ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2012

new GYBE is really good

Feel like if Lindstrom is not in with a chance I just don't know ILX anymore

― Gukbe

Lindstrom seems to always do extremely well in these lists. I hope Smallhans will be in the top ten, it's probably my second favourite album of his after Where You Go I Go Too. If he hadn't put out a second album this year, I'm sure Six Cups of Rebel would have placed a bit lower down.

I cooled on Smalhans quite quickly. It's decent in a functional kind of way but it doesn't have the charm or the tunes of WYGIGT for me.

I love Smallhans and voted for it, but I can't help but wonder if people would have preferred an album of the Terje edits. I think I would.

I realised only yesterday that Where You Go is absolutely perfect after I listened to it a long train journey. Smallhans isn't in that same league but I just really love how those songs just build in a really odd way like he's testing you if you can't take it or something. Not sure if that makes sense. Maybe I won't go back to it as much in time but right now it's everything I'd want from an album by him. Especially as there doesn't seem to be an actual full length Todd Terje album any time soon.

i'm a pretty big lindstrom fan and never really got in to smallhans.

i mean talabot is nice enough but it's basically like listening to dance music's version of coldplay

― monotony, Wednesday, January 30, 2013 5:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this statement *might* have a shred of credibility if you weren't stanning for burial

are there any Terje edits on 12"s apart from the ones on the Rough Trade bonus CD or should I just go ahead and buy the latter

this statement *might* have a shred of credibility if you weren't stanning for burial

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, 31 January 2013 12:46 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah I was gonna say that the enforced-emotional-breakthroughs of Chris Martin's vocals make Burial a much better candidate for "the Coldplay of dance music" than Talabot.

haha yeah I was gonna say that the enforced-emotional-breakthroughs of Chris Martin's vocals make Burial a much better candidate for "the Coldplay of dance music" than Talabot.

so this coldplay thing was just a flippant reference made while bored at work on a thursday morning but i'm struggling to relate "enforced-emotional-breakthrough" vocals to burial

Only a few of the Talabot album tracks have vocals though.

b/c burial is all about enforced-emotional-breakthroughs, sometimes though not always/entirely through vocals - he's just much more "stare out the window and learn how to ~feel~ again" than Talabot or basically any other dance music since Kompakt's heyday (FWIW a large chunk of Kompakt stuff could also be described as "the Coldplay of dance music" IMO).

So pleased to see the iamamiwhoami album place (so high too!!) - avoided it for ages, partly due to a seemingly relentless pr campaign directed at my inbox, but mostly because of the name which is the most stupid name in the existence of Knifey electro pop. But I caved after seeing it brought up on ILM (yeah so I use you lot as a barometer of good taste a bit more than I'd like to admit. WFAI?) and it grabbed me in a very similar way to Chairlift. Really, how did it place that high though? Magic things are at work. 'Goods' was a latecomer to my tracks of the year. I love her nasally tones.

Beach House - I like this album more than the idea of this album, if that mAkes sense. They're by far the best of this kind of music, if this kind of music is a thing... Whoever said it's comfort music is OTM

That Actress album, I dunno... splaszh seemed like such an original record whereas this just sounds too normal or something. It's like with Splaszh I had to work hard to hear the influences whereas this wears it's influences on it's sleeve. It sounds like a post-rave IDM album but lighter, skippier, which might be why people dig it, but I like him when he's fucking with something at the centre of my brain. I like Actress when he's grotesque, but this turned out to be blandly pleasant instead.

y'all are really into your grayscale dance music this year

This made me lol

b/c burial is all about enforced-emotional-breakthroughs, sometimes though not always/entirely through vocals - he's just much more "stare out the window and learn how to ~feel~ again" than Talabot or basically any other dance music since Kompakt's heyday (FWIW a large chunk of Kompakt stuff could also be described as "the Coldplay of dance music" IMO).

okay but as you mention the force of burial's emotional charge isn't always carried through vox (the climactic finale to 'ashtray wasp' is due just as much to the gliding piano-ey sounds as the pitch-shifted vocals. similarly, coldplay aren't a band that relies solely on chris martin to create a kind of emotional catharsis. i dunno if they're a sit inside and stare at the window band too much anymore either. talabot, for his part, makes much more extroverted music than burial but it's still aiming to elicit emotion. for me, it doesn't really, outside of maybe the opening track and bits of "soon will be now".

