You could have it so much better.....with the ILM albums of 2005

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Comment....

other ilxors said

This reminds me of the path Will Oldham took with Ease Down the Road and Master + Everyone, some of the wierdness and occasional harshness of the old material is gone because they both have reached some type of personal closure, comfort, transcendance...definetely self-aware, and less self-concious...and I'm beginning to think its his best work, possibly my favorite album of the year
-- Space Is the Place June 10th, 2005 3:58 PM.

I'm absolutely loving this (of course), definitely his best since "Dongs of Sevotion" (probably my favourite). Sonically and thematically it seems somewhere between "Supper" and "Red Apple Falls" but much closer to the latter. For the most part it's extremely spare: guitar, voice empty space and Jim White's sublime drumming... with some added banjo and violin on some tracks. No real surprises, just Bill Callahan doing his thing. "The Well" is his best track for years and one of the very best Smog songs, the moment where he slows the track riiiiight down to sing "FUCK ALL Y'ALL" Is my musical moment of the year. Also, he's lost the parentheses.
jed April 29th, 2005 1:00 AM.

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Comment

Franz Ferdinand transcended both the hype and backlash of the post-punk revival by simplifying their sound into pretty straightforward pop. Impressively, they improved on their debut in doing so, smoothly grooming themselves for success. And who's to argue they shouldn't? Wouldn't you rather hear their songs on the radio over Nickelback?

AS Van Dorston

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Comment

The kid can really sing, which helps carry this album along with all the angular/post-punk/whatever moves that we're used to in 2005, but which they do pretty well, too. That, and it's kinda earnest, kinda witty, really fun, and contains very little of the mind-numbingness that I feared it would, and later found in the Kaiser Chiefs and Arctic Monkeys.
Maciej Kasperowicz

other ilxors said

can't really explain the maximo park record love, but a handful of singles/album tracks ("graffiti", "kiss you better", "the coast is always changing", "apply some pressure") just really hit me. well crafted pop, reminiscent of the 80s power pop with just enough of a hint of punky/post-punky angularity to keep it interesting. i mean yeah it's all been done to death, but they write good, fun, hooky-as-hell songs.

it's just been a great driving in the car summer soundtrack for me. but (as stated upthread) the album has just a few too many filler tracks to reside on my year's best of.

rentboy August 10th, 2005 5:12 PM.

would have to agree... wasn't on my albums list, but definitely on my singles list

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Comment

It's a comeback only in the sense that few would have expected them to re-peak twenty-five years into their turbulent career. The album's surprises include tracks such as "I Want It All" and "Nothing's Impossible", both of which were penned by new DM songwriter Dave Gahan and brooded like the "Black Celebration" sequel that was never recorded.

Barry Bruner

other ilxors said

Gore's gone back to his Construction Time Again-era of melody writing with a dash of Ultra layered on top. The music itself is a smooth, danceable groove where the lower register synths burble along, the higher register synths ring out like bells (strong pizzicato atack followed by rounded delay) and the mid-range synths fill in all the gaps in a wash of awesomeness. For a track that's built on loungey components, it's surprisingly forthright and driving in execution. There are echoes of several past songs in the songwriting style (particularly "World In My Eyes"/"Enjoy The Silence" and "It's No Good") but it's definitely got its own identity; it certainly isn't as much of a departure from the DM sonic stereotype as "Dream On" was but it also isn't as obvious as their Some Great Reward singles.
I completely love it.

Dan Perry.

HOLY FUCK.
Their best album since "Violator". Maybe their best album except for "Violator".

Here is an out of left field comparison: Orbital's "Blue Album" gathered together a bunch of styles they'd used over their career and crammed them all into one album. "One Perfect Sunrise" was supposed to be "Impact", but obviously it wasn't nearly as good. The whole album was like that.
But on "Playing the Angel", everything sounds better than the original. "Construction Time Again"-era ballads weren't as good as "Damaged People". "Fly On the Windscreen" isn't as good as "Nothing's Impossible". Screw "Song of Faith and Devotion" -- you haven't heard Depeche Mode do gospel until you've heard them do it over Kraftwerk's "Numbers" ("John the Revelator"). What a masterpiece.

MindInRewind October 12th, 2005 6:38 AM.

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Comments (all from last years poll)

ILM's first official cheereleader. Or is it the other way around? - The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"there isn't a bad track on it (although the 7 minute-long 'come together' is like a generic early 90's rave pop anthem from the title down) i managed to actually *dance at a party* to chewing gum on sunday!

gonna be mega." -piecesboy

"I love it when ILM gets all excited and behind something." -Alba

"I am incredibly impressed by the album as a whole. I need to spend more time with it, but my gut feeling is that this will be one of my top favorite albums for the year." -Matthew Perpetua

"I can't quite shake the impression that this is sort of the best album ever made, it feels like it is totally completely Up There with all my very very very favouritest records of all time and I can find absolutely nothing about it that is less than superbly perfect really. I do hope I maintain this level of enthusiasm, it is a tremendously excellent thing to have happened." -Alex in Doncaster

Despite my initial distaste, I've grown to like that dumbass feather doll on the cover.

xpost

...by re-writing "My Sharona."

Like that was necessary.

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Comments

This record suffered the same fate as the LCD Soundsystem one - it appears to be an attempt at the ebb and flow of an "album" in the old style, when many seemed like they'd be perfectly happy with a compilation of bangin' 12" singles. (You could concede their point when both singles came with excellent remixes.) But if you're patient with the more subdued second half, it reveals a pretty strain of melancholy. The dancefloors should be happy with the throbbing machine funk tracks of the first half of the record - especially "Give Me Every Little Thing", one of THE great P-Funk tributes.

Hayden Nicholls

other ilxors said

i didn't really think much of this project when the DFA were getting rolling but now i'm coming around. this album really does sound like it's going to be great. i think "i, robot" was the track that really made me come around.
the last three tracks sound particularly awesome. and the texts that accompany the tracks on that radio thingy are raw and awesome in a denis johnson sort of way.
vahid April 29th, 2005 5:00 AM

i am having an interesting reaction this record. on the one hand, i am happy with the review i gave it; when it's playing i think "wow, this is a pretty good record." but i NEVER FEEL LIKE PLAYING IT. i have probably listened to it four times since i got it. i just see it sitting there, know what it sounds like (good), and still feel all "ehh." which is odd because when i first heard them i listened to the singles over and over! i think spencer may be the closest to being otm of anyone. if he was gonna do a Dance Album, i wish he had actually thrown a couple songs in there, or sequenced it thematically, ala discovery. the lack of the old singles is baffling.
strng hlkngtn July 26th, 2005 1:49 PM.

I really think it's the worst electronic album I've heard in the past year or so. Not saying it's the worst, just the worst *I've* heard. The "fucking round with fruity loops" thing is so true. There's nothing clever with using early 90s pre-sets. There's no romance, funk or beauty in this turgid mess.
paulhw August 5th, 2005 9:53 PM.

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Comments

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Comments

other ilxors said

this.
album.
is.
so.
fucking.
amazing.
Nic de Teardrop January 24th, 2005 2:31 PM.

I just find it hard to believe that DP are happy with this release and wouldn't be surprised if the rumours about contractual obligation were true. How can the same band who did something as gorgeous and timely as Digital Love be content with something like Brainwasher?
It's not a truly terrible album but I can pretty much tell on first listen that like Talkie Walkie it won't have the staying power of Discovery or 10,000Hz the Legend.
Dog latinMarch 14th, 2005 7:24 PM.

What unites the first three tracks is that they each pour all their energy into a single, intensely catchy hook which is then repeated ad infinitum, but the tracks themselves aren't particularly dancefloor bombs, they never take off in the manner which we're accustomed to with French House - if anything, they feel like nothing but a looped breakdown rather than an absence of breakdowns. Were it a case of the latter these tracks might be closer to "So Much Love To Give" or "Call On Me" or a Crydamoure production.

I think this is deliberate rather than lazy (though I can't guess at the motive) - there's a moment in most of the tracks here where the duo will introduce a single element - a snare, a synth variation etc. - which threatens to send the whole thing over the top, and then they pull it back again. It feels like a rather restrained album to me, in the same way that Discovery felt restrained in places but without the pop-song structure that would explain/complement/contextualise it.
I think "Steam Machine" may be my favourite track, though at the moment it's all up for grabs. "The Prime Time Of Your Life" is the track that suffers most for its brevity I reckon - it should be twice as long!
Tim Finney March 20th, 2005 11:32 PM.

Discovery:
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Human After All:
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disco violence October 29th, 2005 6:26 AM.

actually, i think "DARE" did that to me with the Gorillaz album, although in a slightly different manner...

i still go back and forth about the juan record, but at the end i really really like it.

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Comments

other ilxors said

I guess Wide Awake will probably be the less popular one here b/c it's "alt-country" and all that, but at least he really cuts loose on some of the songs rather than try to be all dark and moody. "Another Travelin' Song" is a straight Dylan rip-off that's still pretty exhilirating, and "Road to Joy" is nice and screamy. Still neither one of 'em's as good as Lifted...

Josh Love January 24th, 2005 2:24 AM.

Wide Awake is a perfectly lovely album that is chock full of good stuff. There really isn't a boring track on it, and some of the stuff is flat-out gorgeous. Nothing on it is innovative, or mind-bending, or anything like that, but it is a fully realized bunch of songs by a consistently interesting artist (with an annoying voice, just like you-know-who).

Vornado May 29th, 2005 5:45 PM.

me too!

(carry on)

I like Human After All, too.

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Comments

This record is celebratory as fuck! "My Morning Jacket reins it in and
sounds more expansive than ever" or something. But honestly, the reason
why this is my favorite record of the entire year is that each and every
fucking song is hovering around explosive or just under it. Pound for
pound, I didn't hear better songwriting anywhere (and I can hear
pounds!!!). And I most certainly didn't hear anyone else having this
much fun! "A good showerhead and my right hand are the two best lovers
that I ever had..." As soon as you wash your hands, I will kiss you, Jim
James!

David Maher

Repeated listens reveal a spiritual epic. Initial tourist fascination
with the ancient city of Damascus interrupted by a chance encounter
with the charismatic Z. Seventeen months of disappointment roaming the
Kavir salt desert leaves My Morning Jacket joyfully free of the
dualistic fixations of their early work. What a wonderful man indeed!
Joe Schoech

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Comments

This record is celebratory as fuck! "My Morning Jacket reins it in and
sounds more expansive than ever" or something. But honestly, the reason
why this is my favorite record of the entire year is that each and every
fucking song is hovering around explosive or just under it. Pound for
pound, I didn't hear better songwriting anywhere (and I can hear
pounds!!!). And I most certainly didn't hear anyone else having this
much fun! "A good showerhead and my right hand are the two best lovers
that I ever had..." As soon as you wash your hands, I will kiss you, Jim
James!

David Maher

Repeated listens reveal a spiritual epic. Initial tourist fascination
with the ancient city of Damascus interrupted by a chance encounter
with the charismatic Z. Seventeen months of disappointment roaming the
Kavir salt desert leaves My Morning Jacket joyfully free of the
dualistic fixations of their early work. What a wonderful man indeed!
Joe Schoech

I can't believe I like a band called 'My Morning Jacket.'--deej.., December 26th, 2005

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Comments:

other ilxors said:
this album is fantastic! i was surprised at how strong it all is. love the guy's voice. comparing this to beck is bizarre, i can't even faintly see how the comparison fits.
shine headlights on me July 11th, 2005 7:01 AM.

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Comment:

This is smooth-surfaced, disco-ball-gleaming, flawless body music, so much so that at times it can be painful to listen to.  It's like watching a bunch of episodes of Arrested Development in a row; it's too much of a good thing.  And yes, they did use WordArt for the cover.  But it's still really, really good. 
Sovietpanda

other ilxors said:
 
Alan Braxe and Fred Falke make great 'concept' House tunes, mixing 70s and 80s Disco sounds with fresh sounding synths and rough-and-ready production. I obviously love 'Upper Cuts' but the tracks only work in their 12" versions - the edits on 'Upper Cuts' do not do the tracks much justice and the edits are rather rusty. Being on the most part instrumental, these tracks belong on their concept 12" releases - perfectfor mixing with accapellas and Disco House tunes. 'Upper Cuts' serves only as a neat way of encapsulating the Braxe sound as a whole, but in compilation form the tunes do sound rather samey, especially in this unmixed and edited form.
Tommy Oke December 21st, 2005 12:58 PM.

i pick the upper cuts because it's one of my favorites from this year, easily one of my most-played of the year. i also think it really works as an album. i can't argue with french touch stadium house that is so well-executed (fake g-funk duly noted and excepted from this argument)...aside from music sounds better with you and maybe rubicon, it is very conceptual and imaginary which i also love. this album and songs like amerie's "one thing" are what got me through the year when the bulk of the other music i listened to, eulogized and loved was really melancholy underneath the sparkling exteriors.
tricky December 21st, 2005 9:33 PM.

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Comments:

True story: while at a music festival on a farm in the middle of nowhere a few weeks back, the house DJ dropped the lead track from Congotronics. I scanned my eyes across the crowd, but there wasn't even a flicker of recognition - I had bought the one copy I'd seen, in Melbourne's smallest record store. Slowly but surely, after a while you could see people moving in time to it - a lot of unsure swaying and bopping to the alien soundtrack, some more enthusiastic dancing to the fuzzy groove. The moral of this story is, if you can get a bunch of indie rock fans in a paddock moving, you're doing something right. Hayden Nicholls
 
Konono No.1: Congotronics (Crammed) We've read about this: songs from
salvage, via homemade percussion and sound system, and lives salvaged, so far, via well deserved publicity, from the kind of boondocks that makes The Hold Steady's service roads seem like Beverly Hills. Metallic, yet fluid (those amplified thumb pianos, like a light show on an oscilloscope). But I never know, from one
listening to the next, whether monotony  or melodic outbursts will win more of my august attention, and this seems to be what keeps me listening so much (so far, anyway).
Don Tarboe

A percussion-driven street party that sounds like Vooredoms with thumb piano. O.Nate

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He's gotten older and wiser but hasn't forgotten how to take chances.
O Nate.

