In 2023, I set a new personal record. Never did I see as many bands play live as I did during this year. In my personal ‘Live List‘, I keep track of every single artist I’ve ever seen performing. From my first ever gig – Alanis Morissette in 2008 – to the most recent one – HEALTH in December 2023 – I keep track of it all. This year, I saw a stunning 178 artists perform live! That’s 32 more than my second best year (146 gigs in 2017)! One of the very first artists I’ve seen play live this year (the 7th, to be precise) was the unconventional (alto) sax / drums band O.. O. opened my 2nd (!) festival of 2023, Eurosonic/Noorderslag, all the way back in January of this year. I immediately acknowledged the English duo as the best act of the festival, given their powerful energy matched so well with their unique mix of sounds and highly skilled instrumentation. All in all, this was a very impressive performance and I was bummed that up to this point, O. only had released one song: ‘OGO’. Given that their set was pretty epic, I was impatiently waiting until November 24th, when O. finally released their debut EP ‘Slice’ (released on Speedy Wunderground). Even though it only features 4 songs, O.’s ‘Slice’ will definitely end up in my endlist of favourite EP’s of the year.