Now this is how it started: THE ILX 1980s ALBUM POLL RESULTS!!

God I love This Nation's Saving Grace. From the moment the spectral dolor of Mansion starts up I know i'm going to have to listen to it all (as I am now).

It's just so much goddam fun as well - puts a big grin on my face. The spastic repetitive rhythms. The tales of expat power lunacy, the unposey but completely out there experimentation, the usual but still incredibly potent mix of mundane local detail and supernatural import, catch phrase and narrative, scorn, wit and bracing sympathy.

And Victorian time travel of course.

And those last words, which at times I have held closer to my heart than anything else - 'every day you gotta cry some, every day you gotta die some, wipe the tears from your eyes son, all the good times are past and gone'.

39. Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4 [1984] (154 points, 12 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://8106.tv/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/e2-e4.jpg

the japanese seem to be particularly e2-e4 crazy. last time i was there i saw all sorts of e2-e4 merchandise. the scarves were particularly popular.

― stirmonster, 15. toukokuuta 2007 20:15

i love the psychogeographic feel of e2-e4, that feeling of leaving the centre, an acidpsyche trip from bethnal green to chingford

― 696, 27. toukokuuta 2007 21:18

I've been a fan of the early stuff for years but am now listening to E2-E4 for the first time and it's amazing. I'm stunned by how good (and ahead of its time) this is.

― rw, 18. lokakuuta 2005 23:40

i saw harvey play a beach party here in hawaii just three days ago. a half hour before sunset he put on E2-E4. about 25 minutes in i went up to him and asked, "are you going to play this one all the way through?" he smiled huge and replied "of course, man!" it was dark by the time the song's 58th minute rolled around. the mixture of an epic sunset with an epic track orchestrated by such a master selector created something hard to describe. it will probably remain one of my top 5 musical moments for the rest of my life.

― grady (grady), 28. kesäkuuta 2006 23:18

^^^ never heard this one either.

what is e2-e4 and what does it sound like?

/tuomas

An early start today. The Dexy's one is probably the album I have read most about without ever being particularly curious to hear. Fantastic write-up for E2-E4 - now that's how to make desperate to check out a record!

via the P4K 80's list

"As the story is sometimes told, Göttsching stopped in the studio for a couple of hours in 1981 and invented techno. E2-E4 is the most compelling argument that techno came from Germany-- more so than any single Kraftwerk album, anyway. The sleeve credits the former Ash Ra Tempel leader with "guitar and electronics", but few could stretch that meager toolkit like Göttsching. Over a heavenly two-chord synth vamp and simple sequenced drum and bass, Göttsching's played his guitar like a percussion instrument, creating music that defines the word "hypnotic" over the sixty minutes of the single track. A key piece in the electronic music puzzle that's been name-checked, reworked and expanded upon countless times. --Mark Richardson"

Wikipedia says James Murphy based 45:33 on it too, so consider me curious.

"E2-E4" is a proto house/techno/trance album form 1984 with some prog guitar noodling. Personally, I can appreciate how it seems to have presaged a lot of the electronic music of the following 25 years, but compared to the stuff it inspired, I think it sounds a bit weak. The synths are kinda too high and shrill, the bass sounds very weak, and the guitar bits feel boring and out of place amidst the electronics.

i will def try it out later, being-on-spotify-pending

So glad to see Dexys in the list they were the only band to have two albums in my top ten. I'm not sure how much love there is for Don't Stand Me Down on here, I hope it makes an appearance.

Manuel Göttsching is yet another one I've not heard that I'm going to have to check out.

38. New Order - Substance [1987] (156 points, 16 votes)

http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/83/SubstanceCoverBig.jpg

I pretty much think of Substance as being the "proper versions"-- Temptation and Confusion are remade (but let's face it, the remake of Confusion's considerably better than the original), and otherwise it's the original 12" single version of everything but "True Faith." Which "awful club remixes" did you have in mind?

― Douglas, 3. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

If I had to save just one New Order album from the fire, then it would be Substance.

Despite the presence of Blue Monday and the tedious remixes of some of the later sinlges, there is just too much classic material to write it off completely.

Wish they'd waited for the full version of Touched By The Hand of God though - the last of the essential 12" versions.

― Zanny G, 4. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

I recently re-discovered Substance and have to say it's one of the finest compilation albums I've ever come across.

Forgot how marvellous 1963 was - beautiful record, perhaps an update is needed on this one.

And all the remixes are incredible. No question.

Lovely artwork, too.

― russ t, 7. maaliskuuta 2003 16:43

I'm not sure what it is -- I didn't really "grow up" w this record like some in these parts.

But as satisfying as Substance is on several levels, I'm still finding a lot of it hamstrung by its 80s production values -- drum machines that lack texture, sequences and programs that tend to plod rather than enervate.

