Pitchfork's 30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023

“Warning: no bars,” reads a label on the packaging of the first-ever solo album from André 3000. The idea of such a thing has haunted hip-hop fandom’s collective consciousness for nearly two decades: a full-length solo effort from Outkast’s Gemini counterpart, not counting his half of *Speakerboxxx/The Love Below*. In the Outkast years, André was known as the far-out yin to Big Boi’s earthier yang, and while the latter pursued a solo career following the duo’s 2006 hiatus, Three Stacks forged a less orthodox path. He designed clothes, produced a cartoon series, and took on a handful of acting roles, popping up every so often to rap a guest verse for Frank Ocean or Beyoncé. Meanwhile, he walked around playing the flute—a habit that, when caught on camera, was something of a meme, but had privately become a passion. The title of the first track on *New Blue Sun*, whose 87 minutes of cosmic flute experimentation are entirely wordless, is at once a caveat and a mission statement: “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a \'Rap\' Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” In a poetic sense, it’s also a truth: The instruments he and his collaborators play here (contrabass flutes, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes) are powered by wind, or, rather, breath. And it’s reflective of the kismet which guided the album into existence: He hadn’t intended to release his flute music until a chance Erewhon run-in with Carlos Niño, the Los Angeles percussionist and producer of spiritually oriented jazz. Basement jam sessions with Niño became the series of improvised compositions that make up the eight tracks of *New Blue Sun*, along with a community of like-minded players, including guitarist Nate Mercereau and keyboardist Surya Botofasina. From the players’ deepening chemistry, transcendent songs materialized—not unlike the bonds that once inspired the Dungeon Family from which Outkast emerged in early-’90s Atlanta. And though its meandering and meditative (though often hysterically titled) compositions exist in the tradition of Alice Coltrane, Laraaji, and Yusef Lateef more than anything conceivably hip-hop-adjacent, they’re animated by a similar spirit to that which made Outkast’s music stand apart: a dauntless dedication to one’s own vision, alongside a belief in the power of creative communion. In that sense, it’s the André 3000 album we’d been waiting for all along.

Musical worlds converge in these dark, celestial dreamscapes featuring Urdu-language vocalist Arooj Aftab with the acclaimed Vijay Iyer (piano, Rhodes, electronics) and Shahzad Ismaily (bass, Moog bass). All three have a complex connection to the South Asian diaspora: Iyer and Ismaily were born in the States to Indian and Pakistani parents, respectively; Aftab grew up in Lahore, came to study at Berklee, and settled in New York, charting a course that led to a historic Grammy for Best Global Music Performance in 2022 (the first Grammy for a Pakistani artist). Ismaily played synth on the winning track, “Mohabbat,” from Aftab’s celebrated *Vulture Prince*. Here, he parlays with Aftab at album length, joining a kindred spirit in Iyer, a fellow member of Greg Tate’s experimental big band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber back in the 2000s. The extended pieces on *Love in Exile* have Aftab’s haunting yet inwardly calm voice at the fore, floating atop a sustaining low end of Ismaily’s raw electric basslines and Moog drones and Iyer’s spacious electroacoustic environments. Even without the input of a drummer, there’s often a very present sense of pulse, akin to a beating and soulful heart.

Laurel Halo’s 2018 album, *Raw Silk Uncut Wood*, marked a shift in her work, pulverizing the avant-techno rhythms of records like *In Situ* and *Dust* into choppy electro-acoustic textures flecked with jazz piano. On *Atlas*, her first major album in five years, her music continues to dissolve. Across these 10 elusive, enigmatic tracks, there are few melodies, no rhythms, no fixed points at all—just a hazy swirl of strings and piano that sounds like it was recorded underwater and from a great distance. Yet for all the music’s softness, it bears little in common with ambient as it’s typically conceived. An air of disquiet permeates the pastel haze; her atmospheres frequently feel both consonant and dissonant at the same time. Even at its most abstract, however, *Atlas* radiates unmistakable grace. In “Naked to the Light,” melancholy piano carves a path halfway between Erik Satie and mid-century jazz balladry; in “Belleville”—a distant tribute, perhaps, to the Detroit techno that influenced her—a languid keyboard figure echoes *Blade Runner*’s rain-slicked noir before a wordless choir briefly raises the specter of Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz. But those reference points are fleeting: For the most part, *Atlas* is a closed world, a universe unto itself, in which blurry shapes tremble in a fluid expanse of deep, abiding melancholy.