My early verdict on Face The Truth is that it is very good, but maybe not as much as the last two Malkmus records. I like it more than Terror Twilight, but not nearly as much as any of the Pavement records before that. I'm very impressed by "Kindling For The Master" and "Pencil Rot" - they touch on some newish territory for him (actually, they both kinda sound like the Fiery Furnaces), and feature some nice sounds and twists. "Freeze The Saints" is my least favorite - it's nice, but it screams "this is a song from my solo album" in way other post-Pavement Malkmus songs have not. Most of the songs aren't very new to me, so I'm just adjusting to the revised studio versions. "Malediction" is clearly my favorite on this record, even though I think I might prefer the live acoustic version that I have from the Buenos Aires show from last year.

Matthew C Perpetua

Just listened to the album. I really liked his last one, but this one does not seem nearly rural prog enough! I WISH there was a song called "Horslip" on it (since I just bought a Horselips best-of this weekend, and it was great!), but on my copy there sure isn't one.
xhuxk March 24th, 2005 12:43 AM.

Anyway, FtT is rocking in my bedroom constantly. I'm moving down the tracklist: at first I was all about the opening Pencil Rot It Kills I've Hardly Been combo. Now the middle section is really satisfying something. I slighted Freeze the Saints for being too Pavementy but it's Malkmus' prettiest tune since Major Leagues (though I never cared for the first album's ballads like a lot of people). Loud Cloud Crowd might be my favorite on the whole album. I'm pretty meh on Kindling for the Master, Post Paint Boy, and Malediction. My favorite SM album.
mitch dub March 31st, 2005 4:45 PM.

Also, that Fran album is so fuckin' good. My indie side (and hatred of cookie cutter crap) won't let me fully appreciate most major bands, but I have to admit, Franz have finally won me over. Just try "Walk Away", "The Fallen", "Fade Together", "Eleanor Put Your Boots On", "Well That Was Easy", etc. Solid songs, man, I'm tellin' you.

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Comment

"To turn myself inside out when I make music is one of my favourite hobbies," offered Bpitch Control matriarch Ellen Allien as explanation for her second album's sound, a sound which is remorseless in turning the listener inside out as well. Thrills is rife with contradictions, illogical foundations shifting around to make perfect sense: a cold, monolithic post-industrial grind transmitted through warm, bubbling ARP synths, an album all about expressing deeply internalised sonic textures on a packed dancefloor or, better yet, on public transport systems. Less of an overt homage to the city than Allien's first album, Berlinette, her fascination with urban living remains as potent a theme in her work as she grapples with its psychogeography, binaries first struggling against each other and then merging as Allien brings them to heel via the messed-up sounds coursing through her body.
 
Key tracks: 'Come',  'Washing Machine Is Speaking', 'Down'
The Lex

other ilxors said

i find this album to be very easy to engage with, it is almost like a blank slate. i also find it to be less cold than either of her previous albums. that's probably the arp talking. the tracks sound like they are 120bpm, but they all hover around 128. i wish the tracks were slower actually, but then it might not sound so techno. i think it has a very late night humid vibe to it.
tricky July 11th, 2005 10:02 PM.

'Thrills'. Wow, it's one hell of a left turn of a record!

I'm gobsmacked at the almost reckless bravery of it. I mean, she's virtually thrown away with her 'typical' sound set (Stadtkind/Berlinette/Remix Collection) here and doesn't seem bothered about the potential to fail without it this time round. She got new tools and wants to play! :-P

On a slightly negative note, I think 'Magma' is my least favourite track here so far, feels slightly ugly and it is just me who hates hearing the last track on a record as the single? So glad I got to hear the whole thing early. But then I really wasn't expecting perfection this time out, I know how these things can go .

But there are many, many things I like about it so far too. Some of this sounds hilariously out-of-control, like Ellen is barely keeping that ARP from bleeping and bouncing out of the studio and into the streets under it's own unstoppable wayward energy.

Her beautiful, subtle yet strong, enigmatic melodies are still here even in all this flowing chaos. I'm not sure how I feel about the comparative lack of vocals so far either, they are there, but often much more direct when used. It still sounds more of a techno thing to me than electro-house, although 'Naked Rain' is kinda deep-house in a way. And 'Down' yeah, is more electro-y. It's just that it's as a whole so much less electro than her previous stuff, and so much weirder, frankly.

If I had to decribe it in less words than I've used so far I'd say: Vaguely Germanic beats meets Giorgio Moroder, LFO & the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

I'm still leaning towards fucking awesome btw, I might have lost the main thrust of my point in all this chatter ;-) There's stuff going on in this record that absolutely kills.I think I'm going to go listen some more now :-)
fandango April 5th, 2005 1:12 AM.

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Comment:
Serves me right for snickering at one time. It's not the consistent, forceful drive of Elephant (though the first track might fool you).  Now they offer sprawl. More overt (but still mutant) stabs at folk, blues, classic rock and pop (with Zep and Stones homages more blatant than before and no worse for it), and dirges; tunes sometimes fall down into noise and rise up again. Beaten out on drums, guitar, piano, and marimba by the primitivist pair. More moods (including happy ones).
Sundar Subramanian

other ilxors said: 
i reckon it could be their best album so far. certainly, 'red rain' and 'take take take' and 'the nurse' are stikingly great songs. 'blue orchid' is a red herring, though - while the album hangs together perfectly, there isn't a song that sounds like another song on the album throughout (is that clear?).
stevie May 17th, 2005 12:11 PM.

It's like old White Stripes with pounding piano instead of pounding guitar, and acoustic guitar and mariamba songs. I've only had a few listens but it seems like their punchiest record so far-- a "total distillation" (like a new Spoon record, kind of) of everything they used to stand for, but more cracked and interesting than ever before. Good stuff, even if the rip is a bit dodgy.
Eric Seguy May 20th, 2005 11:56 AM.

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Comment:
Wherein Missy drops the metallic clanking of This Is Not A Test and embraces, well, everything else - squiggly Neptunesisms, the ghost of Detroit electro, Rich Harrison's booming drumloops, faux-crunk, dancehall, "Apache"... And it all works, even the Slick Rick impersonation. Why no love from the critics? Perhaps they're over Missy, now that they can't tie her into some grand Timbaland auteur story? Their loss. Hayden Nicholls
 
other ilxors said:
have only listened to it once but at least (at least) 3/4ths of this is...guhhhhhh...
strng hlkngtn June 22nd, 2005 4:31 PM

This album is beyond fantastic -- the only weak spots are "Partytime," which I think is the actual disappointingly tame moment, and "Click Clack," which is all boring commerical Southern and, like, a safety net in case everything else flopped.
I think "Remember When" is my favorite. Talk about a great ballad! If Missy only rapped she'd EASILY be half of the artist she is.
Rich June 25th, 2005 11:44 PM.

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Comment: 
I've long said that Fiona Apple is what would happen if Kanye West was a white girl (or maybe he's what would happen if she was a black man). And what happened in 2005? Kanye only starts bigging her up in interviews and getting some hott Jon Brion action, while Fiona replaces long-time producer and mentor Brion with Mike Elizondo, better known for his work with Dr Dre. It's perfectly clear, anyway: both are highly intelligent kids (less generous souls would say precocious brats, and call her precious and him cocky), American college archetypes, irredeemably moulded by their racial and sexual identity. They're both looking for the same answers - because this is how both work out their respective issues, by asking questions of themselves and their peers and their partners and their society, questions and more questions and not shutting up - and they approach the same sonic aesthetic from different directions (this is now obvious, with the Brion connection, but it's always been there). So, like Late Registration, Extraordinary Machine is smart; ambitious; at times wise and at times petulant; lavishly wordy and lavishly arranged; seething with anger even as the artist gives you a sly wink in honour of her theatrical tendencies; impetuous and light-hearted and possessed of a perfect understanding about which rules to follow and which rules to rip up.
 
(And who cares which version is better? I make it roughly half-half, and you have a CD burner. Learn from the lady, and quit whining.)
 
Key tracks: 'Extraordinary Machine', 'Get Him Back' (Jon Brion version), 'Please Please Please'
The Lex

other ilxors said:

Okay after some more listens I'm completely dumbfounded as to why this has yet to be released. There are more than a few tracks on here that would do well on radio with enough push, and the album is absolutely spectacular. Ugh... SONY sickens me.
The Brainwasher March 16th, 2005 3:12 AM.

Christ Almighty, this album is so good that it's even overcoming my passive antipathy towards Fiona Apple. It feels like the frame of reference should be the Arcade Fire - just this meticulously orchestrated swirling self-justified *thing* of an album.
And this is COMPLETELY the correct marketing route for Sony to go with this album. I for one would have never listened to it if it had just come out in the stores like any other great album.

James.Cobo March 16th, 2005 7:13 PM.

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Comment:

A young violinist/singer/songwriter who's been experimenting with sound since he was 11, Patrick Wolf sounds like he's 21 going on 51 on his second album. After recording the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink folk and electronics debut Lycanthropy, Wolf studied composition at the Trinity Music Conservatoire. Wind in the Wires is dark, autumnal European folk, tweaked with laptop electronica. While the gothic songs show that Wolf has an old spirit, it's also one of the most passionate albums of the year.
AS Van Dorston

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Comment:

Hailed by the mainstream press as some sort of return to her disco roots, this was in fact producer Stuart Price carrying on where he left off with his excellent electro-house remixes as the Thin White Duke: gorgeous warm synths, a solid, lovingly detailed sound and, yes, plenty of open hats on the off-beats. If he could make Gwen Stefani sound this good, what could he do with Madge? Surprisingly then, the only thing wrong with this record is Madonna. She is at times a terrible lyricist, rhyming New York with dork and really caning the 'profundity' of her 'there's too much confusion/it's all an illusion' line. Her voice sounds tired in places, her phrasing is too 'straight' for me (as it has been since the early 90s) and it's hard to care about the self-audit of her fame in tracks like How High. The gloopy, very  un-disco strings that segue the tracks together don't help either. But there is still a lot to love about this record: Hung Up, of course, the surprisingly charming I Love New York, with its I Wanna Be Your Dog steal, the way the rave riff comes in half-way through Get Together, and the whole box of noughties production tricks that are making this such a glorious time for dance music.
Jamie Smith

other ilxors said:

I had been sitting on the fence about it, as it's a fine line between genius and horror when Madonna goes all profound and mystical, but...
"Isaac" is a fucking monster. The most sonically exciting song she's done... well, ever, maybe? I love the mmmms that nod back to "Frozen", especially. Fine line, yes, but she's on the right side on this one. And she's really not on it that much! I really have awful fears that she's going to release "I Love New York" as the third single ("Sorry", an excellent choice, is pencilled in as the second) instead of the much more suitable "Let It Will Be" or "How High".

edward o November 5th, 2005 7:35 PM.

I like my music to be produced by people who at least RESEMBLE yer average fella!

I agree with "Partytime" being a weak spot, but I think "Click Clack" isn't bad - it's a perfectly acceptable track, though it seems a bit prosaic in comparison with the other tracks around it. The other weak track I'd single out is "Joy" - which is fairly joyless and features Missy's least-inspired rapping. It's beyond ironic when the two weakest tracks on a Missy album are the two Timbaland productions.

ILM could use a little more rockism.

My number two album is Annie but didn't vote for it because it's from last year. That is 100% the fault of ILM, again thanks. It can be included on my official list because 2004 albums I failed to listen to are eligible but felt wrong to vote for it on ILM.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/low.jpg

Comment:

Shaken by personal crisis, these slow-mormons abandon the church of neo-dull, presenting us this ominously beautiful revelation.
Joe Schoech

other ilxors said:

this is *amazing*. i'm sure i've said before on ilm that i've only got into the last 3 or 4 albums when the next one's come out, giving me some kind of filter to view the older one through, but this has got me straight away. maybe it's because of the election, maybe because of my personal life right now, but it just sounds fantastic - like they've finally delivered on the album they've been threatening since "dinosaur act".
toby November 3rd, 2004 11:43 PM.

Everyone seems to agree that the "classic" Low songs (Death of a Salesman, Walk Into the Sea, etc.) are great, regardless of how they feel about the rest of the album. Your description of "When I Go Deaf" is spot-on -- yes, the song's second half completely disrupts the mood and tone of the first half.
Many people are frowning upon this -- I am smitten with it. In most Low songs, almost every note sounds so meticulously crafted, as if every sound you hear is there for a specific purpose, with absolutely nothing left behind by accident. Certainly, the slow tempos have a lot to do with this, because each note is accentuated and separated from the others that much more.
Then we hit the second half. On its own, I love the fuzzed-out, grungy timbre in Alan's guitar here. But more to the point, after all the delicacy, and all the attention to the smallest details in their songs, suddenly Low have broken out into a chaotic sprawl and it sounds like they're about to completely lose their shit. The chorus isn't sung as much as it is heaved out of Alan and Mimi's lungs, and it's probably the most unrestrained that they've ever sounded on record. The raw emotion of this portion of the song completely floors me.
Obviously I'm not criticising anyone's taste or opinion here, I'm just writing down what I hear and how I feel about the album.
MindInRewind January 27th, 2005 6:10 PM

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/sigurros.jpg

Comment:

Sigur Ros, "Takk...". Here I sit, going through the motions of another failed attempt to describe Sigur Ros' "Takk..." without having the finished product turn out like a description of a shit Mum album written by a twee indie fuck. What's the point of writing about how "Se Lest" feels like a soaring, Peter Pan-like excursion over a twinkling Disneyland when I can't stand the way those words look on paper? Why write about how "Heysatan"'s four minutes serve as an exhausted, extended sigh that help the album tail off into nothingness better than any final chord could? There is no point.
Barry Bruner

other ilxors said:

so far this is great! totally hilarious coldplay-style-riffage, but they're real good at it.
sean gramophone August 4th, 2005 9:05 AM.