Dan Selzer has said elsewhere on ILM that some of that can be attributed to NO's modernist tendencies -- the band's willfully crude use of sampling, etc. I respect his opinion and he knows a shit ton more than I do about New Order.

But while that definitely applies to records like Technique, I don't think it does to Substance, where there's really not much of a justification for it -- it's not like you're hearing the ex-Joy Division guys reveling in primitive synthesizer technology on, say, "Shellshock" or even "Perfect Kiss" (which on many levels I really love, btw). Often, you're hearing remixes done by other people and sounds (digital bongos, synth blasts) that went the way of the dodo for good reason. Regardless, in a lot of cases, they're simply not being deployed with much creativity or even a charming naivety.

Yes, a HUGE part of New Order's appeal is their willingness to embarrass themselves -- My I've arguedmore bands should do it today, because it creates a tension that modern production values (and their accessibility to anyone with a computer) tend to relieve. But I think there's a pretty good case to be made (on Substance anyway) it's not always occurring on purpose...and not always that appealing either.

― Naive Teen Idol, 14. marraskuuta 2007 20:51

Still hate the remixed versions on this (an old ILM argument, I know). I never ever listen to it, and I listen to a lot of New Order.

Substance is one of the first, if not the first, albums I ever bought. I played it to death. Looking at the track listing now, I can't remember that many of the songs. It's possible that's just down to the rubbish titles, but I don't think so.

Two other things I don't get: praise for the artwork; and why the downer on 'Confusion'? It's definitely my favourite thing they did (John Barnes rap apart).

The artwork is great in that it's all these vibrantly colored stills wrapped in the most basic black & white bookends.

I just crossed the 30:00 mark on the Manuel Göttsching album. I could see listening to this once a year or so, but it's definitely not an all the time kind of thing.

Glad to see Dexy's post so high. Didn't vote for it but I wavered about including it in my 30.

Last time I tried to listen to E2-E4 was with friends and they called it boring. Listening again now and it seems like a perfect late night alone record.

37. De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising [1989] (164 points, 23 votes)

http://www.blogseitb.net/eitbmusika/files/2009/09/3-feet-high-and-rising.jpg

3 Feet High oozes fun, so it wins.

― I Wish You Almanac (Autumn Almanac), 20. toukokuuta 2004 6:13

it seemed like there was a huge WTF-ness to it that no other hip-hop at the time possessed. the 'psychedelic' connotations stem more from the 'daisy age'/love vibe theme perhaps. the interludes like 'transmitting live from mars' just have that fantastic 'what the hell is going on' factor amongst the general wacky backdrop.

― Stevem....Has Dandruff (blueski), 15. helmikuuta 2005 13:11

De La Soul/Transmitting Live from Mars

proposed by gygax!

Spike Lee?s Do the Right Thing, subject and style, was the peak of 1989 as year of black rage: in the opening credits, Rosie Perez amazondances to Public Enemy?s Fight the Power, distillate of the entire film, ragged nerve-flare of (semi)informed and (quasi)politicised anger, at the tipping point between fully justified expression of stress and the slurch off into full loss of perspective. (What would YOU do?)

By significant (and demonstrably saleable) contrast: De La Soul?s made name that same year was quietness and quirkiness, other chosen ways to live out black American life on-screen. The distinction held them down in the end got trapped in stupid media-emptied words (such as "surreal" or "hippie")... There were others, though.

Almost always in rap, you?re listening to the rapper as an character in the drama s/he or they just wrote ? and part of the fun is the tension between what?s acting and what?s acting out. The soft French voice in ?Transmitting Live from Mars? asks "Quelle heure est-il?" ? is the knowledge what time it is the ur-hiphop gift? ? but a lot more present than the sense of listening *to* De La Soul as a rap act is the sense of listening, and listening with them, to the constituent parts of this song (the male and female voices on a French language tape, the gentle little string smear copped off a Turtles record). One minute forty of classico-pop art abstraction: hugely filling the speakers with its depthless reticence.

Give or take street language that can?t be everywhere comprehensible (it wd lose its cachet if it were) and all this often delivered in extremes of compactness, rap is upfront and in-yr-face about it concerns. Which means a rapsong *without* a rap is at the very least a kind of riddle (even if you?d prefer not to hear that it?s a metophor or an allegory, or any invocation of similar ticket-to-upscale-museum status).

So why "live" and what?s Martian about it? Who the aliens here, who the threatened? Which is home, and which is far? Yes, it might just that the ordered calm of a European language lesson is a universe away from black American life. But it might also be that the idea of black Americans finding value and pleasure in this same lesson is a universe away from the stereotypes ruling American life, or European life, or __________ Am I listening to De La Soul listening to a Transmission from Mars, or is Mars the sound of De La Soul listening? Science fiction, from War of the Worlds to Marvel Comics to Star Trek to whatever, is the prism that binds, the perfect cultural representative of a shared humanity, even as it straight away goes on to raises questions about distinctly unshared identification: who were the hunters here, who the display?

