ILM's 2015 End of Year Albums & Tracks Poll / VOTING THREAD

That was my nice version! I complain every year but still vote so I have only myself to blame.

Seeing as Roz managed to get this nomination in in time and make me realise it was actually eligible, please please get behind Suiyoubi no Campanella - Jeanne d'Arc in your track ballots. It's so good.

Also if you want completely insane J-pop try the Heaven & Hell remix of You'll Melt More's Hamidasumo (the original is quite fun but the remix is excellent).

Nicolas Jaar has no shortage of support here on ILM, I'm just campaigning for the idea that his four "Nymphs" releases, all during 2015, constitute an album -- a pretty spectacular one at that! Seven tracks, 53 minutes of music, gorgeous sound design, clickety microhouse percussion pushing and pulling against the beat, vocal clips rendered transparent and slippery, harpsichords, pianos, sawtooth waves, dramatic pauses, ...

Here's the whole cycle on Spotify and on YouTube.

I have to say I am torn about that Jaar release - I love it a lot, and if I do consider it an album it would definitely make my ballot, but... it wasn't released as an album. So, I am still unsure.

I understand the mixed feelings, but I just decided to make the leap, things like the AFX SoundCloud uploads are equally unconventional ways to release an album's worth (or more) of material...

that krystal klear track is extremely good, reminds me that i forgot to nominate morgan geist "mezzanine"

I was sure I'd nominated One Night Only last year, but searching the archives tells me otherwise. Either way, I'm glad it got a video this year so we can try it again.

Looking forward to spending two hours of my first day back at work queuing up all of these recommendations.

If anyone feels like taking a punt on a regular lurker's lovingly compiled 10-track playlist of campaign hopefuls, please click hither

It totals in at a slender 40 minutes and will effortlessly accompany most commutes/breakfasts/vortices of 'dead' time.

Contains: U.S. Girls, Kevin Gates, Weyes Blood and so many more (7).

cherrypicking the nominations and OMG @ destra's "lucy", what an incredible tune this is

also v confused that i missed call super's "migrant", it is v beautiful

i haven't listened to anything else but "lucy" for the past hour

I definitely know that feeling.

btw the Jennifer Castle album on the nomination list is from 2014. It's an unbelievable album, but.

I love the AKA ft Burna Boy track 'All Eyes On Me' but wasn't that from 2014 too? Just checking before I vote for it.

Well, the song was initially released june 2014 and the video popped up right before christmas last year so yeah. If we're talking impact I'm thinking it was probably as big or bigger in 2015, though.
HOWEVER if we're being generous there's a 2015 remix that's also awesome so if the mods don't mind you can vote for that instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAl72T_xYLs

I think i've posted about it in a few places... But I really wish everyone would get as excited about Keith Ape's It G Ma and its remix as I am.

(i can't seem to post direct links to the videos...)

Yes, it sounds like U Guessed It. But it's so remarkable that this song even got out and became such a success without the benefit of the korean music machine. And that it brings Japanese and Korean rappers together. And that it got such a strong and surprising roster for its remix. And it's basically infinitely re-listenable.

Keith Ape - IT G MA
Keith Ape - IT G MA Remix

ALERT, future's ds2 is on the ballot twice under both that (which is the proper title??) and dirty sprite 2

Ok I'll get onto it.

oh hell yeah "lucy" is amazing

RE potential Jazmine Sullivan vote-splitting, I vote we all coalesce around Stanley.

nah "let it burn"

"mascara" is the one that blows me away as an individual song but was technically 2014, "stanley" or "brand new" would be my second choice but at this point you just realise you should vote for the album, right?

every time i scrolled the tracks list and saw 90% of an album's tracks nominated i got annoyed

I spent most of today shuffling the tracks playlist, and there were only two tracks that I felt the need to skip before the end. GOOD WORK TEAM.

that krystal klear track is extremely good, reminds me that i forgot to nominate morgan geist "mezzanine"

― J0rdan S.

Ugh, I basically flipped a coin over which side of the Galleria 12" to nominate to avoid vote-splitting, and settled on "Calling Card". Sorry!

Cosign all the love for Destra's "Lucy" ... on a soca tip, can I recommend Fadda Fox's Ducking? Video has the "escape the office for carnival" trope from classics like JW & Blaze's "Palance".