Ugh. They get worse with every album.
Melissa W August 4th, 2005 9:30 AM.

It's so frickin' BLAND for aural nirvana, by rote. I've never heard a band so dedicated to being DRAMATIC/BIG/BEAUTIFUL sound so dull, and that includes Godspeed, who I detest. So yeah, I dislike them for musical reasons, that way that they cheapen the sublime. Aim for Mont Blanc, get a Thomas Kinkade landscape.
That said, in the 'I am amused' department, two flacks on the NRO website were talking about being fans of theirs today, with one saying, "It's like Enya if Enya were rock."
Ned Raggett September 23rd, 2005 2:38 AM.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/deerhoof.jpg

Comments:

other ilxors said:

The new Deerhoof is fucking gorgeous. Believe the hype. They've stopped MeltBananaing it up and started making pastoral pop. Will latch itself to college radio like a sucking tick covered in glitter paint.
Whiney G. Weingarten July 22nd, 2005 7:29 PM.

I just have to say it again. Brilliant! Like the sun bursting through on a cloudy day. I don't think anyone will top this one for years.
marybeth August 10th, 2005 7:21 PM.

This album is awesome, but I really can't fucking take her voice anymore. I love that weird, sort of incongruous afro-pop sounding track. It came in right when I was starting to get bored.
Hurting November 3rd, 2005 5:32 AM.

I mean someone needs to develop a patch that edits out her voice.
Hurting November 3rd, 2005 5:34 AM

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/wolfparade.jpg

Comment:

I am not a particularly big fan of Modest Mouse, nor would I call myself a fan of "indie rock." I love this album.
Also, I consider "actual music" to be much more important than lyrics. This is one of the very few bands I listen to because of both music and lyrics.
They sucked live.
sovietpanda

Rate Your Music: 50 Best albums of 2005
http://rateyourmusic.com/feature/2005
With reviews

after an exciting 40-31, it's all gone very indie again, sigh. I live in hope tho'.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/kelleypolar.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said

A really gorgeous production; the real strings are predictably incredible, the harmonies are lush and crystal-clear, the synths amazingly glowing. Plus Morgan co-produced it, so there is a lot of of Metro Area DNA in the rhythm tracks.
Definitely one of the best sounding records I've heard all year (and the tracks are great too.)
Michael F Gill August 30th, 2005 11:39 AM.

I do hear Geist's production but I don't think you can overstate the impact of so many lyrics, it gives a record a totally different aesthetic and appeal. Perhaps the reason alot of people are very into this (who may or may not like Metro Area, and if they don't, so what, let's not crucify them) is because such a strong presence of vocals makes it less of a knowing producer/purist album than Metro Area's record.
I don't mean that as a criticism either, but the Kelley Polar Album is definitely more song based, and also I think the vocals make it alot more pop and catchy than Metro Area.
(it's actually way closer to the Unclassics mix than the Metro Area album, which I also prefer!)
In response to Sean, I think the reason I had a very over the moon response is because the record has an instant impact, I mean, I am still pretty much bowled over by the first track. The best answer I can give you is that I think it's a brilliant pop record, and people are still kind of smacked across the face by that kind of thing in a weird out of leftfield way, especially when it's an artist they haven't heard of or heard before, and again this is all speculation on my part.
I hate characterising people as newbies based on their enthusiasm so hopefully that won't happen here if it's not too late.
Ronan October 25th, 2005 2:40 PM.

let me restate before i piss anybody else off: i really like the kelley polar album, except i hear it like an IDM record, not a house record - i agree w/ susan's statement but i would probably ease back on "leading up to nothing" (less polemical pls) and i would go ixnay on "childish ideas" (though there are certainly ideas about genre ... maybe ways of playing w/ genre that are specific to IDM)
i guess what is fascinating about kelley polar is that it plays w/ genre in an unexpected direction - instead of the usual IDM tricks (electro w/ references to musique concrete, jungle w/ references to gabba + grindcore) we have this sort of mid-tempo electronic album (the reference to PLAID upthread was spot-on) that references disco in the way autechre integrates influences like xenakis or zoviet france, or arthur russell integrates terry riley - i guess a corollary to what i am saying is that this is different in the way that early jungle artists incorporated ragga and the way deep house artists incorporate gospel + jazz music.
vahid November 24th, 2005 12:25 AM.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/clientele.jpg

Comment:

Reverb seems like such an intrinsic element of the Clientele's sound that it's hard to imagine them actually removing it. But that's what their producer does, or at least minimizes it since you'll never fully drain the honey from the hive. And while I can't say this necessarily sounds better than the Violet Hour, it does reveal the core of their pop-lovin' heart. Which allows some supremely catchy songs like "My Own Face Inside the Trees" and "When I Came Home From The Party" to flourish, and invites a little more investigation into their impressionistic lyrics. Plus … there's strings!
Keith Sawyer

other ilxors said:

What I've heard of Strange Geometry is gorgeous - Louis Philippe string arrangements, Alasdair never sounding better and a spoken-word piece that'll knock your socks off. They seem to have got the pro-studio richness without losing their signature sound. Clever boys.
Michael Jones June 19th, 2005 10:38 AM.

It's really rather good.

Just more of the same, but it sounds wonderful. It doesn't seem like as many people are going to be talking about them here this year, which is sort of a shame, but then what more can you say except this sounds like the last two Clientele records, maybe a bit more structure than The Violet Hour and it's also got some lovely orchestral flourishes. I love it.
Adam In Real Life August 19th, 2005 3:38 AM.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/ladytron.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said:

I can't say I'm disappointed but I think the best tracks were on the sampler. My favourite is still "All The Way" (I think it's even my favourite Ladytron song so far). But "White Light Generator" sounds like a bit of a mess to me. I'd prefer it if it had more structure. Still, there are a few nice surprises ("Soft Power", "High Rise"). I'm not very familiar with Light and Magic but this album feels very, very dark and ocasionally very cold too, which is part of what I expect from Ladytron.
daavid August 15th, 2005 5:28 AM.

Very happy with this. I am hearing "Harmonium"/"Jenny Ondioline"-era Stereolab in lots of this (esp. "High Rise") but magnified to cartoonish levels of heaviosity. "AmTV" is Lightning Bolt playing the B-55's. I was baffled by the MBV comparisons in relation to "Sugar", but "White Light Generation" is totally "Soon" (although more "Nothing Natural" perhaps).
604 is kind of a benchmark-perfect record for me, and this is totally different to that, but there is this weird cloak of flawlessness wafting over the whole thing.
Alex in Doncaster August 12th, 2005 2:29 PM.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/saintetienne.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said:

The bastards.

The bastards.

They've done it again.

Wrong-footed me. Dared me to shrug my shoulders at the top of this thread.

And then I listened to the thing, on my Discman, on a 31-degrees-in-the-shade Saturday, walking from Oxford Street to Chalk Farm.

The benign abandonment of these sunny, empty streets in the Bloomsbury/Euston/Regent's Park triangle.

The only shop open in Great Titchfield Street was - you guessed it - a tanning salon (not, alas, the Tropicana Tanning Salon).

In a semi-derelict newsagents just off Wells Street to buy a much-needed bottle of water, the elderly proprietor invites me to admire her nice young terrier.

Round the nexus of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. Blocks of flats which look like displaced houses from the road which ran parallel to the Thwaites brewery. A white-haired, tanned, pullovered fiftysomething wanders past me with a watering can. He is probably extremely well-known, but I don't stop to look at him.

Jumping over the end of Cleveland Street, the Tower looking down upon me ruefully, and not quite protectively.

Even the main traffic lights on Euston Road appear to change in super-slow motion on a day as liquid as this.

Down the shadowed side of Osnaburgh Street, across from the former insurance office where Laura briefly worked too many years ago, below the windows of the flat where once Kenneth Williams lived; a smaller and pokier place than you'd expect. Two dusty front windows, only one open. Everything in this street appears to be on the brink of turning into dust - disused factories, Houses which don't seem to House anyone -
"throws a gown over every place I've been
And every little dream"

The long, peopleless procedural that is Albany Street. Almost peopleless, at any rate. A group of backpacking students stop at a pub, and realise dolefully that it's not open yet. "Don't worry," says one, "there's another one just up the road that's definitely open." And indeed there is - the Cafe of Good Hope. Across the street from where Henry Mayhew once lived.

The communality of the poor. Everybody talks about the enclosed individual prisons of London. No one ventures outside their room, talks to anyone else, etc.

"I walk these side streets alone"
But you wouldn't know it from round about Robert Street. There's an estate there, not quite the Regent's Park Estate from whence sprang Flowered Up and where the components of Militant Esthetix continue to dwell. People amble out, smiling, talking to each other, passing cordial greetings, eyeing me with suspicion. Should I be here?
"She knows this has to end"

It's easy to feel out of place. I rest my legs at a bus stop. Two people join me; a crew-cut twentysomething in shorts and iPod, swaying his arms and tapping his feet, enraptured, glancing around to see if anyone else can feel it, but I can't even hear what he's listening to. To my left, a distinguished-looking, grey-haired, bespectacled fiftysomething, possibly an Independent leader writer, looking benign rather than bemused.

The church at Redhill Street whose clock seems to have long stopped. The nearly luminous redbrick which runs in the little side street behind it, but which proves to lead to nothing except the sectioned-off wall of a school playground. I make my way back to the main drag, and a black woman looks at me exceptionally dubiously.
The shops here are standard, but perhaps all that is needed. A Post Office which at 11:45 in the morning is already closed. A dry cleaners. A betting shop. A tanning salon (and no baker). A piano shop. Why the piano shops in out-of-the-way locations? I recall Courtney Pianos in Botley Road, across the street from where once we lived. The idea was that once we got a proper house we'd get in a piano (there wasn't enough room for one in the flat) and I'd teach Laura to play it.

Further down, past more closed-down depots and warehouses, along whose walls I walk directly as the shade does not penetrate more than a couple of inches beyond them, the street becomes distinctly more rural (you could almost be walking down a street in Harrogate, or Blantyre) and delicately more opulent. To my left, the complex of backs-to-the-street Cumberland Terrace pied-a-terres wherein '70s rock stars hang their spurs during the week. To my right, past the TA barracks, I suddenly see Cherry Tree Lane from Mary Poppins, identical in every detail and blossom. Park Village West - what is this elysium doing on the outskirts of Camden? And such transcendence is not limited to those of affluent means; back in the estate, there was a block called Kelso House. Through the entrance portal I can view an unbelievably light and colourful bouquet of garden and enchantment. Also closed off to me.

"We need some space"
"I said I'd miss my mates"
I'm now at the top of Albany Street, at the junction where the outflow from Camden meets the back end of London Zoo.

"Let's build a zoo!...Here they come! Two by two by two by two..."
I opt not to suffocate in the drowning human traffic of Camden proper so make my way down Gloucester Avenue, past the LMC, before emerging at Chalk Farm, en route to one of the most magical days I can remember having for a long, long time.

"Stars above us/Cars below us/Nothing can touch us, baby"
Tales From Turnpike House is about escape. The Stars are regularly referenced in contrast to the "grey" (and recall the grey-on-white-on-grey design of the Finisterre sleeve; what was that about "I love to get lost in the city" and how did that end up as "Slow down at the Castle?").

(in Ryman's 253, remember, the fatal tube crash occurs at the Elephant and Castle - the End of the Line. Beyond that, it's the multiple Congo deltas of Old Kent, Walworth, Camberwell, every man for himself)

It's about a day in a dozen lives; A Grand Don't Come For Free multiplied by side one of 'Til The Band Comes In with a libretto by Georges Perec and scored by - well, scored by the Rivers (the absence of rivers is tangible in the record's story).

There isn't much unalloyed joy in TFTH; the nearest thing to an uplifting song being the hopelessly hopeful "Sun In The Morning," and even the temporary rooftop relief of "Stars Above Us" is tempered by the knowledge that, 14 years after "Nothing Can Stop Us," the reassuring reflex is now "nothing can touch us." The fear of being touched ("Side Streets" is remarkable; music by Tom Jobim, lyrical plot by "Robert De Niro's Waiting." The not-particularly-hidden deathwish of "Maybe I'll get it tomorrow") means that no one can touch you; or, like Gary Stead, you end up drinking yourself into - more drinks. He'll lambast his long-suffering partner or the "Aussie bar staff" playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he invariably ends up buying another round at the Hatton Fan.

The remarkable way in which the rhythm template from "My Heartbeat" is used as a springboard for other diversionary/introductory tactics on "Milk Bottle Symphony." The echoing fade of "away" into non-human static on "Slow Down At The Castle." The perversity of "A Good Thing" being far more Xenomania-sounding than the two Xenomania-assisted songs (but how Xenomania-like was "Shower Scene" from Finisterre?) and piercing something vital with Cracknell's "it's all for nothing" refrain.

The way in which the frustrated vaudeville waltz of "Relocate" suddenly atomises into an abstract Julian Opie landscape straight off the bluer corners of Sound Of Water halfway through, and how apt it is that David Essex now sounds more like Bowie than ever ("Sounds like a load of balls!").

The heartbreaking instrumental fragment of "The Birdman Of EC1" which appears to have flown off somewhere between the Cocteau Twins' "Beatrix" and Plaid's "Eyen."

And "Teenage Winter" - my God, what a song, what a closedown, what a last-bit-of-Escalator Over The Hill gone pop, where all the disparate voices return for their reluctant curtain calls as the stage collapses around them - nothing's what it used to be, that two copies of "Every Loser Wins" don't add up to a winner, that a Subbuteo '81/2 catalogue in the drawer ISN'T A SUBSTITUTE - and we realise horribly what growing up actually means; not so much the halycon grief of Pet Sounds, but "mums with pushchairs outside Sainsbury's with tears in their eyes."