maybe a better argument for this coldplay of dance is something like james blake

wh00ps forgot to enclose my parentheses

and of course it's "so* will be now" grrrr

So pleased to see the iamamiwhoami album place (so high too!!) - avoided it for ages, partly due to a seemingly relentless pr campaign directed at my inbox, but mostly because of the name which is the most stupid name in the existence of Knifey electro pop. But I caved after seeing it brought up on ILM (yeah so I use you lot as a barometer of good taste a bit more than I'd like to admit. WFAI?) and it grabbed me in a very similar way to Chairlift. Really, how did it place that high though? Magic things are at work. 'Goods' was a latecomer to my tracks of the year. I love her nasally tones.

― dog latin

Good post. I thought there were only like five of us who really like the album that much. I had given up on it placing and was delighted to see it that high. That and Niki & The Dove were the nicest surprises so far. Hoping that Dexys or Sebaatien Tellier might make a shock entry in the top ten later on... I realise this won't happen by the way.

FYI Purity Ring is fantastic live

so glad that gy!be made it. Never would have expected them to place so high. It really is their best album.

I had lost all hope of seeing iamamiwhoami make the list after we'd already had Niki & The Dove, Purity Ring, Bat For Lashes, Chairlift, and School Of Seven Bells. But you got it right ILM, it is a better record than all of those!

purity rings live show /is/ good; just sucked that when I saw them she went out of tune for the second half

dodgy monitoring or summat

also midi lightbulbs

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS - another on my ballot; i was initially disappointed by this because the weakest tracks are at the start (and they're weak in a SVIIB-by-numbers kind of way, which is the most dispiriting), but it's definitely an album that gets better and better as it goes on. i appreciate the sheen that increases with every album - the best songs here are the really uptempo, propulsive ones where you feel like you're lost in a storm or wind machine or something: white wind, scavenger, low times. weirdly enough though i think the SVIIB track that most resonated emotionally with me in 2012 wasn't on the album, it was their cover of a terrible rock-era lil wayne song, how to love. i am also baffled by the way no one outside ilx appears to give a shit about SVIIB - like, i don't think anyone else at the guardian reps for them! i'm like, this is my token indie record y'all, do i still have to be out on my own?

30. TAME IMPALA - still don't see the point
29. MUNGOLIAN JETSET - went back to this in light of "toccata" surprising me so pleasantly on the trax poll. much better than i remember - loses its way when the wackiness creeps in but they hold off on that for the most part
28. IAMAMIWHOAMI - keep meaning to actually give her a try but i think i'm still not over my disappointment that she wasn't christina aguilera, disappointment that has only been compounded by xtina's actual career being such an ongoing mess
27. SAINT ETIENNE - loved hearing my friends named in song <3 i didn't vote for this or listen to it much, but saint etienne are so patently a great thing, i'm suspicious of anyone who doesn't see this
26. HOT CHIP - this is the album that made me move them out of the "unexciting journeymen whose albums i listen to out of a sense of duty based on that one jam they had 7 years ago and never rise above average" box to "actually i kinda hate these guys and especially the singer". joe goddard has really come into his own as a producer/remixer though.
25. BEACH HOUSE - i still neither know nor care about the difference between these people and best coast
24. ACTRESS - all actress music i've heard has been like listening to paint dry. NOTHING HAPPENS.
23. BURIAL - i guess i'll give it a pass despite only consisting of 3 tracks as they clock in at over half an hour. i don't see this as a notable or landmark release even on burial's own nothingy terms though. sub out for skrillex please.
22. JULIA HOLTER - i really didn't get this album but there was enough craft going on to make me think the problem was me rather than her. just couldn't find a way in though. if i was a julia holter fan i would be so mad at grimes getting all the hype.
21. GYBE - lol they still exist? these people are just a punchline with which i mock certain friends of mine for their awful music taste 10 years ago. i think when i was in university i wrote an article comparing them negatively to destiny's child (i think about 50% of what i wrote for the university newspaper in 2001 was basically "comparing indie sacred cows negatively to destiny's child", setting the tone for my career tbh)

the burial vs talabot argument upthread is odd, but to me burial's focus on making you ~feel emotion~ comes across as very heavy-handed, like at every point you can never escape the exact emotion he's trying to drive home relentlessly, and it's not actually a very interesting emotion. with talabot it's almost like the emotion is a secondary by-product - like it hits you almost without you realising at first

I cooled on Smalhans quite quickly. It's decent in a functional kind of way but it doesn't have the charm or the tunes of WYGIGT for me.

