ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

lol oops, got wires xed

imago is gonna go have a talk with his people and make sure he's getting solid exit polling info

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intel/2012/11/07/07-megyn-kelly-decision-room-2.o.jpg/a_560x375.jpg

Thread has convinced me to take out my stopwatch for the next time a metal album places

I voted for TNP too! ..although it was not high on my ballot

I guess the Oneohtrix Point Never album wasn't a hit with ILX? I was expecting it to show up somewhere, but at this point it doesn't seem likely

the most silent of swells

http://www.charleslay.com/uploaded_images/jimmy_truck-784553.jpg

and I'm not talking musically -- they literally have done nothing for me: they haven't played a show i booked, or paid me to do their taxes, or even shared smokes or snacks with me. People often talk about music "not doing anything for them," so I decided I would vote only for music that has literally done things for me. Mainly because I didn't listen to any 2013 albums, I made my ballot totally out of financial self-interest.

Thread has convinced me to take out my stopwatch for the next time a metal album places

― 龜, Wednesday, January 29, 2014 10:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the infamous occasion upon which j0rdan unveiled two albums 9 minutes apart and then waited 11 minutes to post the next one will heretofore be known as 9/11

never forget

Omg sd

let's lol

I'm currently listening to one of my favourite albums of the last few years, possibly a ballot top-3, for the first time. You have about 15 minutes to guess what I'm talking about before I post the albums I've reviewed. N.B. you'll get it wrong

Like, this album is *completely blowing my mind*. That's your clue.

that's a pretty shitty clue, dude.

guesssss

1 month passes

PET SHOP BOYS Electric - THIS ALBUM HAS MY GODDAMNED ATTENTION. Turns out that I *do* like str8-up thumping dancepop when it's done with a New Romantic widescreen openness and proggish swagger, rather than the dismal DFA-isms of toss like Factory Floor and so forth. Oh YES! :D *gets up from chair, performs extremely physical living-room walk-dance* Gonna let this stew for a few songs...track 2 is kinda less amazing, in fact a trifle rote. Happily, Love Is A Bourgeois Concept is an *absolute fucking banger*, feels like a true dance-music classic, the sort of song that will be fondly remembered many years from now. If there's one potential problem with this music, it's that I can't fathom how a whole album of this stuff will really work - they don't seem to have too many tricks (we shall see) - but when the highs are this high you've gotta say they've done their jobs. This is no Rio (basically no album is these days) but it's so far very good. Fluorescent heads in a slightly different direction - less drummish, more moody, and builds to a mighty head. Album is sustaining pretty well. Really well, even - Inside A Dream had an awesome progression and this Springsteen cover is working splendidly. OK, enough of 'Thursday', god. 'Vocal' is...pretty euphoric, yeah. It dices with kitsch and wins, altho I wd guess that has been the PSBs' steez for 30 years now...

LAURA MARLING Once I Was an Eagle - Oh christ how long is this fucking album? *time passes* Oh, absolutely enough of this. She's always been the peon of fucking BBC evening-slot helldrudgery and this shit stops here. Apologies to all. Yes, I can tell this is wilder and sparser than 'her previous stuff' but this doesn't mean I'll like it. I don't get any transcendence, any cosmic energy from this; it reaches for a level I can't access the edges of sanity from. Comparisons to Joni Mitchell kinda ridiculous and insulting, tbh.

DJ KOZE Amygdala - Haha, this album's even goddamn longer. First track features Caribou though, which is a surefire way to pique my interest. Well, features a Caribou sample, at least. *a lot of time passes* Royal Asscher Cut is the first song to really reach me but it's great! *more time passes* Das Wort is REALLY lovely triphoppy chillvibez! All the ones with German in their title, or something. *pauses album to watch movie*

HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA The Woman In The Dunes - This is one of the best fucking films I will ever see in my life. A sort of Wicker Man of the capitalist condition, except ten times better than that sounds - all our schemes for extracting water using dead fish, our schemes for selling sand, our schemes for trapping crows and using them as messengers (hint: crows ALWAYS know better), our bug-collecting, our at-first reluctant but then willing and eventually automatic obeisance to our overlords, our endless struggle against downward forces...this occupies a similar headspace to Pynchon, fuck it, and is similarly rife with nuclear angst, a kind of apocalypse-threat that does more damage than an actual apocalypse...twisted and mutilated sexual dynamics, initially our consolation, our escape from Hell, played increasingly for others' benefit, increasingly the very lure that keeps us servile, culminating in one of the most extraordinary scenes I'll ever witness in film (the drumming/mask/spotlight 'performance' scene, where the surreal nature of the movie finally spills over into an explicit stage-show, our reality revealed as a mock-up, a fraud, a farce and yet a source of tremendous pain and hurt) - this is an existential howl of despair at the capitalist condition to dwarf all others. Now, climb back in your pit...