But at least the mums with pushchairs can still connect on even an elementary level; the narrator of "Sun In The Morning" returns for a grief-stricken "Goodnight" as Tony Rivers' "Our Prayer" harmonies seem to indicate that there won't be another morning. Another potentially perfect day lost. No reassurance. Park your bike in the alley.
And yet there is an escape route. Or perhaps it's a dream within a dream in the same way as that central demo section of the third Bill Fay album. I don't know whether I would have reacted to TFTH in as passionate a way as I have if there hadn't been Up The Wooden Hill, a quarter-hour taster for an upcoming "children's record." Because in these 15 or so minutes exists the life and spirit more or less absent from the main album's story. "You Can Count On Me" is Chinn and Chapman reshaping Cornelius' "Count Five Or Six." "Barnyard Brouhaha" dares to be one nanoinch's breath away from "Crazy Frog." "Let's Build A Zoo" and "Excitation" together give us perhaps the sexiest vocal performances of Cracknell's career - here she's happy, mischievous, provocative; Deee-Lite x Mud + Sweet Exorcist (and get that "suffragette" line in "Excitation"! For kids, did they say?).
But then there's something else. The hidden ending to the album proper. David Essex returns in "Bedfordshire" presumably having been convinced to move to the country. With his hitherto unheard son, he ventures to take him on a walk, and there's an immensely poignant acoustic reverie (not that far from Van Morrison's "Coney Island," really) which sounds as though the cynical old geezer has rediscovered life via his child ("It's green 'cos - that's the colour of Thunderbird 2!" "You're right, son! You're absolutely right!"). Here, we are moved away from the easy associatives of old Small Faces album tracks (but here's another reason for my passion - calling songs "Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire" or "Night Owl" means you're inadvertently referencing The Songs Of Our Lives) towards something more affecting. But more real? At the end, Essex turns towards his child, towards us, and informs us that "If you close your eyes, you can see anything you like." So they may well still be in Turnpike House. But they have managed to realise the wonder of what's on their doorstep. Maybe.

But "Night Owl" returns us to the grief of "Goodnight" - Cracknell sitting alone, downstairs, at midnight, paranoid about the creak on the stairs (it's the same protagonist as "Side Streets"), wondering what she could have done to make her life better. A children's album? Only in the same way that side two of Tiger Bay was a children's album. The urge to return to childhood. The fear of now. The fear of death, violent or natural.

On the bus home, some considerable time later, there is a young girl sitting at the front of the top deck of the bus. As the bus crosses Waterloo Bridge she gives an involuntary gasp of shock and wonder. It was obviously the first time she'd seen the view. What Saint Etienne tell us is that we all gave that gasp at some stage in our lives - in my case, when I was no more than five or six - and that the challenge is to recapture that gasp and make it work for you, so that your existence can be (re)turned into (a) life.
Marcello Carlin June 20th, 2005 8:34 AM.

Anyone who's ever liked any indie-rock but generally thinks it's all a bit not for them at least not these days should maybe try Wolf Parade. I think they're great.

Never really got into the Kelley Polar album.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/outhud.gif

Comment:

other ilxors said

I really hoped Donut would be wrong, but wow, what a letdown! They stopped doing brilliant post-punk style stuff for THIS plastic artificial sounding crap? Please no more mentions of this alongside the new LCD Soundsystem or New Order, please.
Bimble February 3rd, 2005 7:53 AM.

I think this album is great, especially the first half. The sequencing is really nice. I've always admired the broader sonic palette that Out Hud brings to the neo-dance-punk party, but tracks like "It's For You" and "One Life to Leave" and "How Long" are also really catchy from a pop angle. (Especially since I don't hear the vocals as "indie" trying to be pop or dance, like !!!: no, they're cool and rhythmic and kinda breathy and totally pop unto themselves.) (Oh, and Donut, I only have Interstate, but I don't hear Pell Mell at all in Out Hud: Pell Mell always seemed to me like a post-rock band that no scene wanted to accept, but way more organic and warm and, I dunno, heartland-sounding than Out Hud.)
jaymc March 28th, 2005 9:27 PM.

I've always admired the broader sonic palette that Out Hud brings to the neo-dance-punk party, but tracks like "It's For You" and "One Life to Leave" and "How Long" are also really catchy from a pop angle.
Jaymc is correct. Additionally, this record doesn't sound like it's saying "this is a band" or "this can be reproduced live" or "we care that this is reproduceable live". The fact that the vocals are so faceless adds to the house-ness, and they don't really seem indie at all. They're very detached yet rhythmic (as has already been said). The Severed Heads comparison is interesting and superficially correct, but they're coming from very different places, and again the overall vibe I get from the Out Hud record is Tom Tom Club as opposed to something on Nettwerk. There's something almost Balearic (vague term I know) about this record too.
Spencer Chow March 28th, 2005 10:14 PM.

That St Et was the first release by them that did absolutly nothing for me after rapidly diminishing returns since Good Humour(Finisterre had like 2 great tracks). Not a shock to see them place high on an ILM poll tho.

Don't make me link to the 1985CDR Go! thread AGAIN...

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/sleaterkinney.jpg

Comment:
With their seventh album in ten years, and the first in three, Sleater-Kinney may be slowing down, but they're not mellowing out. In fact, The Woods is the most poundingly vicious album they've ever done. The key to their refreshing new approach is using Dave Fridmann, no fan of their earlier work, to light a fire under their butts. Indeed, Janet Weiss sounds like she's using John Bonham's femur bones for sticks, while Corin Tucker's vocal work reaches a primally powerful peak. Near the end of the album, song structure is abandoned for hypnotic jams. It's not a perfect album, but if Sleater-Kinney can manage to write songs to match their best from Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out with this new sound, they'll be the best rock band on the planet, male or female.
AS Van Dorston

other ilxors said

I original liked this record, but as I listen to it I can't help but notice the lack of hooks. For an album that's supposed to hearken back to the Deep Purples and Zeppelins....where are the fucking TUNES? I guess it's a symptom of of the majority of indie rock albums these days, but damn. It may sound nice, but it's samey samey samey. Gimme something I can sink my teeth into....they've done it before ("Dig Me Out," "Little Babies," "You're No Rock n Roll Fun"), but not here. The album might have teeth, but if you're looking for hooks, go somewhere else.
PB June 2nd, 2005 3:37 PM.

I finally got around to buying this today. Hey, it's good! I like the rawking. I made the mistake of reading the lyric sheet on the subway home (I had nothing else to read), which gave me a little bit of a sinking feeling. But once I put it on, the lyrics didn't bother me at all. They're one of these (many) bands who would be better off not printing lyric sheets. The words sound fine with the music. And the music sounds fine too. On first impression, solider than either of the previous two. They sound like they kind of found their feet again. And speaking of feet, Janet has one of the heaviest kick-drum stomps around, gah-lee. This record really makes me want to see them play again. I hope they do the 10-minute freak-out in concert.
gypsy mothra June 22nd, 2005 8:17 AM.

i'm just listening to this now. i know fuck-all about sleater-kinney, but i like this album a lot. it is intense and seems to be ripping my crappy speakers to shreds, which is no bad thing. i need to listen to it on my proper stereo. preferably, i feel, on vinyl.
grimly fiendish July 10th, 2005 8:52 PM.

Tell more more about what you mean.

If anyone has any outstanding* blurbs can they send them asap. I thank you.

*or even mediocre

Going by St Etienne's placements in the 90's polls, I thought it was clear that they have a large fan base here.

-- Rockist_Scientist (Al__suca...), January 13th, 2006 11:25 AM. (RSLaRue) (later)

haha--how could that possibly be positive?

wow. otm.

also i don't get this list anymore. i don't understand the cross section of people who voted

and the clientelle is SO BORING

i don't understand the cross section of people who voted

i don't understand why some of ILM's most vocal personalities didn't vote, and i think that's what might give the list a rather skewed feel. still, i am thoroughly enjoying it, odd though it might be. top work, billy.

50. Smog - A river ain't too much to love
49. Franz Ferdinand - You could have it so much better...
48. Maximo Park - A certain trigger
47. Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel
46. Annie - Anniemal
45. Juan Maclean - Less than Human
44. Dangerdoom - The Mouse and the Mask
43. Daft Punk - Human after all
42. Bright Eyes - I'm wide awake it's morning
41. My Morning Jacket - Z
40. Tom Vek – We have sound
39. Alan Braxe & Friends – The Upper cut
38. Konono no.1 – Congotronics
37. Stephen Malkmus – Face the truth
36. Ellen Allien – Thrills
35. The White Stripes - Get behind me Satan
34. Missy Elliot – The Cookbook
33. Fiona Apple =- Extraordinary machine
32. Patrick Wolf – Wind in the wires
31. Madonna – Confessions on a dancefloor
30. Low - The Great Destroyer
29. Sigur Ros - Takk
28. Deerhoof - The Runners Four
27. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
26. Kelley Polar - Love songs of the Hanging Gardens
25. The Clientele - Strange Geometry
24. Ladytron - The Witching Hour
23. Saint Etienne - Tales from Turnpike House
22. Out Hud - Let us never speak of it again
21. Sleater Kinney - The Woods

Top 20 TBA

- predictions?

(only two that I voted for made the list so far)

Others yet to make an appearance that'll probrably be in the top 20: Robyn, Gorillaz, New Pornographers, Rachel Stevens, Girls Aloud, Spoon.

i'm assuming "funeral" will be in there too.

i'd love to think that the meshuggah album will roar into the top ten, but i fear that's wishful thinking. bastards. still, it was terrorizer's #1, so at least someone somewhere is hailing the awesome power of riffular prog-metal magic \m/

I listened to Francis the Mute today for the first time since it came out. It's a very funny album.

Shortwave Set an outside bet? Everyone who heard it seemed to like it.

ILM TOP ALBUMS OF 2004

I didn't want to jinx it by saying so, and I didn't want to be wrong, but yes, I think so. There is a strong Kate Bush cult around here, though it might not be visible to people who don't click on the relevant threads.

first up the 10 most likely to show up in the top 20:

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
M.I.A. - Arular
Kate Bush - Aerial
Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
Vitalic - Ok Cowboy
Broadcast - Tender Buttons
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Animal Collective - Feels
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem

the next 10 IS difficult to judge, so here are some candidates with comments:

Common - Be [Is rap still popular asks Geir?]
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene [Is this too generic indie rawk to show up in the top 20?]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah [Have enough ILM types voted for Pitchfork approved Talking Heads karaoke?]
Gorillaz - Demon Days [Does ILM like fun? OR NOT ]
Isolée - Wearemonster [Have the dance types voted in enough numbers?]
Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain [Where are the Noise dudes?]
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema [Canadian Indie on a zillion blog / webzine lists]
Nine Horses - Snow Borne Sorrow [Will enough people vote this into the top 20?]
Robyn - Robyn [A long thread on ILM suggests this is popular]
Kanye West - Late Registration [Is rap still popular asks Geir?]

Some other candidates/ Outsiders: [remember there were over 500 albums voted for] will any of these be in the top 20:

The Shortwave Set - The Debt Collection [have a cult following on ILM]
The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute [is this too prog to be popular for ILM ?]
The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree [has a cult following on ILM]
The Decemberists - Picaresque [tuneless tripe that is popular with indie types]
Mew - And the Glass Handed Kites [Can these Danish art-rockers gatecrash the top 20? unlikely ]
Dälek - Absence [Did enough people remember this?]
Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs [Seems to be on a zillion indie rock lists]
Jesu - Jesu [too obscure for the ILM Top 20?]
Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations [Never understood the appeal of this lot]
Spoon - Gimme Fiction [North American Indie rockers seem to rate them]
Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die [Twee bollox]
The Books - Lost and Safe [Popular on some other polls]
Elbow - Leaders of the Free World [Do Elbow have enough followers on ILM?]
M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us [Lacked substance, and too early in 2005 - faded away]
Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft [Another band with a cult following on ILM]
Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks [Has a following on ILM, but not enough for the top 20?]
New Order - Waiting for the Sirens' Call [I don't think this will be the top 20 as it got a mixed response on ILM]
Goldfrapp - Supernature [this album had a mixed response on ILM]
Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue [Wine bar Muzak]
Black Mountain - Black Mountain [Have some following on ILM, but NOT enough for top 20]
Röyksopp - The Understanding [Unlikely to be in the top 20]
CocoRosie - Noah's Ark [Unlikely]
Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures [I don't think this will make it]
Clor - Clor [Not enough support to make it]
Mu - Out Of Breach (Manchester's Revenge) [Did the dance types vote for this?]
Jan Jelinek - Kosmischer Pitch [A slow burner, gradually picking up kudos towards the end of the year]
Field Music - Field Music [Not enough support to make it in the top 20]
Opeth - Ghost Reveries [On other polls this is the most popular metal release of 2005. Metal has never done well on ILM polls, the same dozen or so people stick to the Rolling metal thread throughout the year in their own special world, so unlikely to dent the top 20]
Ulver - Blood Inside [No chance - too obscure for ILM]
The National - Alligator [Has done well on other polls]
Jaga Jazzist - What We Must [Superb album but highly unlikely]
Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It [Will the pop-ists vote gatecrash this into the the top 20?]
Girls Aloud - Chemistry [Will the pop-ists vote gatecrash this into the the top 20?]

Billy, are there any albums in the top 20 ? NOT listed on this post.

sovietpanda OTM re:Clientele. I feel like one could not approximate a closer feel to the most absolute boring side of indie pop. A friend told me listening to Death Cab for Cutie is like watching paint dry to him. That's what the Clientele is like to me. I only saw them open for Spoon, which is an unfair comparison to make, but I didn't want to hear their shit again.

Also, Simon... I too think Okkervil is a stretch, but if it doesn't make it here, I propose starting a thread devoted to its greatness and revelling in the imagery/world as if we were Trekkies or Star Wars geeks. I propose calling ourselves Okkies.

