TOP 10 NOW: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part II: 2008 ALBUMS)/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

16 - The-Dream - Love/Hate

fixed

Could have been higher if more had voted cared

lol why am i even quoted here, i didn't vote!

you only have to wait til monday to see what the top 10 is

jaymc, that wasn't an actual prediction, just wishful thinking. Also lol @ me not realizing there was an actual FF vs BI poll when I made this one: fleet foxes vs bon iver

i guess these 3 at least

which of these two won't make it:

Air France
Erykah Badu
Bon Iver
The Bug
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Cut Copy
Fleet Foxes
Gang Gang Dance
Hercules and Love Affair
Hot Chip
Lindstrom
M83
No Age
Portishead
TV on the Radio
Vampire Weekend
Kanye West

a word, too, for the-dream's remixes, especially the way he recasts mariah's 'touch my body' as a wondrous space ballad drifting through the stars

and the way he magnifies the romance latent in the mundane details of shontelle's 't-shirt' by turning it into a duet set against a scene of snowy, crowded streets, the boy heading home to his girl

Apocalyptic doesn't have to mean menacing, LJ. My favorite The-Dream songs are "Falsetto" and "I Luv Your Girl," and a large part of what I like about them is how they use space. It's a subtly unsettling eeriness rather than anything in-your-face.

ok, 2, i can't count/format

I would be sad to see neither Jeezy or T.I. make it, even if I didn't really start to get the Jeezy album until after voting.

still pretty sure jeezy will make it!

16 - The-Dream - Love/Hate

fixed

haterz to the LEFT

ok, i just tried listening to bon iver and ew.

haah, it's just funny bcuz there hasn't been a better dissection of an album than love/hate on ilm in the past like two years

The-Dream's album is all about how he (and Los and Tricky) use space. "She Needs my Love" is especially effective in how it goes from sparse metallic sound during the verses to full-on lush at the chorus.

yeah Love/Hate is kind of tied to ILM for me in a way because you guys don't shut up about it. Like that Estelle thread that somehow ended up with us ranking our favorite songs on Love/Hate.

Could have been higher if more had voted cared it wasn't watered-down bog-standard tuneless smooth-neo-soul/R&B shite of the kind that a mercifully insular ILM crew persist on trumpeting as the zenith of recorded sound I had voted for it

*goes left*

Love ya guys really btw, but there's no eye-to-eye on this one. Maybe I need to get in the mood. Dichotomised stylistic shifts an interesting song doth not make IMO, but I'm probably looking for different things in my music.

Now that I think of it, maybe the reason I and some others here are a bit non-plussed with supposed perfect pop song "Livin' a Lie" is that it doesn't make nearly as interesting use of space as the rest of the album?

louis, just like i hope you wouldn't take brainwasher's opinion about british mope rock into account, we're not really taking yours about the-dream into account

"livin a lie" is great but it's one of the least interesting songs on the album

lol How the hell is The-Dream neo-soul?

ok, 2, i can't count/format

― whatever, Friday, February 13, 2009 3:54 PM (2 minutes ago)

hah i was wondering if you counted both nick cave AND the bad seeds :p
i agree those two are def the two least likely to place on that list.

ha xposts LJ but tbf what R&B albums have you loved recently?

he sounds like a cody chestnutt fan

wow that mariah remix is fantastic! so much happening, and i never liked the original (and loved the seamus haji remix, heh)

ps louis your idea of great music is english dudes who mistake fugazi for emerson lake and palmer so stfu

pps if u don't like bon iver you can step to the left too, that guy is boss

that is all OK J0rdan, I don't expect you to, we've all picked our poisons

Rev, my terminology is dicey but I know the precise kinda sound I'm trying to describe. It's no more offensive an error than the ones you guys keep inflicting upon art-rock (or should that be, "fringe indie"/"mope-rock")

K3vin, it ain't MUCH my thing, but Rev's thread of experimental R&B threw up some good songs, I'd need to go back and give them another listen

goole, I *HATE* emerson, lake and palmer with almost every fibre of my body

yeah i really liked 'touch my body' but if there was ever a good song that was basically begging to be remixed it's that

xpost

Louis, I think this great Tim F comment is mad pertinent right now.

