In May of last year Heavenly Recordings’ hip hop duo, Revival Season, released a single called Chop. Now, I’m a big fan of the pair anyhow, but the Inner Space Quartet remix was off the hook. With a quick bit of digging I discovered that ISQ are Marc Zeriat and “Brother” Lee Skelly, with a bit of additional input from The Bees’s Aaron Fletcher. Since they were new to me, I went out and picked up copies of all of their 45s that I could find. 7s signed to Funk Night and Lee’s label, Dime. Gold Horse, Pool Phase, Paranoia Party, Medicine Bag, Holy Water, all were totally authentic homages to Giallo and library music cues. ISQ also remixed Manchester’s answer to Lee Hazlewood, Nev Cottee.

Brother Lee is a multi-instrumentalist, and a super talented chap, who it turns out was also behind the lush library music homage, Discodor. Lee did stacks of session work during the 1990s and 2000s, for folks such as Regular Fries and Shawn Lee, and, wow, does it show. His own album, Casio City Rockers, jumped from funk to country, to Sci-Fi to ambient, taking in jazz, glam, and Beatles-esque psychedelia, and as far as I can tell Lee played everything himself. Impossible to musically pin down – as listeners to his long-running Soho Radio show, The Trip, will know – Lee here shares some of the sounds that tuned him in and turned him on during the course of the last 12 months.

Super selections and wonderful words by Brother Lee Skelly.

On reflection, 2023 felt like a dry year for music for me personally. Certainly 2022 would be a wilder list. But from 2023 here’s what I listened to more than anything else:

Suzanne Ciani / Improvisation On Four Sequences / Week-End Records

You just get the feeling that you’re not listening to machines and electronics here, you’re listening to Suzanne. She is the music. All the intelligence, the experience, the depth of her feelings… it’s all here. I think she’s amazing. She’s definitely the one artist above all others that I would love to collaborate with. But that would only happen in my dreams!

Hania Rani / On Giacometti / Gondwana Records

I have a very soft spot for quiet piano playing, and Hania Rani more often than not than hits that spot. This is such a beautiful album.

Colleen / Le Jour Et La Nuit Du Réel / Thrill Jockey

Sometimes with Colleen’s albums it feels as if she’s into the process of making them. Like, choosing which instruments to use, or where to record, or whatever. But I don’t get that feeling here. This was a key album for me last year.

Natalia Beylis / Mermaids / Touch Sensitive Records

Ambient keyboards, and what sound like field recordings. I listened to this a lot.

Jaja / Eternal Stars / CYAN

This moves slowly and serenely and takes a while to reveal itself. But the album has nine tracks and lasts four hours! It’s mastered really quietly too, so it took me a couple of listens to get it. At night. With headphones on. Super ambient.

Mary Lattimore / Goodbye, Hotel Arkada / Ghostly International

Harp is such a beautiful instrument, and Mary Lattimore plays it beautifully. Never any extraneous playing, everything is just right. Having the good taste enough not to overdo it is a skill in itself.

Elena Papandreou / Paper Moon: Songs by Manos Hadjidakis / BIS Records

Solo classical guitar from Greece. I love solo classical guitar, it calms me the fuck down. Doesn’t always have to be from Greece, but I loved this.

I realised whilst typing this list out that there’s barely any beats or voices, and everything is about 48bpm! But 2023 was that kind of year for me.