I expect certain people on ILM to be still listening to rap by the time anyone outside Bronx or Compton has long since abandonded the genre. :)

My prediction: 389

yup. and it didn't come out in the UK until 2005, which means it's eminently eligible. indeed, billy singled it out in his original blurb as one such example. i'd be very surprised if it doesn't make the cut. i mean: LCD soundsystem was in last year's poll too, remember?

spoon will chart highly, i'm betting. and i think that bloody new order record will get in there too, although it really doesn't deserve to at all.

i did put "waiting for the sirens' call" itself in my "tracks" list, but it's got no chance. like, er ... [counts on fingers] ... at least 85% of my track choices ;)

I find them unlistenable.

Yes! Watch this space.

20. Antony and the Johnsons - I am a bird now
(116 points, 12 votes)

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/anthonybird.jpg

Comment:

I seriously think this record shares DNA with W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. Both take me out of myself by provoking thought, empathy, and a kind of spritual meditativeness. Each is the work of a man fully inhabiting his current situation and transcending it in the process of documenting it. The complexity of feeling in "For Today I Am A Boy," as well as its rousing chorus (if you can call it that), makes it my personal favorite song on the album. Of course DuBois never had a piece devoted to the act of fisting. And holy shit, does Antony actually make it sound sweet? Yes, yes he does.

David Maher

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/twincinema.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said:

The melodies on Electric Version still sound much more difficult to me, more complicated and tangled, and not as immediate. My second time through Mass Romantic (and The Slow Wonder), I already felt a strong familiarity with every track; some tracks on Electric Version took three listens just to gain perspective on where they were about to go after each measure. I personally didn't feel as familiar with it until maybe the fourth or fifth listen, and I was never as taken with it as I was by the first album. The new one seems like a pleasant middle-ground. Not as much power-pop throttle as MR, not as many twists/turns as EV.
Ryan Pitchfork June 19th, 2005 5:01 AM.

It's my favorite New Pornographers album, which is saying quite a lot since I really love Mass Romantic and Electric Version. I am quite confident in my opinion that Twin Cinema is a full-on masterpiece. It took me a few months to arrive at that opinion, though.
Matthew C Perpetua December 7th, 2005 8:08 PM.

Yes! Watch this space.

My prediction for the one not listed = Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit, given the indie-centric-ness of this list so far (it leaked early enough to get in, right?)

18. M83 - Before the dawn heals us
(141 points, 11 votes, 2 number ones)

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/m83.jpg

Comment:

When M83 became Anthony Gonzalez's solo project, his band's life as a synthtastic "Loveless" clone came crashing to a halt. Setting the controls to "epic" for nearly every track, they broadened their template to include heart-crushing ballads ("Safe" might have been the saddest song I heard in 2005), sweeping, cinematic instrumentals ("Moonchild"); as well as surging, pseudo-shoegazer rock ("Don't Save Us From the Flames", "Teen Angst"). What's more, "A Guitar and a Heart" is the best song Loverboy ever made.
Barry Bruner

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/demondays.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said:

an album made for summer dusk and heat and noise. driving around playing this in my honda- some tracks even sound better with the windows down and all the street noise
kephm August 8th, 2005 10:15 PM.

I'm enjoying it way more than I ever thought I would. That irritating voice-over by.....is it Dennis Hopper?, though, bugs the shit out of me.
Alex in NYC August 9th, 2005 1:12 AM.

useful memory jogger

stefan's 2005 albums metalist [NOW INCLUDING 150 LISTS)
http://pub37.bravenet.com/forum/3172289350/show/580641

I'd say Jeezy & maybe Wayne are the only ones that have a chance.....maybe Run The Road. I wouldn't be sure there will be any considering the strong indie slant of this list.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/holdsteady.jpg

Comment:

Crisis! Drama! Visions! She
said this! She did that! "Sounded kinda familar," the male narrator notices.
But not too familiar, because the hoodrats in these songs have eaten and
digested the evidence, as they run out of Record Town, and maybe even out of
the
Hick City Mall. But they've still got plenty of stuff, like "that sweet pleated
feeling," and Bible verses in tiny tattoos ( she does, on her neck), and
brilliantly grubby cartoons. Listen while exercycling, and watching your job go
to
China or Vietnam, and your future go to retro (rocking all the way)
Don

other ilxors said:

I don't see how anybody can NOT dig this album. My friends who greeted Almost Killed Me with a shrug and a "the singer is kind of annoying" are now uniformly obsessed with this record.

I'd be surprised if there's a better rock album this year. And it should definitely have a formidable showing when they do the "Best albums of the 00s polls".
kornrulez6969 May 3rd, 2005 8:50 PM.

i really like the album. so much to take in. you could get lost in it.
scott seward May 12th, 2005 11:53 PM.

I have never heard a track by "the hold steady"!

Didn't stop Annie making the top 50.

Hold Steady, only listed as popular in US on rym [http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/the_hold_steady] - they have zilch profile in the UK, i think i may have heard them on dirtyradio.net a few weeks ago

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_hold_steady/separation_sunday/

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/robyn.jpg

Comments:

I ignored this album for most of the year because I thought the raves were just coming from fanboys with no lives. I was pleasantly surprised to find this is even better than the albums by Annie and Utada. The songs are alternately cocky, wounded, defiant, yearning and most importantly, they're all great.
AS Van Dorston

The voice is small and the sound is thin, but don't mistake this for
delicacy. Robyn's putting out, just as Madonna had once put out when she was
young and hungry. "You never were and you never will be mine" is a chant and
a lament but also a great solid truth she can hold onto. And when she tells
her story, I melt: "She had the scarf on I gave you, and you got down to tie
her laces. You looked happy and that's great. I just miss you, that's all."
(This has a personal meaning for me: back in '89 my then-wife Leslie was
struggling with a video and I said, "Imagine that Smokey had given her man a
sweater or scarf or something and so one day Smokey's out walking and she
sees it on some other girl." This suggestion helped Leslie pull the video
together. Our marriage broke up a couple of years later; I still miss her.)

Some people over on the Robyn thread were trying to say that Robyn is "pop"
not pop, which is probably true though I don't see why you can't be both,
and anyway others on my list such as Fannypack, Annie, and Franz Ferdinand
are at least as "pop" not pop as Robyn, and so were the Ramones and the
Dolls and the Stooges. What it means is that Robyn has an edge. "Konichiwa
Bitches" is the most sublimely silly rap since "Jam On It" and "Attack of
the Name Game," but with a twist of obnoxiousness; the silliness has an air
of "who gives a fuck" and "I am being gleefully transgressive and I can do
anything," which she is and which she can. Frank Kogan

Hmmm... I maybe spoke to soon. I'm listening to the album again and finding his voice kind of annoying. But I really liked some of their earlier tracks, esp. Secret Knives.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/rachelstevens.jpg

Comment:

I have OCD like tendencies in the sense that I think there is a definite, clear-cut right way (and wrong way) to go about doing things. Rachel Stevens does not help me get over this false assumption. Apparently, there really IS a definite, clear-cut right way to make a pop album in the 21st century. Yes, Anniemal's little imperfections and insecurities made it endearing. But this is pretty much perfect, and you can't beat that.
sovietpanda

've now received the finished album (which I may also be reviewing for Time Out hurrah!) and it's amazing - on a par with Anniemal, if not better. "Crazy Boys" is the entire career of Goldfrapp compressed into one song ("Nobody does it better" as it were). "All About Me" is easily the best use of a Cure sample in popular music. "I Will Be There" is Trevor Horn's Dollar in the afterlife. And let's not forget "Every Little Thing" which is schaffel pop at its finest (Akufen meets the Glitter Band with THF Drenching on dictaphone) and the nice table-turning of the concluding "Dumb Dumb."

These are initial thoughts only, but more to come once I've had a chance to settle in with the record. Still - Rachel, Sugababes, tATu, Charlotte, Robyn - it's the second coming of New Pop Mk II innit?
Marcello Carlin September 30th, 2005 10:38 AM.

I was iffy about the rejigged tracklisting but on relistening have realised that this way you have pretty much (subject to change) the three best (or most instant, at least) songs all crammed together right at the end, and yet the rest is still flawless, so it peaks and peaks and PEAKS and then it is over. Although "I Will Be There" was great where it was, but this way the first third gets to be epic instead and "Dumb Dumb" is a fantastic tidy slick closer (like "Everything You Ever Wanted" on the first GA elpee). "Negotiate With Love" has more oomph earlier on, "NGATG" is more of a heartwrenching pivot rather than being tossed away nearer the start.

"Funny How" is very nocturnal, long-dark-night-soul, the later it occurs in the running order the better.
Alex in Doncaster September 30th, 2005 9:49 PM.

on the other i'm disappointed it's not in its rightful place at #1.

on, umm, both hands i'm GUTTED you didn't use my blurb, billy. grr.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/sunsettree.jpg

Comment:

For me, the most immediate and addictive of all the Mountain Goats albums. Forget the issue of timbre; Darnielle's vocal delivery on lines like "But in the long tresses of your hair, I am a babbling brook" and "Take your foot off of the brake, for Christ's sake" makes you want to grab the one you've always wanted and kiss her/him with your mouth open. And with its lyrics, The Sunset Tree is an album with which you feel like you can really spend some quality time allowing it to tell you its story.

David Maher

other ilxors said

It took a little while to grow on me, I think because it was so heavy, but it's become one of my favorites this year. This Year-Dilaudid-Dance Music sequence is just amazing. The other highlights for me are Up the Wolves and Pale Green Things.

I love the imagery of Up The Wolves, and it took my a couple of listens to hear the line about "ever since we founded Rome" and realize that "The wolf" wasn't the step-dad. Though I'm still not sure who it is. I guess it's just hope for some surrogate or better mother.
Scott CE May 11th, 2005 9:16 PM.

The whole thing has this bittersweet redemptive quality to it. It's really powerful and touching. I think he's finally got the instrumentation right too; I loved parts of the last two albums but it still seemed like it was feeling around in the dark somewhat (with production and new instruments). There's this great subtlety on 'The Sunset Tree' and everything seems to be in the right place.
Hari A$hur$t May 31st, 2005 10:18 PM.

M83 - Before the dawn heals us:

i used to hear music in my dreams; music so beautiful, so powerful, so
perfect that i would wake up in tears.

this is that music.

album of the year. album of the decade. album of a lifetime.

12 to go, the next 2 should be interesting - then the top 10 predictions can start

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/kanyewest.jpg

Comment:

Although this is unmistakably Kanye's album, Jon Brion pushes this one over the top and into 'classic' territory. Although there were other well made and successful hip-hop albums of 2005, Late Registration is the most musically complex, while still being catchy enough to appeal to a wide audience.
Jonathan W

other ilxors said:

i am getting little disturbed reading different opinions about this album :) i liked it very much first, but soon my interest wore off. if you compare it with Blueprint (soulful samples, rap about personal matters), Kanye just isn't Jay Z, he doesnt have neither his lyrics nor his skills on mike. its a shame there is no great rapper these days able to presuade Kanye to work with him on entire album. maybe jay-z comeback album...
karl76 August 21st, 2005 11:16 PM.

as always, the best Kanye tracks are *made* by the guest talent - Drive Slow is worth it for Paul Wall (kanye's forgettable), Gold Digger has the Jamie Foxx vocals,

I don't know enough about 'flow' or whatever to make a 'he can't rap well' argument but I know he always sounds mush-mouthed and forced (except for Gold Digger, really), his personality is grating as well as boring (oooh, he's conflicted. Get in line with about four million other MCs, thanks.) and it ruins a lot of well-produced tracks.

What I notice most about the album is how much I love his drum sound - his drums are so big and warm but just the right amount of tight, with the bass drops every so often to rattle your trunk.
milozauckerman August 24th, 2005 2:22 AM.

uhhhh why do people think this? Kanye's verse is so much more memorable than Paul Walls, whose isn't bad but is generic by Paul Wall standards.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/girlsaloud.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said:

GIRLS ALOUD ROCK I SURE HOPE DIS ALBUM WONT LET DEM DOWN. LONG HOT SUMMER IS CRAP THOUGH. WHY IS EVERYONE MAKING A FUSS ABOUT 'SEE THE DAY'? IS IT MEANT TO BE THERE BEST EVER SONG OR SOMETHING?

LORNA

XX
LORNA November 18th, 2005 9:31 PM.

It SOUNDS fantastic, and is indeed fun and silly and exciting. But...I don't know. When Long Hot Summer" came out it was a blast of adrenaline, and then after a while people seem to feel that there wasn't much "there" there (I actually still really like that track); I fear the album might end up the same way.

But we'll see.

(And "Whole Lotta History" = tear-inducing. The best "song" song, if you will.)
brittle-lemon November 27th, 2005 1:23 AM.

like this album a lot better today! it's no wwtns (i second what edward said about the magnificence of 'big brother' and would claim the same for 'thank me daddy' too) but it's still brilliant. at first i thought people claiming about the fade-outs were being overly picky but they're right, though i have no problem with fade-outs per se these ones feel rather random.

in order of greatness:

1. SWINGING LONDON TOWN (discoraveboshing 4eva, this is the 'graffiti my soul' of chemistry)
2. watch me go (have we mentioned yet that this appears to have been co-written by jc chasez? and that it is like an even saucier version of the ska one on his album whose title slips my mind? the "quarter past one!" section makes me giggle with glee, as do the TWO raps)
3. wild horses (the transition from school assembly choir into banging chorus-chorus-chorus is the most wtf moment on the album outside of 'swinging london town')
4. no regrets (really very un-girls aloud; it's not really a pop ballad at all. it reminds me a little of some of the better songs off the great expectations soundtrack from a while ago - 'life in mono', 'besame mucho', 'siren' - for some reason. brilliant lyrics)
5. waiting (the most fun to dance to! contains lyric "all men are dogs so baby throw me to the wolves"! this is totally totally not meh)
6. models (great concept, great execution apart from the vocals possibly being mixed too low. should have been called 'girls girls girls')
7. it's magic (there is no song, really, anywhere in this, but it sounds ace - ie and omg it is KET-HOUSE GONE POP, this reminds me of those reverso 68 mixes of the juan maclean and manhead but in a girls aloud context)
8. see the day (RIDICULOUSLY over-the-top!)
9. racy lacey (not as annoying as i was expecting. very funny)
10. whole lotta history (this i fully expect to grow on me a lot more, i haven't really paid attention to it yet)

all the above i categorise as Very Classic.

