ILM's Top 77 ALBUMS of 2011

just listened to st. vincent "cruel" (fun!) and and am now checking out colin stetson. sweet christ, this stuff is gorgeous. where did stetson come from? can i get this on vinyl? best and most surprising thing on this list since julia holter. thank you, ilx!

Colin Stetson is great but missed my ballot due to not quite enough listening to it before the vote finished. Did vote for 'Judges' in the tracks poll, though.

YESSS 40watta

goon cru consensus in action I would assume

graveyard shift is really great, overtime shift is alright too

ok so i was digging this colin stetson thing and i thought it was some kinda skronky electronic deal...but this is a sax album???

probably the best and the worst of the 4

http://i.imgur.com/Y92X2.jpg

22. Lady Gaga — Born This Way (488 points, 14 votes, one first place vote)

P4K: DNP
P&J: 30

Spotify

^ no idea how this happened

don't be a drag

E-40 was my #2. knew it would place, was hoping for top 20, but 23's pretty respectable, i guess. tons of stuff to digest, yeah, but graveyard's unstoppable. and even if overtime is relatively weak, i almost never bummed when something off one of these comes up on shuffle.

If I'd got my shit together to vote for tracks 'My Lil Grimey N***a' would've been in there.

^ no idea how this happened

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, February 1, 2012 1:24 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you don't get why it came in out of the top 10? yeah, me neither.

I get why; as an album it isn't that good

silver linings

"Fuck 'Em" is probably my favorite

xp

big xp

intrigued by the borden/ferraro/godin/halo collabo record. what's this one like? a pleasant, new age-y wash of sound?

― (⊙_⊙?) (Alan N), Wednesday, February 1, 2012 8:58 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's a reasonable description, if you accept that such a thing can be very good.

lol @ j0rdan using the single cover of "born this way" rather than the dreadful album cover

inexplicably, "electric chapel" wound up being my favourite song on a wildly uneven, bloated album. will also rep for "scheiße" and "bloody mary" quite hard. the rest, less so

"judas" is underrated & the sax solo on "edge of glory" is of course classic, but a massive misstep after FAME MONSTER imo

alright last one for today, sorry to dump this on y'all

http://i.imgur.com/7n0fu.jpg

21. Shabazz Palaces — Black Up (502 points, 17 votes)

P4K: 14
P&J: 10

Spotify

Certainly happy to see Colin Stetson up here, even if it didn't grab me enough to make my ballot.

seriously this colin stetson is blowing me away, how is he doing this?

thx j0rd! enjoy your afternoon.

Colin Stetson recording is really interesting. Sax with a ton of mics (I am assuming both contact, close, and room mics) and then mixed to get that rich textural sound. Cool shit.

XP

The Borden/Ferraro/Godin/Halo collab is pretty much a new age synth drone record, it's more akin to the earlier Oneohtrix stuff that was what I fell in love with in the first place. Feels like optimistic kosmiche.

Liked but didn't love Shabazz Palaces, I think it may have fallen off my ballot in the final reckoning.

No overdubs either

"The Righteous Wrath of an Honorable Man" is my fav from that Stetson record

Colin Stetson is awesome. Great sound on that too.

check some live videos. He looks like he's going to die quite a lot of the time

There's a great Q video of Stetson doing 'Judges' on YT, and another where he shows you how.

Glad I'm not the only one stunned by Colin Stetson!

Huge thanks to everyone who got this onto the countdown.

E-40 yesssssssss

Shabazz Palaces is fantastic. so far pretty much all my favorite hip hop stuff of this year has placed, with the exception of Kool G Rap

xp

here's the cbc clip of him playing "Judges" http://youtu.be/k9YJM2GCvk8

Oh, and lots of circular breathing to get the repeato riffs (all in response to how Colin Stetson made that record)

check some live videos. He looks like he's going to die quite a lot of the time

― Number None, Wednesday, February 1, 2012 9:29 PM (9 seconds ago)

LOL, yeah. Though the dude is hella beefcake, if marines did circular breathing he'd be in the special corps.

psyched to see shabazz palaces, though i knew it would do well. another of my top 10 and totally worth seeing live. beautiful design job on the LP, too.

Yeah, the Stetson is p. cool. Only heard it in December (I think Nabisco enthused about it somewhere), but I can imagine that it could've made my list if I'd spent more time with it.

No overdubs either

― grandavis, Wednesday, February 1, 2012 3:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok no fucking way, for serious?

All sounds due to mic placement and extended techniques (i.e, all live)

so many things on this list are stuff that i dutifully checked out at the time and never clicked with me - shabazz palaces is very admirable i guess but i just never wanted to listen to it? i don't think any of my more obscure choices are gonna place aside from dawn richard :(

colin stetson sounds interesting though

watch that youtube clip - fucking incredible stuff

saw stetson play at ATP in the fall. the guy is mesmerizing

ok yeah i was afraid this would be gimmicky but i'm sold

Lex you would love the Colin Stetson album I think, it's kind of an astonishing record. I had been expecting jazz when I listened to it but it's like... imagine if Carl Craig played a 100+ year old bass sax. And I'm not shitting you, it actually sounds like Carl Craig.

Don't know much about these things but I have no idea how he managed to wring some of those sounds out of his instrument, especially so many of them at the same time. Fully deserves the hype.

This is what I wrote on Stetson after hearing Judges:

The first time I heard Colin Stetson he was the opening act for Godspeed You! Black Emperor and it was absolutely mind-blowing. Some of us mistook him as a sound engineer and were caught completely by surprise when he started playing. One by one we fell into a silent trance as he created out of thin air the most magnificent, heartbroken beasts I’ve ever heard from a one man band. Recorded in one take with no overdubs, Judges captures the thrill of hearing him live with precision. Not only is the record technically impressive and conceptually novel but also highly compelling at a musical level. Inspired by post-rock and electronic pioneers, Stetson favors sonic aesthetics over experimentation, every deviation sounding calculated enough as to not scare the feeble away but smart enough to hook the most demanding listeners.

i'd be interested if it was jazz! i'm d/lding it now

You can tell he worked on it for a long time, it's not free jazz or just strange sounds, he tries to make it really musical and expressive, though it's still solo sax, so it has limits.

He kind of sounds like the Caspar Brotzmann of the bass sax.