RESUME DJ KOZE Amygdala - How can anything follow that movie up? This is good music for this state - slightly anaesthetic, mellow, subliminal. Allows me to manipulate my own thoughts into a rested state. Shit, this album still has like 40 minutes left, even after this (very soothing) ten-minute monster. Can I namecheck Global Communication and be done? Yeah it's really good. That film has quite blown me to fuck.

DJ RASHAD Double Cup - More excellent midnight music, a bit more frenetic, but still got that soulful slightly psychedelic slightly insane vibe to it, kinda creepy how closely this falls to my headspace in fact, even more than the Koze...oh NICE, track 2 is really off-kilter and delicious - this isn't as completely bewildering and crazy as the RP Boo (which I voted for in the traxpoll) but has incredible charms of its own. Really good head-music. Really weird. I'd wager really original, too. Heckuva lot of craft and skill gone into composing these. OMG LOL, the RYM reviews are all 'where are the beats I can't dance to this?!' well lemme tell youse punks this is HEAD MUSIC, music to hear at FOUR THIRTY IN THE FUCKING MORNING WHEN REALITY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Mind you, I'd dance the fuck outta this shit too. OH MY GOD THIS ALBUM IS INCREDIBLE, what the FUCK. Completely crazy! This is such new music to me - such untrammelled creativity, holy crap...when people say that the most revolutionary music is coming from hip-hop & urban dance, I guess this is what they fucken mean! My absolute mind is getting blown here. So glad I chose to play this album instead of going to bed! This will definitely be the last for the evening, if only because Miley's not gonna be able to follow this up. Well, also because I need to sleep. Only One is just...a spin-cycle of techno-psychological breakdown and hypercrushed musical obsession, all microtooled and precision-murdered into a slash-cut meat display of dance music, a wonky lucid message heard softly through the side of your brain in the final seconds before the night claims you entirely, for its own ambiguous needs...everything's too fast or too slow, messages are repeated like abandoned weather stations, circuits short on purpose, you've fallen off the grid, the chain, the ecosystem - you're being lined up but all wrong...oh my god, I Don't Give A Fuck is one of the best SONGS I've heard recently full stop, fuck fuck fuck, shit, fuck, the machines haven't won, they've lost, and this is their lament as they're led to the reprocessing plant...seriously, that was Autechre reimagined as death-march, 'cept a march you dance, that was tension without release until you realise that heightened tension IS release, this shit's turning me luriqua, dear christ oh my lord. This would have been in my top...3 of albums? 4? 3 or 4? This is absolutely INSANE. How, ILX, how? How can I be exposed to so much unbelievable, penetrative art in the space of a few small hours? My jaw is dropped, I'm gone. This album does things with rhythm that I didn't even think were possible in hentai. I'm done, defeated. Spent. It just keeps it coming. This is the music The Prodigy thought they were making but weren't. This is the endless trip into a certainty you can't calculate, and it just keeps coming for more. Yes, this is better than that RP Boo song I heard, and I'd argue crazier - it moves subtly and devastatingly thru the gears rather than starting in 5 and proceeding therefrom. It laser-adjusts the gearbox before your very trembling face without having to move the fucking stick. Cogs are magnetised, lifted, replaced, swirled, shunted, dematerialised...this is a device that has learnt how to build itself, the point of technological singularity...we belong to the music now. Just two tracks left. Let U No - the light pours into me, solidifies. I am an illuminated bar of unbending attention. Last track. The countdown. Thudding evasions. We're all too high, so high we've forgotten what high even is, what dimension either metaphorical or mathematical might signify, and are simply accepting of and solely concerned with time's onward rollerdisco, its paradoxical stillness...nothing snaps the spell despite a million interruptions...zen is chaos...peace is violence...where can I find more of this shit

you know just because they're called 'superlatives' that doesn't make them peculiarly resistant to constant abuse

*twitches, exposed wires crackle*

hentai??

list of actual superlatives in that post:

[one of the] best [fucking films]
[one of the] most extraordinary [scenes]
Are we counting 'completely (adjective)' as a superlative? Disputed.
[people say that the] most revolutionary [music] <<<-direct quote
[the] last [for the evening] <<<-actually a noun
[one of the] best [SONGS]
[my] top[...3]

^^^so mostly prefixed by 'one of the' or otherwise easily-qualified. Nice try pal :D

[one of the] most extraordinary [scenes]

are we still talking about hentai?

yes we are

*goes to bed still completely amped ^_O*

it moves subtly and devastatingly thru the gears rather than starting in 5 and proceeding therefrom. It laser-adjusts the gearbox before your very trembling face without having to move the fucking stick.

one of those ordinary student nights, then...

http://media0.giphy.com/media/5vsp9FqLBVk4g/giphy.gif

lying in bed now srsly abt to drop off but that^ is basically how that album makes me feel, in a good way

^^excellent series of posts

I'm glad LJ likes DJ Rashad! :D

I thought I Am The Center would place as there seemed to be a lot of love for it here but can't see it being Top 20

@ imago get to Teklife vol. 1 right away

is it the final countdown today?

