Well since we are all at it I am also gonna post my top 10 Bandcamp releases of 2023 (excluding some I saw were already in lists here):
Jazz Emu melts funky, original and well produced music with some damn good humor. I recommend watching his youtube music videos, they are extremely well-produced on a shoe-string budget and the songs unfold their full potential together with visual media.
This is a 2023 re-release of an ambient classic. I love Hiroshi Yoshimura, he spearheaded the japanese ambient scene like no other imo.
Miho Hazama is an extremely prolific Jazz talent. This might be her best album yet, extremely modern influences but still totally her sound.
ATA might be one of my favorite labels of today. This is the third entry in their Library Archive series, which are made out of great tunes that will make you want to move your butt!
Green-House produces music in the spirit of Kankyō Ongaku, the sub-genre of Ambient music I enjoy the most. All their releases are gems.
I could just copy and paste the last description here. Love this kind of music, it soothes my soul.
Jonathan Scales makes great music with his steel pan jazz trio. I recommend watching the Tiny Desk Concert where they perform with Béla Fleck on banjo as a quartett. Very unique sound in the space, even after Jaco Pastorious attempt to get the steel pan into the "mainstream" of Jazz. This new album is the amalgamation of all the years refining their sound.
These two EP´s count as one release, since they are connected. A third EP is still coming. This has gotta be the biggest surprise of the Year. I saw PoiL playing with Ueda at the Rudolstadt Festival 2023 where they performed all of these songs + the third EP in a row. Highly complex progressive Rock and Metal mixed with traditional Japanese Folklore stories. Just an amazing sonic experience, but needs time to settle and develop in the brain. Seeing them live first helped me immensely.
If you don´t know KNOWER, get over to youtube and take a good look and listen. Extremely impressive mix of Drum´n´bass, Jazz, EDM, sometimes Dubstep, Funk and more. Simplistic, yet complex. This is their best record to date and I doubt it can better than that (but I am open to be surprised again) Highly engaging music, lots of fun.
Honorable mention:
Marquis Hill has released banger after banger these last years. And while this album did not quite do it for me as the others did before, it is still a great record. His trumpet sound is just silky smooth (he sounds like that live, as well) and the production of his albums is extremely modern. Mixing Jazz, R´n´b, Spoken Word and Rap and connecting all the songs of each release to a certain theme, makes them very special.
Liked your drum kit though...
