bright Northern Morning”
Jalen Ngonda “Come Around And Love Me”