People who love the Susanne Sundfør, maybe check out Carla Morrison - Amor Supremo? Different sonic palette (more Disintegration-era Cure fronted by Julee Cruise/LDR/whatevs), but similar emotional range/vibes.

oh one other thing i meant to campaign for is the four tet remix of eric prydz's "opus" which imo is really perverse

Just realized I forgot to nominate Vybz Kartel's Viking for the albums. It probably wouldn't have charted but I still feel like a complete idiot right now. Easily one of 2015's strongest releases.

RE potential Jazmine Sullivan vote-splitting, I vote we all coalesce around Stanley.

― dc, Monday, January 4, 2016 7:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's the one track I always skip :(

yeah i don't care for that one really. mascara is the one for me.

Mascara would be my pick too but it's clearly an albums' list contender. I'll definitely vote for it.

AKA ft Fifi Cooper, Rouge, Moozlie & Gigi Lamayne - Baddest (Remix)

^^^^^fave discovery from the noms playlist so far

mascara and/or brand new and/or forever doesn't last
but honestly i don't vote for singles on an album that i vote for

Voted. A couple things missing from the Spotify playlists that I think are very worthy of consideration.

Hama - Torodi can be heard in its entirety on Bandcamp.
Algiers - "Blood"

Hama will probably be on my ballot. Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile and Blick Bassy - Akö definitely will. Al-Namrood - Diaji Al Joor is an anonymous middle eastern folk metal band from saudi arabia and The Very Best made a really fun album this year. ok one more the same label that put out Torodi put out a hypnotic album by Fadimoutou Wallet Inamoud that sahelsounds describes as "Isswat recordings from Azawad region of the Sahara desert. Music of nostalgia, longing, and revolutionaries, sung by Fadimoutou Wallet Inamoud in her debut recording, a local production from 2008. Sparse rhythms and hand claps punctuate the meditative hypnosis, accompanied by a the signature vocal drone of her group."

One beautiful thing I found in the end of year lists that I think a lot of people might enjoy is the Nicola Cruz album 'Prender El Alma'. Maybe he's already a big manchego on the balearic thread so I might be telling some of you what you know anyway, but it's something like an Ecuadorian dreamscape of mountains and forest being patiently daubed on a plasterboard wall that's already gently pulsing with the bass from the club next door. There's a lot of folk elements, cumbia rhythms and some echoey Studio-like guitar, all put together in quite a caressing and spacey way. Favourite track atm is Cumbia del Olvido, but the whole thing is on spotify.

that sounds nice - i'll definitely check it out

Voted!

me too :+)

already a bunch of great discoveries from the spotify singles playlist, and i've only heard maybe 10% of it so far. thank you ilx it's like second christmas and i loves you.

i'm finding the transitions less jarring than last year, too, actually they're quite pleasant. forks, do you have any method of sequencing these playlists? my thanks to you and the organizers.

i voted.

p sure the playlists are in order of nomination. i keep this in mind and try to order my nominations so they sound good sequentially.

xp to davey, it's sequenced as they were nominated, so the transitions are likely to be less jarring as twenty or so in a row are probably in one specific mindset and maybe even preprogrammed by the nominees in that way! I've enjoyed listening to it that way sometimes too but ultimately I hit a pocket of tastes dissimilar to mine so I've transitioned to an "alphabetical by artists" so that I can get a fair taste of what the artist has to offer and not sacrifice diversity.

or basically what crut said.

BTW, by that method I just discovered Middle Eastern black metal band Al-Namrood and this is fucking rad!

Just want to point to two blissful female singer songwrite k-pop releases:

https://youtu.be/tfyc2YHj3zM
https://youtu.be/PkBsfEw0zbY

that second one, "calling in love," is really lovely

one that i got into from dj martian's recommend on the Shambhala thread:
Kiiara - Gold
https://soundcloud.com/kiiaraonline/gold

in the spirit of magnanimity my first splurge here will be for stuff i (or my gf) didn't nominate

we've discovered some rly great stuff on the albums playlist and we're only about 1/5 of the way thru

beauty pill is amazing, joanna wang is utterly amazing, container is great, dreamcrusher is cool, frank bretschneider is boss, matchess is beautiful, raoul is groovy, eek/islam chipsy is off the fucken chain

discovered some lovely trax too. have heard much more of the trax playlist obv. highlights include <kaeb (stunning), lady leshurr (brush yo teeth), tunde olaniran (fucking insane prog-trap-idk that sticks in your head like a velcro bullet) and hit the quan (fresh)

have about 700 albums or w/e to skim-listen over the next few days omg how

LJ, I am setting aside the upcoming year to listen to all our playlists and noms. Join in!

like, why rush? and why worry if you can get through it all? listen to everything you can and let your mind sort it out.