Hi Pop kids and music lovers! It’s that time of the year when we look back and take stock of all the fun music we’ve played in-store during the year and shout about our favourite albums of 2023. Not necessarily music of audiophile quality, and perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but for many it is music that is joyous and uplifting. Music that makes you want to dance around. Music to transport your mind to other dimensions or just music that makes you think “What the F**k was that all about!”

secret stratosphere by william tyler and the impossible truth

Secret Stratosphere - William Tyler & The Impossible Truth

Released on the 31st March and without a shadow of a doubt my most favourite album of the whole year is Secret Stratosphere by William Tyler & The Impossible Truth.

A bit of background just in case you’ve never come across him before… William Tyler is a Nashville guitarist and composer. He spent years woodshedding and touring with Nashville groups like Lambchop and Silver Jews before breaking away to focus on his own version of instrumental guitar music. Secret Stratosphere is a live recording of William Tyler & his new band, The Impossible Truth, which shows him at a point of culmination where his place as one of the premier purveyors of prog/psych-country guitar amblings is cemented.

The band are totally hot and the music intense and other-wordly like a cross between Hawkwind and the Charlie Daniels Band. Drums are rock solid and thunderous with Tyler’s looping on lead guitar maintaining a post-rock ethereality, with chugging basslines beamed in straight from The Grateful Dead. There is even a Kraftwerk cover which is off the scale with trippy goodness! I can’t wait to hear more from this bunch.

no fixed point in space by modern nature

No Fixed Point in Space - Modern Nature

Next on my “Best of 2023” list is the third full-length album by Jack Cooper’s band, Modern Nature, which takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on the 2021 release, Island Of Noise, and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It’s a music that hasn’t been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced in the past but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world. It contains elements of folk, jazz and modern classical without being any of them. Definitely one for fans of late period Talk Talk. A beautifully recorded album and a totally quiet vinyl pressing too.

History - Bokanté

In third place comes History by Bokanté. Snarky Puppy guitarist, Michael League, formed the band in 2016 after hearing singer, Malika Tirolien. On this, their third studio album, Bokanté have mixed rock, jazz and blues with roots firmly in West Africa and the Arab world, bringing it all into the retro-modern present.

These nine tracks tell - with lyrics sung mainly in Guadeloupean Creole - of outsiders and seers, memories and joy; of black history, global unity and the futility of war. Of taking time to rest, feel, love. Of the redemptive power of music as a conduit, a change maker and a muse. The sound quality on this album is totally off the scale gorgeous… Definitely one of those albums to play to your friends when they come round to listen to your hi-fi!

careful of your keepers by this is the kit

Careful of Your Keepers - This is the Kit

Going back to the summer, we had the brand-new release from This Is The Kit, who are the musical project of Kate Stables and whoever joins her. I have been a fan of theirs since the first album came out and they have been improving with each release. This new one has had an injection of summary woozy trippy psychedelia, courtesy of production duties and musical guidance from Gruff Rhys... Him from the Welsh pop wizards, Super Furry Animals (just in case you didn't know).

A great collection of songs that also happen to be absolutely beautifully recorded too. This is one of those albums that will make your system sing. The recording puts so much of a sense of air around all the instrimentation that the sound just pops out of the loudspeakers and hangs in the air, the soundstage extending way out of the boxes left to right and up and down. The real treat though is that wonderful deep bass that seeps through at just the right moments! I suggest you treat your ears to one of these sharpish! Nice green vinyl and a locked groove at the end for extra weirdness!!

Unending Ascending - Gong

November saw the release of Unending Ascending by Gong. A truly brain melting mash up of proggy, funky, drony, psychedelia and jazziness. Not much in the way of Radio Gnomes and Pot Head Pixies but who cares! The spirit of Gong is well and truly alive and safe in the hands of Kavus and his bunch of spiritual anarchists. I was looking forward to this one for ages and was not disappointed. If it wasn’t for the staggering brilliance of William Tyler this would have been top of the list!

The sound quality of this tiny selection of some of the year’s best vinyl has been raised to new heights by the introduction of the new top of the range, state-of-the-art turntable from Rega Research, called the Naia. It has not only moved the goalposts, it has changed the game! I knew that it was going to be good but this is just one of those wow products that comes along very rarely.

I am not going to go in to any more detail about it here because I notice a recent blog from the Brighton branch which does just that very eloquently. What I will say about the Naia is that never before have I heard a turntable that can extract this much information from a record groove and still make it fun to listen to. It is that simple. There are quite probably a lot of very worried turntable manufacturers around at the moment, all scratching their chins and trying to work out just how they have all suddenly been left behind.

The Rega Naia turntable is currently available for demonstration at our Cheltenham store so if you fancy a listen call them on 01242 583960 for a chat.

Thanks for reading.