ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

ack yeah i'd forgotten how straight-up terrible matthew dear's contributions to this are

the rest is as prettily inconsequential as i remember

A Matthew Dear-less version of Magical Boy actually exists in the world. I think it's on Spotify.

yeah so I don't know what happened but all of a sudden the Goldfrapp album turned amazing, "Alvar" and "Thea" rule

Love the slightly discordant strumming throughout Alvar.

http://i.imgur.com/CT1yQl3.jpg

35 DJ RASHAD Double Cup (463 points, 17 votes)

Spotify

re: Koze, the song I ended up endlessly playing was "Nices Woelkchen"

DJ Rashad's cover three times the size of everyone else's!

I like what I've heard of this, but I didn't hear much.

Have you not listened to Goldfrapp before DJP? If you like this one you'll like their debut album, Felt Mountain.

ahhh finally - the top 35, now for the bigger pictures!

lol the one image i forgot to resize is prob the most boring album cover on this entire list

Have you not listened to Goldfrapp before DJP? If you like this one you'll like their debut album, Felt Mountain.

I posted about them above; they're a "looks great on paper" band that I've never taken the time to really pay any attention to

On the plus side, I see my house.

I listened to the first half of that and didn't really click with it, was expecting it to be more rhythmically complex than it turned out being. Like I get the feeling there's better/ruffer footwork out there?

I like this in bits and pieces but I've never been able to stick with a footwork/post-footwork album for the whole duration.

i quite like the cover
geography nod with a circuitboardesque feel to the city lights

i didn't get round to this until this month. i don't know why i loved footwork so much for about three months and since then it's left me completely cold. maybe it was just dj nate himself. footwork needs more danity kane samples. i feel guilty whenever i see the footwork thread that i started years ago pop back up on new answers when it's been an aeon since i last opened it let alone posted in it.

DJ Nate was probably my favourite of the albums I tried to get into.

http://i.imgur.com/63rDsdq.jpg

34 MILEY CYRUS Bangerz (465 points, 16 votes)

Spotify

So far of the things I've voted for, MATMOS and DJ Rashad have placed.

I listened to the first half of that and didn't really click with it, was expecting it to be more rhythmically complex than it turned out being

It's definitely a journey kind of album where energy levels go up over the course of it, starts out pretty slow, gets a whole lot more banging towards the end.

Laura Marling is very well done stuff but it feels like an album made up of Ruby/Poe interlude tracks

FUCKING BANGERZ <3333333

bangerz was top 3 for me all year

good album
voted wrecking ball in the singles
really enjoyed love money party and 4x4 too

I like the DJ Rashad album a lot, but I think the RP Boo album was wilder sounding and ultimately more satisfying

Bangerz is the only album listed so far where I was physically recoiling by the time I got to the third song.

ok, just getting caught up.

Happy to see Laura Marling, that was my #1! I really love this album and came back to it over and over again this past year. It's on the long side, but all of the songs open up so nicely across repeated listens.

The DJ Rashad album is amazing, he took Footwork to the next stage in its evolution with this one.

Had no idea Miley Cyrus released anything in 2013.

... whut

4x4 is awesome, I can take or leave a lot of the rest. Had been wondering who was going to finish higher out of Miley and Ariana and I think the right album won.

yeah I preferred the Rp Boo one.

xxxxp

I love footwork, big proselytiser of this stuff on and off board and I got to interview Rashad earlier last year too. This is maybe the most straight up accessible footwork album so far. It's full of hooks but also I felt like it was a little straightforward compared to other stuff and ultimately didn't play it a great deal. It's a really good album but it also compromises the rough edges of footwork, which is an inevitability I think.

ok so all the really great miley trax last year were her deep cuts

"drive" - anguished dubstep ballad à la melanie fiona's "4 am"
"4x4" - bubba sparxxx's hick-hop dream gets a new lease of life; contains lyric "drivin' so fast 'bout to piss on myself"
"sms (bangerz)" - ludicrous britney duet; anything that contains a hint of freestyle revival will get a thumbs up from me; her "funking bangerz!" aside has been in my head permanently since the album came out
"rooting for my baby" - hey she can do understated and genuinely affecting stuff too

Had no idea Miley Cyrus released anything in 2013.

Dude even the Japanese soldier who didn't realise the Second World War had ended until 1974 knew about the Miley album.

"Rooting For My Baby" is my favorite.

bangerz was both a pop album that felt very 'of the moment' and pretty singular. there's def a lot of rihanna's DNA in the album (as "we can't stop" helped make clear in a pretty obvious fashion) but i think it's a better full length than anything she's ever done, esp recently. 'good girl' might be close though.

i love miley's vocals though. i'm excited for unplugged!

also i really hope "#GETITRIGHT" is the next single for karaoke purposes

This is Reggie off the Rashad record

i love that "rooting for my baby" was a song pharrell had sitting around for 10 years but never liked how it fit anyone else until miley got it

lex posted all the worst songs on the miley album. absolute classic tho

I kind of got interested in hearing Bangerz because people were saying it did actually have great pop bangers, but then I realised all those people were also saying that 'We Can't Stop' was good. And as far as my ears can tell, it's actually very very horrible. Admission: I'm pretty sure I've never heard even a bit of 'Wrecking Ball'.

lex posted all the worst songs on the miley album. absolute classic tho

― k3vin k., Wednesday, January 29, 2014 12:23 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark

hahaha

awful album

i don't think "drive" or "sms" are the best ones, "4x4" is a pretty exact distillation of its appeal either good or bad though

Loved We Can't Stop, 4X4, Rooting for My Baby and especially FU but it always felt better than expected rather than a genuine standout album.

I am relatively certain the Miley album is not for me considering that abou 15 seconds of "SMS (Bangerz)" made me tear off my headphones and want to curse out everyone in my immediate vicinity for being alive in this terrible world

I kind of got interested in hearing Bangerz because people were saying it did actually have great pop bangers, but then I realised all those people were also saying that 'We Can't Stop' was good. And as far as my ears can tell, it's actually very very horrible. Admission: I'm pretty sure I've never heard even a bit of 'Wrecking Ball'.

"Wrecking Ball" is a decent song, certainly the best thing I heard by her all last year.

lex posted all the worst songs on the miley album. absolute classic tho

i know a lot of people who rep for this album and NO ONE agrees on which the best/worst tracks are. sure sign of a classic as ever

TRU

Still my favourite song on Bangerz is FU, a magnificent and bizarre dubstep torch song

No opinion on Bangerz but am enjoying the concept that the lyric "drivin' so fast 'bout to piss on myself" is a selling point.

didn't realize "adore you" had been made a single -- that was my favorite deep cut. really dig the future track too but i like just about anything with future on it