11. biology (it's grown on me quite a bit but i still can't stand that out-of-sync percussion which doesn't let up at any point apart from the bluesy section)
12. long hot summer (even at the time it was only ok, and diminishing returns are happening)
The Lex December 6th, 2005 12:38 PM.

predictions, no order:
spoon
bloc party
andrew bird
MIA
animal collective
sufjan
LCD soundsystem
ladytron

i hope, but i'm not so confident:
gwen
clipse
shortwave set

I know he always sounds mush-mouthed and forced (except for Gold Digger, really), his personality is grating as well as boring (oooh, he's conflicted. Get in line with about four million other MCs, thanks.) and it ruins a lot of well-produced tracks.

OTM

is that David Maher or Christgau?

-- titty sanskrit (quaf...), Today. (later)

Is this a compliment? If so, I guess I'll take it. If not, touche. But am I wrong?

THE WOLF ISN'T THE STEP-DAD?!! WTF. Somebody educate me.

only saw them open for Spoon

so did I. it was SO PAINFUL. one of those situations where you just pray they finish. and then Spoon put on the lamest show I've seen them do

1. M.I.A.
2. LCD Soundsystem
3. Animal Collective
4. Bloc Party
5. Sufjan Stevens
6. Spoon
7. Vitalic
8. Jamie Lidell
9. Isolee
10. Kate Bush

But he did! And it's way better than Late Registration too!

Not to rag on Milo I just think he's crazy!

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/patrickwolf.jpg http://eur.news1.yimg.com/eur.yimg.com/xp/pressass/2638560831.jpg

most of jaymc's predictions are solid and dependable, i think.

Brooke Valentine album also slept on eh?

The Lex - in the rundown of the top 10 don't forget to post about how crap the chart is, and it must have been rigged by guitar-worshippin' american college dorks who should be listening to some new jack electropop. Don't forget now.

brooke album bizarrely slept on by the lady herself, did she bother even promoting 'girlfight' in any meaningful way?

my ILM top 10 predictions:

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
M.I.A. - Arular
Animal Collective - Feels
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
Kate Bush - Aerial
Vitalic - Ok Cowboy
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Isolée - Wearemonster
Broadcast - Tender Buttons
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase

maybes or maybe NOT: will these be OUTSIDE the top 50 or will any sneak into the top 10?

The Arcade Fire [have enough Brits voted for it?]
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Common - Be
Dälek - Absence
Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain
The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute
New Order - Waiting for the Sirens' Call
Nine Horses - Snow Borne Sorrow
Spoon - Gimme Fiction

in the UK they are NOT well known

Bring on Isolee at number 1 anyway.

especially the ones in hackney

[LET'S GO DIRTY PROJECTORS #1!)

It's my fave album too and I didn't vote for albums either. I wonder what difference would a couple of extra no. 1 votes have made.

:(

I like the smog record!

seriously, from the Pascal Gabriel/Paul Statham (B-Movie!)/Hannah Robinson Rachel contributions (not forgetting Rob Davis (Mud!) + Jewels & Stone and Shelly Poole/Damian Legassick), feel like these are who I should be watching (+ bassline garage?). we know yer names, we know your old bands, we er... like you lots, watch out!

was also my fave album of 2004, but haven't gone back to it much and mostly think of those 4 main songs... so I'd prob put Junior Boys or somat else over it now (but then there is "Heartbeat"...).

I considered this but figured there were other likelier candidates.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/unterwasser/aerial.jpg

Comment:

Still warming up to this one, though considering the absolute disaster it could have been (hello, Red Shoes) this placement may end up being too low upon reflection. The finest compliment I can give Kate's latest one is that it was an immediate reminder of both the elements that attracted me to her records back in my teen years and the reason why I still love them today. There's a sense of risk here, she's not willing to allow safety or embarrassment pull her away from her instincts. Conceptually many of the songs seem quite silly, and reading the lyric sheet certainly reinforces that perception. But songs are made for listening and that's where this album soars. Sure there are some clinkers here, but even the ones that don't quite climb the mountain have an unabashed joy of creativity that make them special. I'll take the 2nd disc over the first, with the unifying "Nocturn" currently my favorite.
Keith Sawyer

other ilxors said:

On first listen, Aerial sounds like a good substitute for sleeping pills. I'm going to give it a second and third chance, 'cause, you know, respect to Kate and all, but this veers dangerously close to Windham Hill territory in places.
-- John Hunter (john_hunter3865...) (webmail), November 1st, 2005 10:21 PM.
So it's basically just another one of those Robert Wyatt-meets-James Joyce-meets Janet Jackson-meets-Joni Mitchell-meets-Fleetwood Mac-meets-The The-meets-Roxy Music sort of records?
Josh in Chicago November 3rd, 2005 4:01 AM.

Aerial b**ches!! Are you hearing this shiznit? King of the Mountain is the jump off, Pi is the f*cking joint, the rest of this sh*t is off the f*cking chain!!

I rather like it.
Dr J Bowman November 7th, 2005 1:50 PM.

Aerial's a Romantic album definitely - landscape imagery, the quest for the Sublime, love and sex - but it seems tempered with a concern for self-sufficiency of musical form that's Classicist. Maybe that's why there's no big Choons: the music's carefully evoking a specific range of emotions. There is lots of passion, ("Mrs Bartolozzi" is positively dirty, excuse the pun) but it's often reflective or remembered: absent lover in "Mrs B", absent mother in "A Coral Room", absent parents in "A Sky of Honey" (?) But they're absences like a Taoist would understand them - necessary centres around which stuff like love happens.
I'm thinking out loud now. I think this is a lot of Aerial's current appeal to me, the formal marshalling of the kitchen sink. Maybe it's also a sort of answer to bugged out earlier. It's not bland, it's self-disciplined.
The Marquis of Cauliflower November 9th, 2005 8:36 PM.

username - ilxalbums
password - ilxor

I voted for "Anniemal" a year ago.

ah sorry i see it was in the top 3 last year!
-- piscesboy (j...), January 18th, 2006 4:43 PM. (later)

Read, then post.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/broadcast.jpg

Comment:

Broadcast continue to work out their United States of America fetish for our enjoyment. Each album seems to develop more consistency with fewer throwaway tracks. This one has a buzzier lo-fi feel with a tone that I found irresistible though others may feel is a bit harsh. More pop than drone, with "Goodbye Girls" and "Michael A Grammar" as evidence.
Keith Sawyer

other ilxors said:

I keep going on about how much Easier and maybe Better it is than Haha Sound, which is unfair, I have had a lot more time for that record since I heard this one. Maybe because this = their current StateOfMind and is more in keeping with what I always wanted them to be like (clean lines, room to breathe, bouncy-ish), whereas Haha Sound was less so, and sounded vaguely like potential squandered when I first heard it. But now it slots happily into the Broadcast Storybook. A big whirly diversion. So I will probably end up liking it best, eventually.
But this one is bracing fizz and I continue to be delighted by it. "Corporeal" especially (Trish duets with a collapsing building to luscious effect)
Alex in Sheffield August 1st, 2005 3:15 PM.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/isolee.jpg

Comment:

other ilxors said

every track has so many ideas, it's like they begin and you think "well this is a nice groove", and then more parts keep coming in, like even in the last 30 seconds of some of the tracks something totally new and different will come in, it's so unpredictable and it gives it this massive depth.
So good to have a record you can really dive into!
Ronan May 3rd, 2005 11:45 AM.

OK, so I've been listening to this album a lot as something has been bothering me about it. I have to say that while Isolee is the absolute master of "texture", this album is lacking in direction. No matter how beautiful they sound, the tracks just don't go anywhere. They're almost like beautifully layered interstitial tracks - the problem is I keep waiting for it to really take off - even something as lovely as Schrapnell just seems like verse after verse. Rest was much more fully realized in this regard. As such Wearemonster is a somewhat frustrating experience for me.
Spencer Chow July 18th, 2005 7:17 PM.

I think this album deserves all the acclaim, and "Enrico" is maybe my favorite track -- it's the one I play first for friends who don't already know the album. I love how that track in particularly combines so many improbable things: a schaffel feel (in the breathy vocal stuff), straight techno rhythms, scratchy rhythm guitar, dub effects. And the punchy snare hit that comes around every once in a while is such a perfect sound, perfectly timed.
National Roffle Association December 22nd, 2005 7:09 PM.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/illinoise.jpg

Comment:

This record may have been hyped a hell of lot, but, if I'm not mistaken, discussion was pretty much limited to Stevens "project" and his abilities as an arranger, with a rave about the subject matter from the natives here and there. What about the fact that Sufjan finally came into his falsetto (see "Concerning the UFO Sighting," "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," and "Zombies," for starters)? What about the fact that the man actually displays a sense of humor? The record is called "Sufjan Stevens invites you to Come On!! Feel the Illinoise!!!" for fuck's sake! Of course the thing is overlong, and yes, there are maybe more than a handful of throwaway songs. And yeah, there is more freakin' majesty leaking out this thing's butt-crack than you could find in the breakfast cereal of the Polyphonic Spree. I mean, Sufjan's doing good work, but that doesn't mean we can't crack a smile at some of his goofy-ass shit. But take it less than deadly serious and you've got yourself a pretty nice little record. That's right, I said "little." At its best, Illinois, is a record of little things. Ferris wheels and books of poetry. Look, a zombie! Hey, a bunch of confederate soldiers' bones just washed up on the bank of river! La dee da! I'm not saying the man is Richard Pryor or anything, just that he's not William Faulkner, and that's just fine.
David Maher

other ilxors said:

I agree Sufjan could definitely benefit from some self-editing, I'm sure that's part of the reason Seven Swans is my favorite of his, it just seems tighter and definitely more lyrically focused. Like Michigan, Illinois can be a little draining to listen to all the way through (which is I'm sure how he intended it to be digested), but there are lots of gems - "Casimir Pulaski Day" is indeed heartbreaking, my personal favorite is probably "Chicago," but "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades" also gets my goosebumps up.
Josh Love June 30th, 2005 2:15 AM.

like a lot of the instrumental tracks and/or interludes on Illinois more than the actual song songs. The Black Hawk War, In this Temple, Out of Egypt etc. they seem more felt and full than the rest of the album. the Pitchfork reviewer (9.2???!) tries to suggest that he doesn't really need to be intimate with his subject matter b/c its all about taking snapshots etc... but i think that is simple and grasping, i think he really did have a problem with proximity to subject matter on this album - you can feel it. ok the treatment is more theatrical/drama and less personal/sober, but still... is he comfortable with that and does it work? anyway, i'm feeling these nonverbal tracks more.
Susan Douglas July 6th, 2005 8:05 AM.

Yes, I sort of agree. Wearemonster just seems to slide past my ears when I put it on.

CREDIBILITY

XPOST

But I still think it's worth defending, it has TUNES!! I'm possibly misreading Spencer but I don't think it's as aimless as he makes it sound at all.

I really do think the album is quite an achievement.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/blocparty.jpg

Comment:

I got a hold of the Bloc Party album at the end of 2004, and I couldn't stop listening to it for the next three months. Combined with their B-Sides, Bloc Party were immensely entertaining. They put on a great live show, and Matt Tong proved to be a juggernaut on the kit. Time has not been so kind to Kele Okereke's yelping vocals and a couple of the weaker songs, but Bloc Party hangs in at number ten for emerging so fully formed with a distinctive sound.
AS Van Dorston.

other ilxors said:

Bloc Party have got the romantic chord-change down pat. They make my eyes feel too big for my head. I fucking love this record. I'm getting Damon Albarn if he was actually from London and not a cunt. I'm getting Long Fin Killie gone razorsharp. I'm getting early Disco Inferno with less accent on the defeatism. I'm getting Wire. There's a real interest in how the record sounds too - it's beautiful. Tight as hell and rhythmically brilliant. I fucking love this record.
Sick Mouthy January 4th, 2005 10:01 AM.

She's Hearing Voices - This Modern Love - Pioneers - Price Of Gas - So Here We Are is a fantastic sequence of songs. Best on any straight ahead guitar record I've heard in a long time.
Can I be the first to mention late 90s R*d**h**d on this thread, if they were divested of much of the moping and kept the shimmering textures and guitars that don't sound like guitars and serrated Jonny Greenwood solos and good drums.
Matt DC January 4th, 2005 12:36 PM.

M.I.A. - Arular
Animal Collective - Feels
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
Vitalic - Ok Cowboy
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase

It does? They seem the archetypal "band you like not love" to me.

This is totally a case of me not really getting it again, I know. But even the people I know who like it aren't CRAZY about it or anything.

Uh ... Bright Eyes?

In what sense is he not from London?

xp

xp

Yes, but LONDON is in LONDON.

Back to the poll

No Touch?

xxp

xp!

Yes ... like Wilco and Interpol from past years, nobody will admit they like them and yet their albums always finish in the top ten of year-end polls.

Rooting for "Feels" is fun.

I liked the LCD album! but I liked "yr city's a sucker" on the bonus disc more than anything on the album itself.

The best part of the LCD Soundsystem album was the bonus disc...should that count as part of the album? I wasn't bowled over by the first disc myself...

~ 6xpost

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/animalcollective.jpg

Comment:

Compared to the sleepy backwoods folk of earlier releases (that's a putdown only if you want it to be), "Feels" teems with adrenaline-fueled life. I still feel strongly about my post-"Sung Tongs" assertion that the ideal Animal Collective album contains only three minute pop songs and twelve minute drone pieces. In that sense, they could have improved the album by roughly doubling the lengths of "Turns Into Something", "Banshee Beat", and "The Purple Bottle", but admittedly, my heart's not in these complaints about near-perfection. Barry Bruner.

other ilxors said

Beautiful, everything about it. The fast songs are delirious, the slow songs are gorgeous. "Banshee Beat" alone exceeds any expectations I had.
I never liked their early stuff before Sung Tongs, and I didn't think they could top that one. But goddamn, this is a remarkable record. Really blowing me out of the water at the moment.
PB August 19th, 2005 7:01 AM.