Thinking about 25th hour, which I saw last sunday with my sister, I wondered if there isn't something Spike Lee is really good at that doesn't get talked about - or maybe I just wasn't listening in the right places. In his films that I so far saw (which isn't all of them), there are often these moments ? never emphasised, just moved into then out of ? of vivid grace and tenderness, where people in their own space are for a time NOT required either to conform to or battle the pervasive cartoons structuring the world elsewhere, including its many self-appointed discontents. Lee does these moments superbly well, actually: but part of what's so powerful about them, in their unassuming way, is that they're surcease from all the stuff he seems so overknown for: "THIS IS A PICTURE OF US - GET USED TO IT!" That picture is often immense, in its urgent flamewarred way, but isn?t even the only thing he?s about, after all.

"THIS IS A PICTURE OF *YOU* - DIDN?T YOU KNOW THAT YET?" The Martians are ALWAYS us, whoever we are, however we behave. There is no "world away": it?s all here.

― mark s (mark s), 31. toukokuuta 2003 18:32

36. The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour [1982] (166 points, 14 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/58/154062438_0492f539b7.jpg

gotta give it to "The Classical". that song was like a Rosetta stone that opened up The Fall for me -- they may have other songs where the satire is more biting, MES is more caustic, or the music is more abrasive, but on "The Classical", all of those elements come together perfectly and create something that feels like a manifesto. or a mission statement, or a vision. yeah, vision is the right word; I would definitely call it visionary. if you were to draw a Venn diagram of Fall tracks, most of the others would be wholly contained within its circle. I dunno, I'm a little drunk right now.

― With a little bit of gold and a Peja (bernard snowy), 4. joulukuuta 2008

the drumming on this album fuking destroys imo

― Cam3ron C. (wilter), 5. joulukuuta 2008 0:46

1) i can see why spectre vs. rector would send most people running away & screaming, but not bcz of its length as much as it being the perfect soundtrack for sacrificing goats..

2) still it's awesome...the "and this day" comparisons are off though...def. "iceland" is hex's "S vs. R"

3) in another thread I had flippantly stated that Slates was better than Hex...the case has been made that I might have to reconsider mightily that position.

4) i voted for "jawbone and the air rifle" for three reasons:

a) an astonishing lyrical peak even for MES in the absolute zenith of his powers
b) great "be-nice-to-animals" subtext
c) it's a four minute song that holds its own in an album full of epics...and sounds almost as massive as "winter" or "hip priest"

4) I'm glad Gamaliel voted for "Winter 2"...it should have got more votes. It is very much equal to "The Classical", every bit the epic, and twice as wondrous...the only handicap is that it's only half the song, and is therefore somewhat reliant on its prequel, but still...

but I'm not bitching...I think we all knew that "The Classical" and "Hip Priest" were going to walk away with this...and they deserve to; isn't "The Classical" the one song that made Western Civilization stand up and think "Huh! Maybe having a band with two drummers is not a stupid idea after all"? But we need to take a good long listen to this album...This is just one album. Only half of a song in The Fall's peak period could devour entire bands from that same period. As I listen to HEH right now, I can only think one thing: it is time to stop kidding ourselves. Wire was not this good. Talking Heads were not this good. Elvis Costello was not this good.

Bowie was never this good.

― Hipster Loser-Loser (Drugs A. Money), 17. joulukuuta 2008 15:30

prole art threat

best fall record = hex enduction hour

― gygax!, 2. tammikuuta 2003 20:37

Prefer This Nation's Saving Grace for its focus and introversion but Hex Enduction is fine in its own way. This album is the climax and summation of Fall Era 2, I think.

Trying not to be hip-hop strawman but 37 is a travesty.

As in a travesty it's not higher? I had it at #10.

travesty its not higher yes. thought it might have been a lock for the top 10 but i'm starting to come around to the idea that it will be every prince record nominate + daydream nation.

Well, my ballot won't help that top 10 - no Prince or Daydream Nation for me.

Looks like most of my favourite albums are not going to make the Top 30!

... what I mean is, they've gone already

I think 2 of my top 10 might make the list, and 2 more from further down my ballot. If a third of my picks makes the top 100 I'll be impressed.

35. ABC - The Lexicon of Love [1982] (173 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uB-0D-gV8mY/SFnTRmC0NrI/AAAAAAAAJrM/BiS-_mSXoIU/s400/abc

I'm sitting at my desk at work. I'm totally drained, feeling like I've run a marathon and close to tears. Why?

