ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

wow this sun araw/congos, which i wasn't aware of, is pretty botched IMO, got really excited as heart of the congos i believe is one of the most magical albums ever....but yeah sun araw seems to just have gotten them as some kind of press stunt without much thought to how to actually use or showcase some of the most beautiful voices ever...the tracks are fairly tuneless, muddled, and unnecessarily cluttered with overly busy "cool" production crap. so much effort being expelled to accomplish so little.

:(

Is that the only cover not altered by grayscaling so far?

Every time I've heard Death Grips I've liked it less.

― questino (seandalai), Tuesday, January 29, 2013 10:55 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Voted for both DG albums, doubt NLDW is gonna place though.

Is that the only cover not altered by grayscaling so far?

I'd guestimate probably 40% of the covers so far were already b&w before I even got to them. It's trendy!

Tracks comment comparing Death Grips to Atari Teen Riot nailed it for me. More interesting in concept than execution, tolerable in small doses.

Nah, 40% was high. But there have been quite a few.

Problem with Death Grips is that they've sort of only got one song which they do pretty well. I wish they'd somehow use their aesthetic to do a really wild Ill Communication-style genre hopper that worked like a cool shouty fucked up mixtape. If someone can give me a reason for owning more than one album by them, I'd like to know. Otherwise I'm not sure they'll amount to much more than a slightly-more-decent Dälek.

Is that the only cover not altered by grayscaling so far?

metz, lower dens, shackleton, silent servant, japandroids and converge are all o.g. b&w too iirc

maybe somebody could post the original after JF posts?

wow this sun araw/congos, which i wasn't aware of, is pretty botched IMO, got really excited as heart of the congos i believe is one of the most magical albums ever....but yeah sun araw seems to just have gotten them as some kind of press stunt without much thought to how to actually use or showcase some of the most beautiful voices ever...the tracks are fairly tuneless, muddled, and unnecessarily cluttered with overly busy "cool" production crap. so much effort being expelled to accomplish so little.

:(

― baby beluga (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, January 29, 2013 12:56 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup, if everything on heart of the congos serves to enhance the voices, this is sort of the opposite it seems

i thought about doing that and then i thought, hey - let someone else be that asshole for a change xp

I don't think DG have "one song" any more than most of the acts already listed.

I might not go as far as UMS re: the Congos, it's an okay record but I have to say his are pretty similar to my thoughts on it.

maybe somebody could post the original after JF posts?

no, don't please. I'm working an aesthetic here and if I wanted to just post the covers as they are EVERYWHERE ELSE on the internet, I could've saved myself a shitload of time and done exactly that.

I kind of agree (it's less than the sum of its Congos) but I can still enjoy the album a lot. xp

Death Grips is odd to me because aside from "Guillotine" I always feel like the songs I'm latching onto aren't the ones everyone else coalesces around; either that or I manage to hit all of the places where people are talking about and playing the songs I don't care as much about.

Like, it's weird to me that "I've Seen Footage" ended up being The Song from The Money Store because I spent all year blasting "Get Got", "Hustle Bones", "The Hacker" and "Bitch Please"

yeah "Hacker" in particular shoulda broken out.

I wish they'd somehow use their aesthetic to do a really wild Ill Communication-style genre hopper

No way are they talented enough to pull that off.

yeah zach hill should really work on his chops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdMDcG3zAEI

http://i.imgur.com/sNu7RJ8.png

48. CLOUD NOTHINGS Attack on Memory (314 Points, 13 Votes) Spotify

also I lost a ton of respect for Death Grips after that super bratty Spin piece, specifically at the point where Burnett apparently said straight-facedly about the NO LOVE DEEP WEB cover art "I just looked at the picture and thought 'what a beautiful piece of art'"

we've all thought that about our penis at one point or another

love the cloud nothings record

also another one unaffected by greyscale

'Guillotine' is still THE Death Grips tune for me, and the one that go me interested in the first place. After that it just felt like more of the same. I guess this is the problem with a lot of loud/abrasive music - without due care it can appear to turn into a formula sans nuance - I'm thinking of the kind of problems people were levelling at brostep a year or two back specifically. Obviously there are exceptions, as with metal. But even metal tends to work best when there's a contrast of dark/light heavy/quiet rather than a bombardment of noise.

3 of the next 4 also unaffected. Ordinarily, that would be something like a hint, but there were SO MANY b&w covers last year that I don't feel like I'm tipping my cards.

Google Image Searching "No Love Deep Web" is surprisingly a treat.

I can't think of a single thing on The Money Store that sounds like "Guillotine"; certainly none of the songs I listed are sparsely arranged base drops with minimal drum tracks and intermittent digital noise blasts.

I don't thing of DG as particularly noisy/abrasive.

calling your band cloud nothings is basically saying to the world "no need to care about us"

I guess this is the problem with a lot of loud/abrasive music - without due care it can appear to turn into a formula sans nuance

sometimes the problem is the listener

Might as well call them the dream.

man don't u see you can't really touch a cloud so you could say it's "nothing" but then when u think abt it it's actually water vapor and *is* something

I didn't get that Cloud Nothings record AT ALL, it was just nowhere near as good as the stuff it's influenced by. In my one listen to the Metz album I found so much more to enjoy than repeated attempts to get into Cloud Nothings

kind of lolling at dog latin saying "the problem with abrasive music is that it's too formulaic; it should really follow this type of pattern in order to work" with no apparent sense of irony

http://i.imgur.com/Aat4zs0.png

47. FRANKIE ROSE Interstellar (316 Points, 12 Votes) Spotify

yes

too low tho

no, don't please. I'm working an aesthetic here and if I wanted to just post the covers as they are EVERYWHERE ELSE on the internet, I could've saved myself a shitload of time and done exactly that.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, January 29, 2013 8:04 AM (13 minutes ago)

also another one unaffected by greyscale

― ciderpress, Tuesday, January 29, 2013 8:12 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3 of the next 4 also unaffected. Ordinarily, that would be something like a hint, but there were SO MANY b&w covers last year that I don't feel like I'm tipping my cards.

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, January 29, 2013 8:13 AM (4 minutes ago)

THIS IS SO WEIRD!!!!! love you man, but idgi

al leong otm

Good album. Voted for it when I decided the Dum Dum Girls EP to be ineligible.

og pressing of this on vinyl was so cool I snatched one up w/o even owning a turntable.

http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/img/large/slr150-color.jpg

whoa, that's awesome. i need to listen to frankie rose. multiple friends have recommended her to me but i haven't gotten around to it yet.

came out really early in january iirc-- listened to it pretty consistently all year

idg why greyscaling the art for the art of it is so strange to people. did none of you ever read zines on newsprint? OLD SKOOL DIY! Or maybe just a choice.

In two years, when it's my turn for albums again, I'll just post regular old jpegs and you can have the boring poll you want.

Tails off, but first half of this is untouchable.

i've already said i like the greyscale as have several other people

thx

I think I would be absolutely in love with this Cloud Nothings album if the singer was even a tiny bit less pathetic

on "No Future/No Past", it doesn't sound like he's sliding around on the pitch for any particular effect or reason; it sounds like he can't hear and is second-guessing the notes he's trying to sing combined with zero breath support, it's really fucking aggravating

like, "let's take the dude from These New Puritans and make him try to sing long, sustained lines instead of the percussive choppy vocals he's actually good at"

in summation, Cloud Nothings gets the "you are not the Pixies, stfu" gasface