Curiosity for its own sake: this is at the heart of Lia Kohl’s work, which finds meaning where others might find none. Whether collaborating with some of independent music’s biggest names (Steve Gunn, Whitney, Makaya McCraven), improvising music around the world, or exploring intimacy with multimedia performance art, Kohl builds webs of connections along paths less traveled. The Ceiling Reposes builds upon her solo releases Too Small to be a Plain, on Shinyoko/Artist Pool, and Untitled Radio (futile, fertile), on Longform Editions. Here, Kohl expands her twin practices of layering improvisations to create music and incorporating these layers within found sounds. She took hours of live radio samples recorded primarily on Vashon Island in Washington State, choosing select moments – bits of weather reports, prayers, talk shows, ads, and music – to elaborate on with her own recordings. The world of radio is ripe with possibility, holding both the mundanity of ads and news with moments of profound beauty or weight. Near the end of track 1, “in a specific room,” a snippet of Bobby Vinton’s “Roses are Red (My Love)” is followed by a voice saying, “we don’t know how much time we have left on this earth”; their juxtaposition forms an oddly touching love song. Later in the album, a twanging banjo and a medieval lute give lively dueling performances, one station away from each other. Kohl’s samples speak to each other in uncanny ways as she deftly weaves between stations, crafting a web of meaning that’s just out of reach. She uses the radio as an instrument, certainly, but also as a way of reaching toward the unknown. There’s an oracular, searching quality to the way she moves through radio stations and invites us to search with her. While the radio is the point of departure, The Ceiling Reposes is rich with layered instruments – cello, synthesizers, voice, kazoo, piano, drums, bells, wind machine and more. Kohl recorded some instruments in the studio, elaborating on or mimicking the radio or each other. Others she captured outdoors, adding birdsong, rehearsal chatter or the sound of waves to the music. Albums are often made in layers, but Kohl holds these layers up for us to hear clearly, reminding us that every sound – whether radio waves, train horns or the direct output of a synthesizer – is in its own space and time. These layers elide and collide, creating a cohesive picture or blurring into double vision, giving the sense that we are in multiple times and spaces at once. Kohl invites us to time travel. Collecting sounds from multiple moments – a truck backing up, blaring a persistent, repetitive C, layers perfectly on a man whistling on the radio – she orchestrates a chamber music of layered experiences, like a map of time made of fruit roll-ups. Kohl revels in the coincidences she finds, making one now into many and back into one.