The reason is that I'm listening to The Lexicon of Love on headphones and I've just listened to All of My Heart as loud as I can stand. Isn't this song just the best fucking thing ever recorded? EVERYTHING about the track is perfect. Fry's vocals, the lyrics, the best intro ever - *that* opening chord, the piano arpeggios, David Palmer's thunderous snare thwack and skittering hi-hat, and the fretless bass prowling beneath. Fretless bass! - this track reclaims this godforsaken instrument from the clutches of the be-ponytailed session fop and turns it into a the sexiest sound imaginable.

The production - have keyboards ever sounded so epic and grand, yet without any trace of pomp? Anyone needs convincing that Horn is fucking god? Just play the 5 or so seconds after the first chorus which lead into the second verse about 5 different keyboard sounds collide and and burst into fragments. No, play ANY five seconds of this track.

Fry - a massive, massive voice, yet able to switch from despair to pleading to anger in a syllable. Listen the verse 2 "You'll be disappointed and I'll lose a friend" - oh God, overwhelming!

The strings - listen to the way they fade *slightly* 2/3 of the way through the chorus as Fry sings "Surrending, Remembering.." Also, the actual chords Ann Dudley uses for the string arrangement - simple, yet with a couple of twists which lift the vocals and let them fall.

I've lived with this album, this track for 20 years and it always has a similar effect. As well as the brilliance of the track itself it has, along with The Human League's 'Love Action', the ability to hit me with a feeling of nostalgia so tangible that I'm having to pinch myself to be sure that the last 20 years have really happened. I'm looking at my work colleagues, looking across at their desks and they're ghosts, strangers. From Martin Fry's opening line I'm back at University, walking across campus in the cold towards the lights of the Students Union. I'm with a group of friends - the girls look great, the boys are mucking about to impress, we've had a few drinks already and tonight we'll drink and dance and kiss and cry till we drop. That's the way I still feel. That's the way Martin Fry makes me feel. That's the way music makes me feel. I don't know what the question that I meant to ask is.

― Dr. C, 21. maaliskuuta 2002 3:00

It's one of those records that maybe one in every ten plays I'll have completely misjudged my wanting to hear and then it'll sound awful, and the next time I put it on it's business as usual (i.e. I love it). Scott Walker is like this too. I sometimes wonder if the times I hate it are me being lucid and the rest of the time I'm just being a ponce, though.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), 23. maaliskuuta 2004 17:59

One of the best first sides ever, which makes side two seem maybe just a hair weaker, but the album's still been one of my top 20 favorite discs for years. I'm not even sick of the singles, or turned off by the way so many still treat it like '80s kitsch.

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), 23. maaliskuuta 2004 19:59

That's all I have time for today, I'll try to continue the countdown tomorrow.

u r a hero

Whaddya mean that's all you have time for?

Who broke my heart? Tuomas! Thomas!

(just kidding)

that was a wonderful write-up for 3 feet high and rising

hex was my #2...sorry B-52s =(

I'm delighted to see The Lexicon Of Love so high it was my number two. It's the album I've played the most throughout my life, it's outlasted any musical phases I've been through.

It's one of those great albums that is full of great moments that get me everytime. The bass kicking in on Show Me, the dramatic intro to Poison Arrow and of course the bit's where Martin speaks. Also it's so good that there are four classic singles on the album yet there's even better with Date Stamp which has to be one of the most perfect songs of all time.

Great poll/thread, but I think of A Different World as more 90s (87-93), especially the vibe in the picture.

Wow, I am shocked that 3 Feet High and Rising is so low. Makes me worried about what's actually going to be at the top of this list.

Would have thought the Steely Dan samples would have been beyond the pale for you!

xpost Too early for predictions?

I'd guess 5. Pixies - Surfer Rosa 4. PE - Millions 3. Prince - Times 2. Smiths - Queen is Dead 1. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

I'd be surprised if Daydream Nation is No. 1.

There's the small matter of 2 Jacko albums? But hey this is ILM.

I can see Thriller in the top 10, but I think Bad will struggle to somewhere in the 20s.

You think Bad will make it at all?!? Yikes.

I suspect Bad will not be on the list at all. And I agree, can't see Daydream Nation as number 1. Maybe Prince of the Smiths or PE though.

xp

closer will be in the top 5. and i am not sure if surfer rosa will be in front of doolittle. what about madonna and the beastie boys? they will both be in the top ten, i guess. daydream nation won't be no. 1 because it is shite and ilm knows it.

Disintegration, Closer, Hounds Of Love, Purple Rain and Appetite for Destruction will all be pretty high eh? Vote splitting will dash Talk Talk's chances. Shock win for the Alarm might still happen though.

Not to mention Oingo Boingo.

list is pretty rad so far - good job dudes - its order is pretty o_O but whatevs

thanks for yr seal of approval

Where is Depeche Mode in this?

Were they even nominated? I don't remember seeing them on the list. Their stock is low.

Several Depeche Mode albums were nominated, though I'm not sure if anybody cares