(TOP 5 TODAY, MOFOS!) Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Albums Poll Results)

Just what we need on ILM, another deej. ;-)

ugh i dont even know what i was trying to do there

rephrase: i expect poll will have little or no further metal on it

Sunn O))) is a lock for top 25, Mastodon good to probable chance of showing, Converge unlikely... that's all folks!

Here's a track from the Baroness album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts1sONxQQfc

absolutely beautiful packaging on the baroness, not too fond of the contents.

really beautiful cover

I just realised YOU ARE THAT VILLAGE VOICE KNOBEND OF A WRITER , aren't you? ;)

― Pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname)

Are you going to posit this in every thread where I say proggy southern metal (Torche excepted) is crap? Just wonderin'.

Metal always gets shafted in the polls which is why there is a metal albums of year poll now on ILM.

It's like they took the packaging/cover art for this Fahey comp...

http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/85294.jpg

...and then threw some BBW's (or whatever the Craigslist personal ads term is) in there for good measure.

xxpost

shouldn't shock anybody that it was not a big year for crossover metal--i mean converge/mastodon/sunn/baroness are all like 3-7 albums deep or something, could they really be getting many new fans? and no monster debuts/career peaks afaict (maybe blue record is a career peak, i don't know)

is a particular emphasis placed on putting an effort into packaging and the physical artefact in metal, then? like, is this sort of packaging par for the course in the genre or a baroness unusual in doing it...

It's always been about having gnarly pictures on the cover afaict, but the Baroness covers are pretty much a one-off in terms of style and content.

basically relapse and maybe southern lord realized that metal dorks will still spend a lot of money on a physical release if it's nice enough.

ah ok, just wondered whether this was a reaction to, you know, The Downloading Culture, or just something that metal's retained

btw one of the guys in baroness does those covers, he's also done records for skeletonwitch and kylesa off the top of my head

For underground bands definitely. It attracts the collector mentality and it means labels/bands can shift physical copies that many other bands just cant as they d/l it for free. The Baroness comes with a code to download mp3s of the album too. More labels, of all kinds, need to do that.
xps to lex

metal bands and labels are still able to inspire some pretty fierce loyalty from the fans, it can be cool imo

i mean converge/mastodon/sunn/baroness are all like 3-7 albums deep or something, could they really be getting many new fans?

I jumped on the Mastodon wagon, finally, after not really caring for what they did over the last 7-8 years. Currently in the process of going back and revisiting the old albums and finding them a LOT better than I remembered...

Baroness are on album #2, I think, with a few EPs in tow as well.

yes 2 eps 2 albums

metal and indie vinyl (especially colour vinyl) has always been around in all my years of buying music, but the last 5 years it has definitely increased. I always felt the reason Boris & Sunn 0))) crossed over to p4k etc was because their early stuff sold for $200 on ebay, so you had to buy lps on via mailorder within an hour of pre-sales going up on websites if you wanted to get one. This hype then spread to msg boards then blogs then the media cottoned on to that.

Boris & Sunn 0))) crossed over to p4k etc

I wouldn't exactly say they "crossed over" -- they got the coverage, sure, but how many hardcore Pfork readers who are buying Memory Tapes, Girls, She & Him, Wild Beasts, Surfer Blood, etc. are also going out and dropping $15 on that new Sunn O))) album, or however much more the vinyl costs?

Pfork coverage is one thing (as scottpl has graciously pointed out in recent threads, the site has expanded its genre coverage a good deal in recent years), but Pfork readership as a whole latching onto these groups is another.

"Who needs that new Baroness album that placed in the Pfork Top 50 of 2009 when this new Broken Bells album is leaking track by track?"

I think 'The Wire' works better than 'p4k' there.

x-post

The fact that Southern Lord presses 10,000 pieces of vinyl now for Sunn 0))) and Boris albums suggests that plenty are buying.

I love "Minimal" to death, but that Aguayo album is boring as fuck. Glad to see Burrprint place, even if I didn't vote for it.