I thought I Am The Center would place as there seemed to be a lot of love for it here but can't see it being Top 20

― groovypanda, Thursday, January 30, 2014 1:34 AM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i guess this is out of the running now. there are a few i'm disappointed not to see.

glad goldfrapp made it, though, that is a really special album. far and away their best, imo.

after further household discussion of Ciara's "Body Party" from the previous results, I learned that L was referring to D'angelo from The Wire, as in that track being music that would soundtrack his life. she was not referring to the male recording artist, who I clearly know nothing about. apologies to Rev & Spottie.

Fantasia & Goldfrapp - not my thing

DJ Koze - Koh-Zee? Kows like in "rows"? very pleasant, got bored after two tracks but I can imagine good settings for this

Dj Rashad - painful on first listen

Miley - this sounds fine, schizo style jumping suits her, won't re-listen

Darkside - oh right this is great, should have ignored whatever was said about bluesy licks on that other thread, didn't hear it so I didn't vote for it but I probably would have, I'll come back to this

Ariana - no thanks

Deafheaven - no

Burial - what? not objectionable but not memorable

Holden - L: "interesting", definitely my favorite discovery so far. is this a deliberate pun on Heldon, or former members or something?

Hecker - see above

Brandy Clark - this is good, L says "honky tonk", and whoa @ this weed song.

(we continue to listen to Brandy Clark throughout dinner. this is what people who were disappointed in the Neko Case album should be listening to.)

The 1975 - this guy sounds really uptight

Amel - first of all Ice Cream Everyday is a great title. this isn't really my thing but I can imagine listening to it in a fancy foreign coffeshop. a couple more songs in and I never want to hear it again

Tegan And Sara - no thanks

Classix - definitely gr80 bait

Holter - me: "only one more album after this" L: "good" - after she wails "mother" in the first track we kill it

BOC - pretty good, would not return to it though

after further household discussion of Ciara's "Body Party" from the previous results, I learned that L was referring to D'angelo from The Wire, as in that track being music that would soundtrack his life. she was not referring to the male recording artist, who I clearly know nothing about. apologies to Rev & Spottie.

ha, this makes way more sense

How can I be exposed to so much unbelievable, penetrative art in the space of a few small hours? My jaw is dropped, I'm gone. This album does things with rhythm that I didn't even think were possible in hentai. I'm done, defeated. Spent. It just keeps it coming.

LJ have you developed a cocaine habit?

ha that feeling of relief when a minor mystery is cleared up

Holden - L: "interesting", definitely my favorite discovery so far. is this a deliberate pun on Heldon, or former members or something?

it's his surname!

(we continue to listen to Brandy Clark throughout dinner. this is what people who were disappointed in the Neko Case album should be listening to.)

:)

"minor mystery" re: ciara and d'angelo not LJ's up-all-night antics

Holden is the guy's surname sleeve! oops XP

And the Holter record has a lot more to offer than track one imo - this is my favourite i think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_LuSW61GI

oh fuck whoops

^ special plea to sleeve cos there's not such a massive gap between the decadent twilit euro vibe on that and something like dagmar krause which i think a sleeve likes?

<3 imago's Rashad write up. So pleased. Gonna listen to it on my way to work

^ yes! agree btw that teklife has more jaw-dropping sonic events but i think that double cup works really well as an album

and NV from upthread: yes this finishes today

This album does things with rhythm that I didn't even think were possible in hentai.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9627011/photos/anime.gif

Oh really?