― questino (seandalai), Thursday, January 31, 2013 12:34 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree with this btw - don't object to hearing it and it's lots of fun to dance to in a club but it had diminishing returns. top 20 but not top 10 is my guess.

really hoping for taylor and farrah to be top 10, and dawn to be top 5. fairly sure miguel will win - there seems to be way more enthusiasm for him on ilm than frank ocean (who i think is his nearest competitor)

Miguel is the biggest cert ever. Farrah will be top 10

28. IAMAMIWHOAMI - keep meaning to actually give her a try but i think i'm still not over my disappointment that she wasn't christina aguilera, disappointment that has only been compounded by xtina's actual career being such an ongoing mess

Just curious, why would you think it's Christina?

2 years ago, when iamamiwhoami released a series of viral-ish videos, internet speculation decided it was xtina going for a new direction.

when mysterious snippets under that name first started getting circulated, for some reason (maybe because they looked like trailers? maybe because they got widespread attention despite not being proper songs? i can't remember) it was widely supposed it was an alias for a big pop star about to make a comeback - xtina's name was at the top of most of those lists. then she came back with the massively disappointing bionic and iamamiwhoami turned to be a random girl no one had heard of.

xp yes

24. ACTRESS - all actress music i've heard has been like listening to paint dry. NOTHING HAPPENS.

Haha, I like Actress (not so much this album), but this is weirdly OTM. It is like watching paint dry, except in complete and total immersive detail - noticing the nuance of every brushstroke, every dip and valley of the grain, the way the lacquer changes from shiny to matte, and somehow deriving some strange introspective pleasure from this like the guy who goes on Obetroll trips in DFW's 'The Pale King'. Not for everyone, granted.

Lots of electronic producers work on that microscopic level though. Don't quite get what is quite so beguiling about this Actress record ahead of everyone else.

Julia Holter and Grimes have nothing to do with one another, nods to an artfulness aside.

This (from the previous album) is his pinnacle so far IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0FmZReUWXU - I'm still in awe of how it's supposed to be a so-called 'study' on Prince's Erotic City. I really like that idea.

I usually want Actress tracks to have more/any progression (altho things like 'N.E.W.' are beautiful and don't need anything extra) or for him to balance the LPs out with more 'fun' stuff like 'Always Human' from the previous one or just faster trippier stuff like 'Holy Water' but instead of any of this his focus seems to be on these intricate yet idle sound sketches and with most of them it's really hard to see why one should be 2 minutes long and another 6.

Got quite a lot out of the Vessel album this year, which reminded me a lot of tracks like Always Human.

Clearly re: actress there is enough happening - just no release/tension dynamic, but actress don't seem interested in that.

A lot of negatives around watching paint dry - but its a non-criticism in this case as Actress are clearly selecting paints made of oils with specific drying times and is into thorough testing of these. I'm all for it.

The whole Coldplay of Dance discussion is pretty funny given 2012 gave us an actual Resident Advisor-credible dance track that actually sounded like Coldplay, although Ame obviously aren't the Coldplay of Dance.

I don't think there has actually been a Coldplay of Dance yet although we're at most 2-4 years away from one, someone somewhere will make a boatload of money combining EDM stadium bluster with with emotional neediness/"feelings". Makes a bit more sense if you think of Deadmau5 as the U2 of Dance.

The Vessel album is great, it took me a while to get into it. It's got a nice balance of abrasive/blissed out sounds and I love dubby techno. I really loved the Luke Hess album as well, both of these I preferred to Actress. But I voted for The Lord's Grafitti in the tracks poll, just wished there was more of that on his album.

If anything's pointing the way then it's those Skrillex tracks that sound like Burial mixed with 90s coffee dance.

there's always been a coldplay element to much dance music

That would make Burial the Geneva of dance music.

Xpost

Who are the Pigeon Detectives of dance music?

For signposting purposes Burial can be the Radiohead of dance music which doesn't quite work for profile or range reasons but will have to do.

By the way if anyone with production skills wants to go out there and make fuckloads of money combining stadium EDM with blubstep then I will accept 30% of earnings for the idea so I can just sit about on a beach for the rest of my life.

I'm frightened of this.

Were Sunship the House of Love of dance music?