Hobb's Top Music of 2023

Remo Forrer -  Watergun (Switzerland-Eurovision-2023)

Eurovision is a bad LSD trip come to life but there is often at least one or two proper songs that can be found amongst the nightmares. This year it was Remo Forrer's song. This song was the total opposite of Eurovision 'Urk War' war-propaganda so it was doomed in the voting, but it is among humanity's top 20 peace anthems and is a great song. At the 2;30 mark Forrer's soars into the lyrics 'What We've Become' and he's speaking for all of Europe, holding up a mirror to the pro-war dehumanization that has swept those nations. Song of the year

Les Baxter - Dunwich Horror

Watched the Dunwich Horror (1970) while sorting stuff and really enjoyed the music. Did a whole scouring of the internet for more Baxter music, got into the 'Tiki Music' scene of the 1950s, finally understood where the original Star Trek TV theme comes from, but despite being wiser about US culture, I never found a Baxter scorce as good as this one.

Parra for Cuva

Some of my favorite music last year was discovering great 'psychedelic techno' mixes from Francofungi and Spacemind, so I wasn't expecting to find any more but Tuttle brought this great Burning Man mix to my attention.

CHVRCHES (ft. Robert Smith) - How Not To Drown

Basically a pop-goth song with a 'special appearance' by The Cure's Robert Smith.  And they do what goth does best: tell you how much the world sucks while refusing to submit to it. "I'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown," she croons. "I'm writing a chapter on what to do after they dig you up. On what to do after you grew to hate what you used to love," Smith responds in the 2nd verse. That's goth in a nut-shell: singing out what you could not bear to say.

The Animated Egg - Sock it my way (1968)

This is the intoxicating opening sample to Public Enemy's 'Do Ya Wanna Go Our Way'

and it's a great psycedelic song in its own right.

Alexander Korostinsky - Altin Maske

This song lead to my the genre of Anatolian/Turkish Psychedelic Rock https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/anatolian-rock-list And I spent a solid month of 2023 just listening to that genre.

Dune: Wormsign

The Internet Archive host s the "most complete collection of music from the retro series of Dune games" https://archive.org/details/dune-wormsign and I listened to most of it and discovered that Stéphane Picq's soundtrack for the original game (1992) is a synth treasure. You can sample it in various versions (Amiga Version) / (MS-DOS - Adlib Gold 1000 Version) / (MS-DOS - Adlib Version) / (MS-DOS - Roland MT-32 Version) or (Sega CD Version), or listen to 'Dune: Spice Opera' soundtrack.

Yeah-Yeah - Blackrock

I came to try and grab the opening 'blaaaccckk rooocckkkk' as a sample but it turned out I enjoyed the whole song

Beastie Boys - Ricky's Theme

This will forever be known by as 'The Theme to Scott Horton's Antiwar radio show' so I was very happy to hear this on an album of great Beastie Boy instrumentals. That whole album was great https://www.discogs.com/master/20216-Beastie-Boys-The-In-Sound-From-Way-Out

Psychic TV - Kondole/Thee Shadow Creatures

https://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/psychick-tv-kondole wrote:For over an hour, KONDOLE’s Titanic undertow drags us into the myopic world of the bottom feeders and keeps us there, declares us all Gillmen and let’s us Grow Fins. Moreover, I believe that without repeated listening to such epic instrumental sagas as KONDOLE, our aging brains will eventually seize up & petrify. It’s as though, through too much TV or just sheer neglect, our aging brains experience some equivalent to waxy build-up, coagulating most unfortunately into a kind of scabby psychic shield around our Doors of Perception, denying us access to all but the most familiar concepts & thoughts. Regular doses of KONDOLE, however, ruptures this overly protective brain coating and re-admits those fancies that children & teenagers access effortlessly throughout their daily lives. So, welcome to the Undersea World of Genesis P-Orridge c. 1989, a culturally kleptomaniacal post-New Age rave up of such velocity that our Psychic hero actually BECAME – during this pre-90s Gateway – his own Kondole the Whale, a perpetually-feeding gate-mouthed Leviathan inhaling whole substrata of lost arcane information at a time, so as to digest, comprehend, then barf them forth coherently (and in edited form) to the Next Generation, reviewed, re-jigged & turbocharged for the coming age.

Downloaded this and never expected to listen to it, but it then slipped into my winamp list one day and I found myself entranced. I was glad to know that I can still get lost in the aquatic ambient of 'industrial; music.

Bigod 20 - The Bog

Discovered this very 'Skinny Puppy'-ish song from the early 1990s - and it has slowly become one of our favorite dance songs around here.

Oh What A Feeling (A Vital Collection Of Canadian Music)

Ripping this compilation of Canadian CDs unearthed many gems! The combination of nostalgia, Canadiana and great songs brought us a few nights of joy. Reminded me of the feeling of listening to a CBC radio show on a summer Saturday evening...

Valdy - Rock 'N' Roll Song

A nice prickly folk song about the coming of the Rockers

Murray McLauchlan - Farmer's Song

Another prickly folk song, this time about the going of the Farmers

Ian Thomas - Painted Ladies

In the bittersweet rock style of Neil Young

Stampeders - Sweet City Woman

The flip-side of shallow 'Painted Ladies' is a the love of a 'Sweet City Woman' (possible French....)

Andy Kim - Rock Me Gently

Andy convinced me with his singing! He has never been loved like this before and everyone should go easy on him.

Frank Mills - Music Box Dancer

Y'all know it - and once you hear it again it does not leave easily.

Moist - Push (1994)

Grunge starts off with a growl and a whine and drives forward with emotionally bitter lyrics. It should collapse but it rocks.

Crash Test Dummies - Mmmmmmm

>>Most of the lyrics are based on childhood experiences of Roberts. << https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmm_Mmm_Mmm_Mmm And I could hear that listening to it with adult ears, he was relating minor grade-school stories about slightly freaky kids. Then the final verse goes ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! and all the pains of childhood wrapped up and comforted by adult voices.

Chilliwack - Fly At Night

Another rock'n'roll band coming to your town to help you party it down - we've all heard that promise - but the final ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! convinces me that will give it their best shot