Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Album of the 12 months: RL Grime – ‘PLAY’ (+ honorable mentions) – Dancing Astronaut
by: Dancing Astronaut Workers
Dec 28, 2023
2023 noticed a swell of dance/digital albums hit digital streaming platforms. Among the many swath of debuts and follow-ups, some initiatives functioned much less as mere extensions of artists’ discographies and extra as decisive comebacks. Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Album of the 12 months—RL Grime’s PLAY—is among the many latter, however the title-taker isn’t the one one. Later-stage long-forms (suppose sophomore LPs and past) account for many of our honorable mentions. The record of our 23 high runner-up albums of 2023 displays our workers’s favorites this yr past PLAY, with all albums showing in alphabetical order beneath.
________________________________________________________________________
Phrases by Zach Salafia and Ross Goldenberg.
In 2023, RL Grime did way over simply reaffirm his seat on entice’s throne.
A half-decade separated the Sable Valley boss’ second and third albums, and through the five-year stretch between NOVA and PLAY, clearly, Grime had come to the conclusion that enjoying it secure was not one thing he needed to do. And in a yr rife with album ingenuity, one undertaking stood above the remaining when all was mentioned and carried out: PLAY, Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Album of the 12 months.
There’d been rumblings of a NOVA successor quite a lot of occasions lately.. And though “Renegade” with Nero didn’t in the end discover its personal place on the PLAY tracklist, that end-of-2022 launch—with a brand new type of Sable Valley art work—from Grime felt like the start of a brand new chapter.
And it was.
Initially of June, we bought the decisive signal that we’d awaited. After wiping his Instagram clear, everybody was left to imagine just one factor: it was lastly album time. However Grime wouldn’t formally affirm it till almost a month and a half later—after we’d already acquired “Pour Your Coronary heart Out ” and “Breach,” with 070 Shake and Juelz, respectively. By a trio of teaser posts that merely learn “APEX,” “GRID,” and “RUSH,” Grime introduced the three components that will later make up his junior LP.
PLAY splits a towering 21 productions throughout three sections, with every representing a definite model; whereas APEX leans into the basic model of entice that prompted Grime’s early-2010’s reign, GRID sits in crossover territory, with a flurry of singer-songwriter pairings, whereas RUSH undeniably stands out as essentially the most experimental of the three. Though every section can actually maintain its personal, when mixed, they comprise one of many single most bold, revolutionary longform initiatives that the dance/digital scene has seen in current reminiscence, not to mention in 2023.
The extent of experimentation evident on PLAY is made all of the extra vital by the place it occupies in Grime’s discography. After years of fan anticipation, it’s possible that many listeners would have been comfortable to have a brand new LP’s value of fabric from the producer, whatever the output’s model. And with a well-demonstrated profitable method, Grime may simply have sat comfortably inside his wheelhouse on his junior album. His determination to subvert conference, nimbly hanging a steadiness between pushing boundaries and interesting to his early-career viewers members, is the crux of PLAY’s designation as our 2023 Album of the 12 months.
Grime’s willingness to traverse new and completely different sonic terrain is probably greatest exemplified on RUSH, during which he dives into his “deepest musical inspirations.”
“[RUSH] grew to become a spot the place I may enterprise again into the home/breaks/storage/techno/and many others. Roots that bought me into dance music within the first place. I feel I used to be all the time hesitant to launch something like this as RL as a result of I needed a transparent distinction from my older initiatives,” Grime mentioned. “It was essential for me to create an area the place I may discover these genres and have it make sense contextually.”
By permitting Grime to carry no artistic bounds whereas harnessing his bar-none manufacturing, RUSH is in the end the part that prompts PLAY’s 2023 Album of the 12 months standing to go from “candidate” to “confirmed.” Naturally, PLAY sees Grime stand on his personal quite a lot of occasions, however we’d be remiss if we didn’t name out its collaborative lineup, which sees him reunite with some acquainted faces, like Baauer, ISOxo, Montell2099, and Juelz, in addition to Sable Valley staples like JAWNS. Notably, the album additionally features a slew of co-production credit from Dancing Astronaut Artist to Watch in 2024 Holly. Vocal help from the likes of Bea Miller, Reo Cragun, 070 Shake, and extra spherical out the LP, offering a propulsive push in the direction of its denomination because the most interesting and most sonically various dance album of the yr.
The cherry atop an already assured future basic got here in mid-December when RL Grime unsuspectingly let seven PLAY extras unfastened as an early vacation present. Within the type of a free obtain, Grime delivered bonus collaborations alongside each Juelz and Heimanu, his coveted VIP of “Renegade,” a handful of stay edits, and even two authentic productions. These further productions, commensurately excessive in caliber because the album’s authentic 21 tracklistings, solely additional strengthen PLAY’s enchantment. .
In fact, RL Grime’s 2023 Album of the 12 months case wouldn’t ave been full with no sturdy supporting tour. The Sable Valley head introduced his junior album across the states with stops in 14 completely different cities, together with New York, the place Dancing Astronaut introduced PLAY’s date at Hammerstein Ballroom. Broadly, the tour’s tracklist was a seamless mix of Grime’s classics—like “UCLA” and “Core”—and album materials alike, peppered with unreleased IDs and PLAY remixes. It was clear as day that Grime put every thing he had right into a tour set that’d been 5 years within the making, and choose dates even started with a RUSH-themed opening set.
On the eve of PLAY’s arrival, RL Grime opened up about why he’d been shifting in silence—particularly on social media —within the time following NOVA. He defined that the endless battle for on-line consideration had “weighed down on [his] creativity and in the end pushed [him] away from participating in any respect with social media.” Creating PLAY allowed him to “regain [his] confidence not solely as a producer however extra importantly as an individual.”
This stretch gave Grime the chance to make an announcement along with his return and prolong a legacy that already seats him on this style’s corridor of greats. And in doing so, he deftly performed two of dance music’s most delicate video games: not solely releasing an album, however releasing a junior album. A two- or perhaps a three-piece idea album, like PLAY, is nearly exceptional within the dance house, and amongst a numerous variety of compelling candidates in 2023, RL Grime outmatched the competitors with a dynamic physique of labor that teemed with refined manufacturing, range, ambition, and innovation. PLAY as an entire is an open-and-shut masterclass of what Grime is able to that gives a first-hand take a look at his progress and maturation over the previous 5 years whereas evoking the very feeling that hooked us after we listened to VOID, NOVA, or any of his previous work for the primary time.
On his third album, RL Grime paradoxically cements his “entice god” label by transcending it on an LP that, by so seamlessly meshing the acquainted with the futuristic, unequivocally secures the title of Dancing Astronaut’s 2023 Album of the 12 months.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Anyma – Genesys
CamelPhat – Religious Milk
EMBRZ – In Our Personal Approach
G Jones – Paths
Gorgon Metropolis – Salvation
ILLENIUM – ILLENIUM
ISOxo – kidsgonemad!
Jayda G – Man
Kx5 – Kx5
Final Heroes – All I See, You See Me
Lastlings – Good World
Le Youth – About Us
LP Giobbi – Mild Locations
Maceo Plex – ‘93
Massane – By The River
Mathame – MEMO
Nitepunk – Human
SG Lewis – AudioLust & HigherLove
Skrillex – Quest for Fireplace
Sub Focus – Evolve
Sultan + Shepard – Without end, Now
The Chemical Brothers – For That Stunning Feeling
William Black – The Nature of Hope
Featured picture: Andrew Keyser
Classes: Music