Some years ago, there was a magazine piece wherein the writer meditated on the concept of the “Cosmic Southerner”: the late Pharoah Sanders, André 3000 and Col. Bruce Hampton (on whom the piece was ultimately focused) were all mentioned. Somehow, Alabama-born, Atlanta-based self-taught artist Lonnie Holley was left out of the piece. But Holley, 72, has improvised — nay, conjured! — ecstatic, baffling and heavy moments that can often only be described as “cosmic.” In a mere two lines of a song, Holley can zoom in on the pores of one’s skin and pull back to encompass the whole of the Milky Way. All that said, Holley’s music and visual art (for which he has shown at The Met, The Smithsonian and is represented by the illustrious Blum & Poe) is much more about our place in the cosmos than the cosmos itself. It’s about how we overcome adversity and tremendous pain; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow travelers; about how we stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one rock we have. Holley has never delivered this message as clear, as concise and as exhilaratingly as he does on his new album ‘Oh Me Oh My.’ ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is both elegant and ferocious, sharpening the work contained on his 2018 Jagjaguwar debut ‘MITH’. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point — his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But, as mentioned, Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope, of Thumbs Up For Mother Universe. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA’s Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), ‘Oh Me Oh My’ features both kinetic, shortwave funk that calls to mind Brian Eno’s ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno’s ambient works. There are also elements of Laurie Anderson’s meditations, elements of Gil Scott-Heron’s profound longform soul, elements of John Lurie’s grabbag jazz, and yes, elements of Sun Ra’s bold afrofuturism. But ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is a triumphant sonic achievement of its own. Acclaimed collaborators like Michael Stipe (“Oh Me, Oh My”), Sharon Van Etten (“None of Us Will Have But a Little While”), Moor Mother (“I Am Part of the Wonder,” “Earth Will Be There”), Justin Vernon of Bon Iver (“Kindness Will Follow Your Tears”) and Rokia Koné (“If We Get Lost They Will Find Us”) serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, giving Lonnie’s message flight, and reaffirming him as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community. Holley reflects, “My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about. When I listen back to these songs I can feel the times we were living through. I’m deeply appreciative of the collaborators, especially Jacknife, who helped the songs take shape and really inspired me to dig deeper within myself.” ‘Oh Me Oh My’ is also an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the songs and distill Holley’s words to their most immediate center. On the title track, which deals with mutual human understanding, Holley is as profound as ever in far fewer phrases: “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.”

*Dream Box* is a different type of solo guitar album for Pat Metheny than 2003’s *One Quiet Night* and 2011’s *What’s It All About*, which were performed unaccompanied on baritone acoustic. The closest parallel is 1979’s *New Chautauqua*, in its blended palette of acoustic and electric guitars and its multitracked approach. But the provenance of this new music also sets it apart. It’s selected from a stash of private recordings made for personal reference, ideas that sprung more or less from Metheny’s subconscious over time. The intent was never to make an album, but nonetheless a fully formed and satisfying one emerged. *Dream Box* is mainly original save for the standard “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” Luiz Bonfá’s “Morning of the Carnival” (or “Mañha de Carnaval”), and “Never Was Love” by the late pianist Russ Long (né Longstreth). Long was a peer from Metheny’s native Kansas City who featured the guitar master with this song on his 2006 release, *Time to Go: The Music of Russ Long*. Long died the same year, making this new version a poignant homage. The template for these pieces is mainly a chordal accompaniment track with a lead melody track—a Metheny duo, essentially, much like on “Unity Village” from his 1976 debut, *Bright Size Life*. There is variation, however, in the choice of acoustic baritone for the chords and rich bass notes in “From the Mountains” and “Ole & Gard,” incidentally the album’s two advance singles. The lyrical waltz “P.C. of Belgium” is another fine addition to the Metheny songbook. “Clouds Can’t Change the Sky” is an outlier, the album’s one fully unaccompanied piece, a continuous and thoroughly absorbing electric guitar performance, with a highly unusual harmonic turn occurring at the five-minute mark.

First full-length album from the Brooklyn experimental trio Scree. Jasmine on a Night in July features a collection music that draws on the work of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish "The sky opened a window for me. I looked and found nothing save myself outside itself, as it has always been, and my desert-haunted visions. …. There is no tomorrow in this desert, save what we saw yesterday, so let me brandish my ode to break the cycle of time, and let there be beautiful days! How much past tomorrow holds." ~~~~~

There’s a haunting intensity and rare poetic beauty about Ryuichi Sakamoto’s blend of ambient sounds, stripped down to the bare essentials of melody and rhythm. And for all its simplicity, this is an album that is profoundly moving. His dozen pieces, created spontaneously in March 2021 during the early stages of convalescence from major cancer surgery, speak of life’s fragility and of music’s power to comfort, console, even to heal. It feels almost intrusive at first to listen to what originated as private musical thoughts, conceived on synthesizer and piano out of an innate need for the presence of pure, unadorned sounds. Sakamoto’s choice of 12 favorite sketches, each named for its date of composition, charts the stages of his recovery, from pieces infused with his labored breathing to a sublime final sequence of impressionistic miniatures.