This album sounds a little more meticulously made and professional though. Like they are aware that a decent amount of people are paying attention to their music. To me their naive-hippy-chant vibe is gone and now musicians are trying to recreate something similar. It may not sound as authentic to me in that particular way but the songs are fabulous and their isnt one dud. It flows great as well and the last track is perfect.
jmeister August 26th, 2005 12:42 AM.

i really like daft punk is playing at my house and tribulations. but never as tired as when i'm waking up is tripe, it almost sinks the whole thing

Same same with the LCD album. The songs I find myself coming back to are the singles -- Losing My Edge, Yr City's A Sucker, Yeah!, etc. The proper album cuts are good, but not good enough to keep me from skipping through the better parts of disc 2.

yes. it seemed so... unnecessary! it kills the momentum too. remove that and add in another electro track and people would have a much higher opinion of the album, i reckon.

i voted for that as a track of the year. nobody else did, it seems.

can't see the fuss about bloc party themselves, though.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/vitalic.jpg

Comment:

Here are your directions: leave house on a Friday evening. Spend entire weekend reaching new heights of debauchery and hedonism. Consume as many Bad Substances as your body will allow, and then double the dose. Put OK Cowboy on when you finally think your brain's turned into cheese. Do it all again! For an entire summer!

Key tracks: 'Poney Part 1', 'La Rock 01', 'No Fun'
The Lex

other ilxors said:

This album is insanely good. The old tracks like La Rock 01 work perfectly in the album context, and everything new is simply brilliant. Right now it sounds to me like the best dance music album since "Homework". For me, the great thing about that album is how it simultaneously works as a compilation of singles seemingly constructed strictly for dancefloor use and a complete album appropriate for home listening (well, more likely home dancing, but still). The same thing can be said about OK Cowboy. I think it's a pretty rare thing.
I thought I'd grown tired of La Rock 01 and the Poney tracks forever but since i got this I just keep listening to them over and over again.
Kornél Kovács March 1st, 2005 9:07 PM.

Velvet Underground = whiney music for teenagers and early 20s (though I still like 'em into my 50s; "whiny music for teenagers" is not necessarily a criticism)

M.I.A. - Arular - favourites
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem 2nd

3rd what will it be?

boards of canada?

or
the arcade fire? the mars volta? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? New Order? Shortwave Set? Goldfrapp? Opeth? Spoon? Mew? Colleen ? Nine Horses?

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/spoon.gif

Comment:

other ilxors said:

i have listened to it, on-off, for the best part of the last 24 hours, and i'm of the opinion that it is an almighty shuffle forward and their best record yet. now, bear in mind that i have a 100% record of thinking the most recent Spoon is the best, since Sneaks, but that's because it has been true every time! to paraphrase myself elsewhere, without losing the Spoon-y spartan essence, the songs are somehow more musical and substantial. i love 'Mathematical Mind' - seriously a contender for best Spoon track to date.
fsharp February 17th, 2005 9:04 PM.

Avec un peu de recul, this album has definitely grown on me now that I listen to it for the first time in a week. I love "The Beast and The Dragon, Adored" as the opener, as it sets the tone for the rest of the album. There are no *peaks* per se, which is always hard to deal with on first listens, but I really like the prevailing mood of this album. I still think that "The Infinite Pet" is a relative clunker though.
alex in montreal February 25th, 2005 2:41 PM.

Monsieur Valentine = dead ringer for early Auteurs. Cello riffs and sparse piano / guitar stuff. Spoon escape being awful as a result because the guy's voice is better than Luke Haines. Or maybe it's just that an American accent sounds more exotic.
alext March 20th, 2005 9:41 PM.

US INDIE RAWK STRIKES IN AT 3 !

Don't tell me Pitchfork types: Clap you hands if you [don't] want talking heads karaoke are NEXT

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000AP2ZAS.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

This top ten is shaping out pretty cool, except of course M.I.A. at #1

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/lcdsoundsystem.jpg

Comment:
Record collecting geek, label co-owner and producer James Murphy was frustrated with the dance music scene he was involved in. It didn't rock. Instead of complain about it, he formed a band. It's not the most original concept, but LCD Soundsystem pulls it off flawlessly. It's danceable, it pokes fun at hipsters, and it rocks like a motherfucker.
AS Van Dorston.

Other ilxors said:

massive, massive, massive disappointment.

The singles disc is so much better than the album proper, so SO much better.

There are too many guitars and rub vocals, and not enough disco/stuff you can dance to.
I think I'll take it back to the shop tomorrow.
The Lex February 3rd, 2005 11:20 AM

sorry, no, i'm loving this whole thing. i like the guitars, i like the vocals, i like the style. and (x-post) i love on repeat. it reminds me in part of soft cell and in part of the normal.
grimly fiendish February 3rd, 2005 11:53 AM.

this album is seriously crap, for me. it's like 8 "give it ups" and not one "losing my edge". if you didn't get the bonus disc with the cd I'd actually tell customers not to buy this, out of shame. Ronan February 3rd, 2005 11:54 AM.

but really, lcd soundsystem was one of those albums where everyone was like, "oh man this is either going to be awesome or it's going to suck completely", and it didn't do either, it just sort of did everything you expected it to do. it's perfectly enjoyable but it's not the sort of album that people really get passionate about. it feels gimmicky in a way, though i'm not sure it actually is.
gear January 19th, 2006 10:53 PM.

I'm kind of amazed Kate Bush placed so low - I was expecting Aerial to go top three at least.

(Ack, LCD Fucking Soundsystem. I'm with The Lex and Ronan here).

hey, at least one-twentieth of their vote was from glasgow ;)

Mr. Snrub sez MIA = More Inane Awful Muzak

1. M.I.A ? Arular
(490.5 points, 36 votes, 7 number ones)

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e128/ilxalbums/mia.jpg

Comment:

Savvy, self-mythologizing electro-hip-hop delivers on the hype.
O Nate

All the reasons she was slagged off (totally faux, art school graduate, can't really rap or make proper beats, exploiter of global street music) were what made her great. All the reasons she was praised (so real, so conscious, her dad's a freedom fighter don'tcha know) were at best irrelevant. But she ended up sounding like no one else, because no one else was caught between the two poles in exactly the place MIA was: the second-gen immigrant unsure as to wear the accoutrements of a second-hand ingrained culture to embrace her roots or for an art project, the pop enthusiast magpieing up the shiniest bits of the music she was digging and smoothing out its edges by equal measures of necessity and invention. A triumph of genius over scenius.

Key tracks: '10 Dollar', 'Bucky Done Gun', 'URAQT'
The Lex

other ilxors said:

Couldn't single out one comment from this monster thread..
This is the thread where we anticipate and then flip out over how great M.I.A.'s 'Arular' is

That just made me spit beer.

No, the new HMHB has great moments but isn't that hot overall.

question how many albums got at least 2 votes?

also can we have a laugh at coldplay's position in the poll?

The Isolee/Vitalic divide - it's like smart vs stupid techno, possibly...

i'm surprised Jed seems to like LCD! there are a lot of great bits on that album.

100 Devin Davis - Lonely People of the World Unite 35 2 1
96 Sugababes - Taller in more ways 36 3 0
96 Mannie Fresh - The mind of… 36 3 0
96 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II 36 3 0
96 Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Days Of Mars 36 3 0
95 Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow 36.5 4 0
94 Shortwave Set - Collecting your debt 37 4 0
93 Herman Dune - Not on top 37 2 1
92 Soulwax - Nite Versions 37.5 3 0
90 Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane - At Carnegie Hall 38 20
90 Fall - Complete Peel Sessions box 38 2 0
89 The Chap - Ham 39 3 0
88 Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono 39 4 0
87 Various - Kompakt Total 6 39 5 0
86 Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy 39 3 1
85 Rhythm and Sound - See Mi Yah 40.5 3 0
84 Gang Gang Dance - God's Money 41 3 0
83 TATU - Dangerous and moving 42 3 0
82 Eluvium - Talk among the trees 42 4 0
81 Go-Betweens - Oceans apart 43 4 0
80 Silver Jews - Tanglewood numbers 44 3 1
79 Jesu - Jesu 44.5 3 1
78 Modeselektor - Hello Mom! 45 3 0
77 Venetian Snares - Rossz Czillag Alatt Szuletett 46 3
76 M.A.N.D.Y - Body Language 47 3 0
75 Clipse - We got it for cheap vol 1 & 2 48 5 0
74 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - CYHSY 49 6 0
73 Opeth - Ghost Reveries 49.5 3 1
72 Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins 49.5 4 1
71 Goldfrapp - Supernature 50 6 0
70 Outrageous Cherry - Our love will change the world 52 3
69 Architecture in Helsinki - In case we die 52 4 1
68 Decemberists - Picaresque 54 5 0
67 Fall - Fall Heads Roll 54 4 1
66 Go Team - Thunder Lightning Strike 54 5 0
65 Stars - Set yourself on fire 54 6 0
64 Fannypack - See you next Tuesday 55 4 1
63 Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche a Bamako 55 4 2
62 Various - Run the Road 56 7 0
61 Akron Family - Akron Family 57 4 1
60 Fiery Furnaces - Rehearsing my choir 57 6 0
59 Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue 57 7 0
58 Black Mountain - Black Mountain 58 4 0
57 Andrew Bird - The Mysterious production of eggs 59 5
56 Richard Hawley - Coles Corner 60 4 1
55 Jamie Lidell - Multiply 61 6 0
54 Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock N Roll 63 6 0
53 Electrelane - Axes 63 5 1
52 Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft 63.5 5 1
51 Fiery Furnaces - EP 64 6 0
50 Daft Punk - Human after all 64 6 0
49 Franz Ferdinand - You could have it so much better… 65 7
48 Smog - A River ain't too much 65 4 1
47 Maximo Park - A certain trigger 66 6 0
46 Depeche Mode - Playing the angels 66.5 6 0
45 Annie - Anniemal 67 5 0
44 Juan Maclean - Less than human 67.5 7 0
43 Dangerdoom - The Mouse and the Mask 68.5 9 0
42 Bright Eyes - I'm wide awake it's morning 71 7 0
41 My Morning Jacket - Z 72 6 1
40 Tom Vek - We have sound 73.5 4 0
39 Alan Braxe & Friends - The Upper Cut 73.5 6 0
38 Konono no.1 - Congotronics 76.5 9 0
37 Stephen Malkmus - Face the truth* 78 6 0
36 Ellen Allien - Thrills 89 7 0
35 Whites Stripes - Get behind me Satan 90 10 0
34 Missy Elliot - The Cookbook 91.5 7 1
33 Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine 95.5 8 0
32 Patrick Wolf - Wind in the wires 97 6 1
31 Madonna - Confessions on a dancefloor 97.5 8 0
30 Low - The Great Destroyer 100 8 0
29 Sigur Ros - Takk 101.5 11 1
28 Deerhoof - The Runners Four 102 8 0
27 Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary 104.5 9 0
26 Kelley Polar - Love songs of the Hanging Gardens 105 8
25 The Clientele - Strange Geometry* 105.5 9 0
24 Ladytron - The Witching Hour 111 9 0
23 Saint Etienne - Tales from Turnpike House 111 8 2
22 Out Hud - Let us never speak of it again 114 8 0
21 Sleater Kinney - The Woods 115 11 0
20 Antony and the Johnsons - I am a bird now 116 12 0
19 New Pornographers - Twin Cinema 125.5 9 1
18 M83 - Before dawn heals us 141 11 2
17 Gorillaz - Demon Days 142.5 12 2
16 Hold Steady - Separation Sunday 154 13 1
15 Robyn - Robyn 155 11 1
14 Rachel Stevens - Come and get it 159 12 1
13 Mountain Goats - Sunset Tree 174 13 0
12 Kanye West - Late Registration 177 14 0
11 Girls Aloud - Chemistry 177 14 0
10 Kate Bush - Aerial 181 11 5
9 Broadcast - Tender Buttons 192 15 0
8 Isolee - Wearmonster 200 13 2
7 Sufjan Stevens - Illinois 205 16 1
6 Bloc Party - Silent alarm 206 19 1
5 Animal Collective - Feels 208 19 0
4 Vitalic - OK Cowboy 217.5 20 2
3 Spoon - Gimme Fiction 221.5 20 2
2 LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem 333.5 26 2
1 MIA - Arular 490.5 36 7

That's it for this year. Thanks to all who voted, who commented and wrote pieces. Apologies to anyone who's emails I've ignored or blurbs I've missed, just a side effect of the chaos of my life, and not a personal dis.

The Eagle eyed will notice that Daft Punk is in a different position in the list above, I made an error and credited it with points it didn't deserve, it drops 7 places and the ones immedeiately above each move up one. No others were affected.

I'll try to list the rest sometime this weekend.

DJ Martian, Coldplay =177

OTM!!! Vitalic just reminds me of all the stuff that I heard in the 90's 'electronica' years (not any specific acts, just generally) that's totally, totally dated and worthless to me now.

