As the year draws to a close it’s time for markontour’s annual homage to John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’. As usual, my list is not festive and doesn’t even manage the fifteen tracks I habitual aim for and fail to achieve. But these are my favourite songs released in 2023. Given how much I have travelled this year, there’s a paucity of bands from beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, so that’s by New Year’s Resolution sorted, but I hope you enjoy them as much I have just the same.
A festival that merely by virtue of its stunning location is as much a celebration of Cymru/Wales as it is the glorious music that drifts out around Bannau Brycheiniog national park for four days at the end of August. 2023 was a year of discovering lots of exciting new bands, mixed with a bit of eye-misting nostalgia, the largest selection of beers of any festival markontour has ever been too (and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Mantle/Brecon end of the bar, who put up with our chat-filled procrastination for another year), and that gorgeous, gorgeous Welsh hill scenery for a backdrop. Here follows markontour’s round-up of Green Man Festival 2023:
markontour 