The problem with music that can fall under the term "striking, original, memorable artistic statements" is that it tends to get hyper-specified in particular genres that it's not possible for everyone to be an expert on, let alone to agree where the striking, original, memorable artistic statements are being made.

Like, I think The-Dream album is one of the most striking, original, memorable artistic statements I've heard in ages (I hope it charts) but I can see why anyone who was not already a massive commercial R&B fan wouldn't get this.

This is a perspective thing that comes with knowledge-of-genre: what strikes the invested listener (close up) as a topography of daring strikes the outsider (standing further away) as undistinguished and insignificant musical wrinkles.

― Tim F, Monday, February 9, 2009 3:08 PM Bookmark

Britishers: Is there an easy and accessible way to keep up with/fall back in love with rnb on the radio? Like the equivilant of what Trevor Nelson's old Saturday chart show was to me when I was 13.

yeah Tim OTM

That Tim F comment was made at me, I remember it well. It is indeed mad pertinent.

the-dream = SO PSYCHEDELIC. dunno if that's the CW, but DAMN. similar to the body-high pure pleasure ooze-vibe nailed by early air (french band) and g. moroder c. here to enternity. "touch my body" rmx! "falsetto"!

now i'm trying to figure out if goole was dissing fugazi or not, and whether or not i should be fake internet mad about it.

pretty sure he was dissing lj

oh hold up, part 2 of the Tim Quote:

xpost - As I've said in different terms previously, listeners tend to think most strongly that ground has been broken when a particular piece of music makes them step closer and they suddenly perceive a mountain range where once they saw relative flatness. It's as much about a movement in the listener as a movement in the music vis a vis its context.

― Tim F, Monday, February 9, 2009 3:10 PM Bookmark

pretty sure he was dissing england - let's move along here

i'm just listening to love/hate now and it doesn't take a genius (nor an experienced r&b listener) to figure out that this guy is doing something at least a little bit different.

lol yeah i could have stopped at 'english dudes'

matt u don't have to get all LOCKHEED LOCKHEED MARTIN MARIETTA on me

^ on some of that stuff, the-dream is to mod R&B as earth is to doom (xpost)

Britishers: Is there an easy and accessible way to keep up with/fall back in love with rnb on the radio? Like the equivilant of what Trevor Nelson's old Saturday chart show was to me when I was 13.

sadly not - the flow of US R&B to the UK has all but dried up for all but the biggest names, i don't think the-dream had any profile at all here last year. either 1xtra or kiss would be your best bets - i mostly just go to US sources (and the ILM R&B thread) though.

Cheers. As soon as I said that I started sniffing around the 1xtra site.

yeah to echo lex the rolling R&B is a great place to find stuff you're behind on

^ on some of that stuff, the-dream is to mod R&B as earth is to doom (xpost)

contendo please expand on this a bit for me.

i assume he means its not really r&b?

posting #15 in a min...it was #1 in one of the big polls...

that mariah remix my the dream is pretty nice, except having big fatass rick ross on a track sort of diminishes it's "wonderful space ballad drifting thru space"-ness IMO.

thank u matty

btw for those who don't know this, the-dream wrote rihanna's 'umbrella'

also single ladies

xps: But The-Dream's whole thing is that he makes no attempt whatsoever to break the boundaries of the R&B genre, he's just as idiosyncratic as possible within them.

<3 him now

yeah i was on the guy's wikipedia he is a machine.

contendo please expand on this a bit for me.

― call all destroyer

no, it IS r&b, but it's been expanded in such an attuned-to-spaces manner that it becomes psychedelic, and it has this three-vicodin-and-a-shot cosmic ooziness that just kills me

i say this is the process of realizing that the earth record is much better than i gave it credit for, and that i totally slepted on the-dream

(caveat: buzz may wear off soon)