Stevem i like the LCD a fair bit and voted it #6 in albums with Movement and Yr city's a sucker #s 8 and 18 in the tracks poll.

albums

1 Smog "A River Ain't Too Much To Love"
2 Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom- "days of Mars"
3 Isolée - Wearemonster
4 The Fall "Fall Heads Roll"
5 Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
6 LCD Soundsytem - LCD Soundsysem
7 Rythm and Sound "see Mi Yah"
8 Bohren und Der Club of Gore - Geisterfaust
9 Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
10 Gorillaz - Demon Days

tracks

1 - Morane - "Electric Pilot Girl (club Version)"
2 - Black Leotard Front - "Casual Friday"
3 - Noze - "Kitchen"
4 - Tori Alamaze - "Dont Cha"/ "Don't Ya"
5 -Theo Parrish - "Falling Up (Carl Craig Mix)"
6 - Nina Nastasia "Bird of Cuzco"
7 - Hot Chip - "Over and Over"
8 - LCD Soundsystem - "Movement"
9 - MFA -"The Difference it makes (superpitcher mix)"
10 - Isolee - My Hi-Matic
11 - Black Dice - Smiling Off (luomo Mix)
12 - Nemesi - "Cosmica (Lindstrom Mix)
13 - Black Mountain - No Hits
14 - The Books - Be Good To Them Always
15 - Carl craig - "sandstorm"
16 - Chicken Lips - "sweet Cow - Lindstrom Mix"
17 - David Sylvian - The Only Daughter (remixed by Ryoji Ikeda)
18 - LCD Sounsystem - Your City's a Sucker
19 - Ying Yang Twins - Wait (The Whisper Song)
20 - Smog - The Well

100 Devin Davis - Lonely People of the World Unite
96 Mannie Fresh - The mind of…
96 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter
96 Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Days Of Mars
70 Outrageous Cherry - Our love will change the world
64 Fannypack - See you next Tuesday

Billy are you sure you didn't forget to add up the votes for Boards of Canada ;-)

TWO VOTES? jesus! o well.

and i was cripplingly wrong about the arcade fire. [blushes]

Glaring omissions!: Superwolf, Jan Jelinek, Six Organs of Admittance.

Here's hoping ILM catches up with DIRTY PROJECTORS in 2014!

Martian, are you being ironic? I can't tell.

even comparing say that late 90s on usenet alt.music.alternative to 2005 - there has been massive changes in the way people find out about music - more music forums, more webzines, blogs, mp3 websites, download culture, internet radio stations, bbc listen again, more sophisticated record label and artist websites.

1. Isolée - WeAreMonster

2. Audion - Suckfish
I'm not really surprised this didn't show up in the top 100. But one of the most common complaints I read about album-length dance-music releases is how they're spoiled by attempts to provide relief/contrast. Suckfish is full-on and relentless and it still manages to hold my interest from start to finish. I have a feeling the jokey track titles prevented some folks from taking it seriously.

3. Richard Davis - Details

4. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

5. Deerhoof - The Runners Four

6. Vitalic - OK Cowboy

7. My Morning Jacket - Z
I'm ashamed to have voted for this. I think the band are great performers, individually and as a unit. I gambled that it would grow on me but instead I've completely lost interest.

8. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

9. Alog - Miniatures
Today I wouldn't rate this quite so high. The best tracks kick ass but it's uneven.

10. Autechre - Untilted

11. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

12. M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us
Today I would rate this a little higher; turns out it's foreground music.

13. The Juan Maclean - Less Than Human

14. Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself

15. Animal Collective - Feels

16. Coloma - Dovetail

17. The Clientele - Strange Geometry

18. Spoon - Gimme Fiction

19. Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase

20. Jan Jelinek - Kosmischer Pitch

can't believe this only got four votes...who was the other one who voted it #1?

Still pretty surprised Ellen Allien made the cut, stoked for the Kate Bush placing, very shocked Modeselektor placed at all given how late that was released in the year and how little action their thread gets.

Albums
1. Royksopp - The Understanding
2. Chelonis R. Jones - Dislocated Genius
3. Animal Collective - Feels
4. Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
5. Arthur Russell - World Of Echo
6. M.A.N.D.Y. - Body Language
7. Richard Davis - Details
8. DJ Mark Marcelo - Ignant Mix
9. Lindstrom & Prins Thomas -Lindstrom & Prins Thomas
10. Statik - Connected
11. Konono no. 1 - Congotronics
12. Wighnomy Bros. - Remikks Potpourri
13. Murcof - Remembranza
14. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Days Of Mars
15. DJ Naughty - One Night In Berlin
16. Major Swellings - Major Swellings
17. Vladislav Delay - The Four Quarters
18.Jan Jelinek - Kosmischer
19. Ennio Morricone - Crime And Dissonance
20. Jay Jay Johanson - Rush

Tracks
1. Amerie - 1 Thing
2. Shola Ama-With U
3. M83 -Teen Agst (Luciano Mix)
4. Kode9 & Space Ape - Kingstown
5. DJ Shadow ft. Turf Talk & Keak Da Sneak - 3 Freaks
6. Geiger - Cocain-e
7. Annie - Heartbeat (Alan Braxe Mix)
8. Lindstrom - I Feel Space
9. Young Jeezy - Go Crazy
10. The Juan Maclean - Dance With Me
11. Magda - 48 Hour Crack In Your Bass
12.Rammstein - Keine Lust (Blackstrobe Mix)
13. Royksopp - Only This Moment
14.Ruff Sqwad - Underground
15. Skream - Request Line
16. Clyde Carson - Soul Glo
17. Nathan Fake - Coheed (Michael Mayer mix)
18. Black Dice - Smiling Off (Luomo Mix)
19. Fred Everything - Friday (Trentemoller mix)
20. Roll Deep - When I'm Ere

also THANKS, BILLY DODS.

xp - no, I cheated. it was december 2004. but such a good track.

11 Lawrence - The Night Will Last Forever (Novamute)
12 Es - Sateenkaarisuudelma (Kraak)
13 Endless Boogie - White (Mound Duel)
14 Gang Gang Dance - God's Money (Social Registry)
15 Hum of the Druid - Societal (SNSE)
16 Teotihuacán tape (New Age)
17 4G - Cloud (Erstwhile)
18 Mouthus - Slow Globes (Troubleman Unlimited)
19 Andrew Chalk - The River That Flows Into The Sands (Faraway Press)
20 Dandy Jack - Los Siete Cstigos (Perlon)

SINGLES:

1 Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl (Get Physical)
2 Lindstrom - I Feel Space (Playhouse)
3 Skream - Request Line (Tempa)
4 Amerie - One Thing (Major Label)
5 Ricardo Villalobos - Sieso (Cadenza)
6 Luciano - Octogonal (Cadenza)
7 Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone (Major Label)
8 Sleep Archive - Research (Sleeparchive)
9 Andre Kraml - Safarai [James Holden Remix] (Crosstown Rebels)
10 Triola - Leuchtturm [Wighnomy's Polarzipper Remix] (Kompakt)

11 Cassy - Night To Remember (Perlon)
12 Wighnomy Bros - Pele Bloss (Freude Am Tanzen)
13 Daso - Daybreak (My Best Friend)
14 Argy - Love Dose [Luciano Remix] (Soma)
15 Stefan Goldmann - Phraselab (Perlon)
16 Nathan Fake - Dinamo (Traum)
17 My My - Serpentine (Playhouse)
18 Magda - 48 Hour Crack In My Bass (Minus)
19 Break 3000 - Flash A (My Best Friend)
20 Mathew Jonson - Marionette [Live Edit] (Wagon Repair)

kate bush should have been higher, up, up, up on the roof.

so i really was the only person to care about lil kim this year :(

can't believe i haven't heard the modeselektor album yet!

1. Robyn - Robyn
2. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways
3. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
4. Tatu - Dangerous And Moving
5. GZA vs. DJ Muggs - Grand Masters
6. Afrirampo - Kore Ga Mayaku Da
7. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
8. Ghostface Killah & Trife - Put It On The Line
9. Missy Elliott - The Cookbook
10. Cowboy Troy - Loco Motive
11. Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It
12. Daft Punk - Human After All
13. MIA - Arular
14. Doc Brown - The Document
15. Pussycat Dolls - PCD
16. John Legend - Get Lifted
17. Chemical Brothers - Push The Button
18. Fannypack - See You Next Tuesday
19. Mylo - Destroy Rock & Roll
20. Antony And The Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

Songs:

1. Kelis - Get Along With You (Fake ID Mix)
2. Basement Jaxx - Oh My Gosh
3. Girls Aloud - Biology
4. Robyn - Be Mine
5. Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
6. Tatu - All About Us
7. Vitalic - My Friend Dario
8. Sugababes - Push The Button
9. Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches
10. Sugababes - 2 Hearts
11. GZA vs DJ Muggs ftr Raekwon - Destruction of a Guard
12. Rachel Stevens - Nothing Good About This Goodbye
13. Mylo - Drop The Pressure (Rex The Dog Remix)
14. Cowboy Troy - I Play Chicken (With The Train)
15. GZA vs DJ Muggs - Smothered Mate
16. Lady Sovereign - Chi Ching
17. Annie - Heartbeat (Alan Braxe Remix)
18. John Legend - Ordinary People
19. Roots Manuva - Colossal Insight
20. Rex the Dog - Frequency

ALBUMS

01 Vitalic - OK Cowboy
02 Kate Bush - Aerial
03 Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It
04 MANDY - Body Language Vol 1
05 Lil Kim - The Naked Truth
06 Kanye West - Late Registration
07 Ellen Allien - Thrills
08 MIA - Arular
09 Girls Aloud - Chemistry
10 Chelonis R Jones - Dislocated Genius
11 DJ Bossman - Street Anthems Vol 2
12 Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter
13 Madonna - Confessions On A Dance Floor
14 Sugababes - Taller In More Ways
15 Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
16 Ruff Sqwad - Guns'N'Roses Vol 1
17 Saul Williams - Saul Williams
18 Diplo - FabricLive24
19 The Glimmers - DJ Kicks
20 Roots Manuva - Awfully Deep

TRACKS

01 Ciara ft Ludacris - Oh
02 Daddy Yankee ft Pitbull, NORE & Lil Jon - Gasolina (rmx)
03 Kanye West ft Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
04 Vitalic - My Friend Dario
05 Tomas Andersson - Washing Up (Tiga's Na Na Na Na rmx)
06 Röyksopp - What Else Is There? (Trentemöller rmx)
07 MIA - 10 Dollar
08 Girls Aloud - Swinging London Town
09 MANDY vs Booka Shade - Body Language
10 Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone
11 Amerie ft TI - Touch (rmx)
12 Destra Garcia - Independent Ladies
13 Missy Elliott ft Ciara - Lose Control (Jacques Lu Cont rmx)
14 Rachel Stevens - Negotiate With Love
15 Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl
16 LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations (Lindstrom rmx)
17 tATu - All About Us
18 Petey Pablo ft Rasheeda - Vibrate
19 Ce'Cile ft KC Jockey - Gwaan Hype
20 Baxendale - I Built This City (Michael Mayer rmx)

It was me.

This made the 2004 poll, low down, Martin.

Confession time: I haven't heard Arular.

I LOVED the m.i.a. mixtape. I think it ruined the album for me a bit
This is why I haven't bothered with Arular up to now. I nearly voted for the mixtape actually, since I only got to hear it in 2005.

Interesting that Barima's thread title for his Shortwave Set thread has now become the official ILM title for the album!! I do hope this confusion is not responsible for its low-ish chart position, if you see what I mean. :P

I forgot to vote for the Broadcast album. It would have gone up a couple of places if I had, but #9 is a fair position so I'm not that bothered about it now.

My votes:

Songs (not ranked)
Sugababes - Push the Button
Sugababes - Red Dress
Kanye West feat, Cam'ron and Consequence - Gone
Kate Bush - King of the Mountain
Kate Bush - Nocturn
Amerie - 1 Thing
Isolée - Schrapnell
Missy Elliott - Can't Stop
Basement Jaxx - Oh My Gosh
Stereolab - Interlock
Saint Etienne - Milk Bottle Symphony
Daft Punk - Robot Rock
Lindstrøm - I Feel Space
Fannypack - 718
Jammer feat. Wiley, D Double E, Kano And Goodz - Destruction VIP
Girls Aloud - Biology
Girls Aloud - See The Day
Lady Sovereign - Random
Vitalic - Repair Machines
Gorillaz feat. Sean Ryder - DARE

LPs
1. Kate Bush - Aerial
2. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
3. Señor Coconut - Coconut FM: Legendary Latin Club Tunes
4. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
5. Kevin Blechdom - Eat My Heart Out
6. Isolée - We Are Monster
7. Missy Elliott - The Cookbook
8. Saint Etienne - Tales from Turnpike House/ Up the Wooden Hills EP
9. Daft Punk - Human After All
10. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - The Days Of Mars
11. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways
12. 50 Foot Wave - Golden Ocean
13. Princess Superstar - My Machine
14. Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine
15. Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
16. Various - Run The Road
17. Murcof - Remembranza
18. Rachel Stevens - Come and Get It
19. The Shortwave Set - The Debt Collection
20. The Mitchell Brothers - A Breath of Fresh Attire

Albums:

Kate Bush: Aerial
Miguel “Anga” Diaz: Echu Mingua
Mohammad Iskandar: Hakini
Jon Hassell: Maarifa Sreet
Gilberto Santa Rosa/El Gran Combo: Asi es Nuestra Navidad
Yousef Shamoun: Taneh wu Raneh
Fiona Apple: Incredible Machine
Various: Choubi Choubi! Folk & Pop Music from Iraq [Sublime Frequencies]
Mayito Rivera: Llego La Hora
Calle 13: Calle 13

Singles/Songs:

Daddy Yankee: Gasolina
Fiona Apple: Extraordinary Machine
Cesar Pedroso: Del Trabajo A La Casa
Kate Bush: King of the Mountain
Voltio with Calle 13: Ojalai
N’Klabe: I Love Salsa
Kronos Quartet/Asha Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum (Take Another Toke)
Calle 13: Se Vale To-To
Mayito Rivera - Negrito Bailador
Vico C - Tu Corazon Ya No Aguanta Pela

I did wonder, but I couldn't see any way of determining a real year for it, so I thought I'd include it.

1. Nedelle
2. M.I.A.
3. Malk
4. Aoki Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko
5. Dead Machines
5. Billy Corgan
6. Why?
7. Excepter
8. Fiery Furnaces “Rehearsing My Choir”
10. Animal Collective
11. Sleater-Kinney
12. Cam’ron
13. Mary Timony
14. Wooden Wand
15. Metalux
16. The Silver Jews
17. Non Nous Plus
18. Deerhoof

Plus some other stuff I can’t remember now