Any other genres of music go for fancy packaging of vinyl or cds?

not necessarily as a matter of course, but this is coming out soon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Q3gAR7Jj8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSbXdoktAs

less effort but raekwon brought out purple vinyl for the sequel to his famous "purple tape"

"Who needs that new Baroness album that placed in the Pfork Top 50 of 2009 when this new Broken Bells album is leaking track by track?"

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Wednesday, February 10, 2010 3:57 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol @ ridic strawman nonsense

and edan had a booklet documenting like every sound in real time on his echo party mix release

shouldn't shock anybody that it was not a big year for crossover metal--i mean converge/mastodon/sunn/baroness are all like 3-7 albums deep or something, could they really be getting many new fans? and no monster debuts/career peaks afaict (maybe blue record is a career peak, i don't know)

the latest sunn o))) album is easily their best, imo. by some distance.

converge is arguable...it's definitely their strongest since jane doe, which is the canonical classic.

lady gaga's last album seems to have been released as a "pack" as well as the usual formats - http://www.ladygaga.com/news/default.aspx?nid=23864

The Super Deluxe Fame Monster Pack will be out on December 15th. It will include a piece of one of Gaga’s wigs, photos, fan-arts, and a pair of 3-D glasses (which will be useful for something coming up soon).

never saw the purple ob4cl2 vinyl, I'll have to take a look

shabazz palaces gave out clothes patches + download keys with their cds. i guess it's becoming common for a little something extra.

xxxp yeah that's really two separate thoughts i expressed poorly...my point is that conv/mast/sunn are like really well-established and baroness is certainly there with this album--but i don't really know of any other "rising" metal bands from this year that actually got a lot of crossover attention.

46 -- Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career (93 points, 8 votes, 1 #1 vote/s) (dnp in p4k, 30 in p&j)

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/1749/covercamera.jpg

a pair of 3-D glasses (which will be useful for something coming up soon).

Michael Jackson Grammy tribute??

Cover connection with Camera Obscura:

http://betterpropaganda.com/images/artwork/The_Golden_River-Frog_Eyes_480.jpg

Just real quick did anybody else mention or notice the phallic-ness of the egg on the Baroness art? It seemed pretty blatant after I noticed it.

Results 1 - 10 of about 137,000 for "camera obscura" "belle and sebastian" with Safesearch on. (0.23 seconds)

Jan 10, 2005 ... The Belle and Sebastian similarities are many, from Camera Obscura's hometown, to the mod pictorials used in their cover art, to the careful ...

Camera Obscura Challenges Belle and Sebastian To Scottish Twee Deathmatch. Not really, not at all. But while we're all Belle and Sebastian whores, ...

Tracyanne Campbell and her band mates in Camera Obscura have labored under the shadow of their fellow Glasgow musicians Belle and Sebastian. ...

oh yeah, Shabazz Palaces

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/05/15/1242428730-dumb_eyes_cd_pkg.jpg

Michael Jackson Grammy tribute??

it probably was, actually

nnghhh didn't even know camera obscura were still going...the epitome of weedy, wimpy indie. useless.

46 -- Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career (93 points, 8 votes, 1 #1 vote/s) (dnp in p4k, 30 in p&j)

not to be confused with the Scottish twee pop band of the same name

what an annoying album title, too

Love seeing Camera Obscura there. I feel pretty strongly that this is by far their best album, but it seems like get gets short shrift. I'm blown away that it didn't end up in p4k's top 50, and 8 votes even seems astoundingly low here.

what an annoying album title, too

Trying to be as un-snide as possible, but have you actually listened to the title track?

not sure you need the safesearch on for that particular google

no, i was just kneejerking! i'm heading out now but feel free to tell me why it's not irritating.

xp

hated the production on that camera obscura album--way too much reverb and soft-focus orchestration that makes it sound like no actual instruments are being played.

I just think the composition on that album was stone-solid, especially on that song. I get the kneejerk reaction, and I'm not a fan of their earlier stuff for those same reasons, but My Maudlin Career really blew me away.