*Puts on DJ Rashad album and listens*

Hmm. Nah.

http://i.imgur.com/wQCqMCC.gif

77 JULIANNA BARWICK Nepenthe – bought this just before Christmas; very pretty, like it a lot, suspect it’s insubstantial though. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
76 FALL OUT BOY – never heard them, little interest.
75 MELT-BANANA Fetch – not heard it; have heard them in the past and thought it was alright but not my thing.
74 BILL CALLAHAN Dream River – liked his previous three, but didn’t get round to listening to this.
73 LORDE Pure Heroine – not heard it. Single was OK.
72 THEE OH SEES Floating Coffin – never knowingly heard.
71 FÖLLAKZOID II – never heard of.
70 GORGUTS Colored Sands – this is metal, right? Don’t get metal at all.
(tie) 68. KELELA Cut 4 Me – never heard.
(tie) 68 CUT COPY Free Your Mind – never heard.
67 f(x) Pink Tape – never heard.
66 DANNY BROWN Old – never heard.
65 FACTORY FLOOR Factory Floor – wanted to like this more. It’s efficient but lacking.
64 CIARA Ciara – never heard.
63 PARQUET COURTS Light Up Gold – heard this. Mediocre NYC wannabes.
62 K MICHELLE Rebellious Soul – never heard.
61 ARCTIC MONKEYS AM – really like this, fuelled by loving R U Mine a couple of years ago. The whole album is good. Surprised me.
60 DONATO DOZZY Plays Bee Mask – never heard.
59 JOHN GRANT Pale Green Ghosts – like a lot, great live, listened to a lot, love the Gus Gus bits, but I don’t feel passionate about him. Very good nonetheless.
58 RHYE Woman – never heard.
57 YOUNG GALAXY Ultramarine – never heard.
56 KA The Night's Gambit – never heard.
55 DJ SPRINKLES Queerifications and Ruins: Collected Remixes by DJ Sprinkles – really liked Midtown etc a few years ago, would probably enjoy this; hadn’t heard of it though.
54 NEKO CASE The Worse Things Get – never heard.
53 CARCASS Surgical Steel – more metal, right?
52 SAVAGES Silence Yourself – heard a tiny snippet of, didn’t investigate. Not sure why.
51 ASHLEY MONROE Like a Rose – never heard.
50 WAXAHATCHEE Cerulean Salt – never heard.
49 WILLIAM ONYEABOR Who is William Onyeabor? – this is really good.
48 YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN UZU – never heard.
47 LAUREL HALO Chance of Rain – heard once at record club, reminded me of the Four Tet album last year. Enjoyed. Should probably buy.
46 QUADRON Avalanche – never heard.
45 ARCADE FIRE Reflektor – their best, least annoying, most fun record by far. Really like it. Find the hate baffling and amusing. Singer still an enormous dickhead.
44 MATMOS The Marriage of True Minds – never heard.
43 JON HOPKINS Immunity – nice, but too loud, overlong, and over simple.
42 MAYA JANE COLES Comfort – really keen to hear this.
41 FUCK BUTTONS Slow Focus – didn’t hit me emotionally like the last one, but found myself playing it quite a bit after it had bedded in.
40 FANTASIA Side Effects of You – never heard.
39 GOLDFRAPP Tales of Us – never heard.
38 PET SHOP BOYS Electric – never heard.
37 LAURA MARLING Once I Was an Eagle – loved the previous two (and liked the debut) but this didn’t click; like Bill Callahan, I’ve probably just heard enough of what she does and maybe just don’t need anymore.
36 DJ KOZE Amygdala – never heard, but intrigued to hear.
35 DJ RASHAD Double Cup – never heard.
34 MILEY CYRUS Bangerz – no interest.
33 DARKSIDE Psychic – really like this; it’s totally trendy lifestyle music for trendy wankers, though. But that’s what I am, or something.
32 ARIANA GRANDE Yours Truly – never heard.
31 DEAFHEAVEN Sunbather – intrigued to hear just out of curiosity, but the 30 seconds I did hear suggested that they’d sucked out the wrong bit of metal ad left the thing I really dislike (the screaming) in.
30 BURIAL Rival Dealer EP – never heard. Never understood the hype around him.
29 HOLDEN The Inheritors – adore this. One of my very favourites from last year. Dips in the middle but the opening four and closing four are amazing.
28 TEGAN & SARA Heartthrob – never heard.
27 AMEL LARRIEUX Ice Cream Everyday – never heard.
26 TIM HECKER Virgins – my first Hecker; didn’t quite get it. Something never coalesced. My mate Rob said he liked that it didn’t coalesce, and suggested it was like an exploded version of Field Of Reeds. Will keep plugging away as something intrigues me.
25 CLASSIXX Hanging Gardens – never heard.
23 JULIA HOLTER Loud City Song – really like this; love her vocals, love the jazz-ish brass, love the lyrics about cheese.
22 BRANDY CLARK 12 Stories – never heard.
21 THE 1975 The 1975 – never heard.
24 BOARDS OF CANADA Tomorrow's Harvest – this is pretty good; I like it as much as anything they’ve done.

how's life, check your ilx email

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, January 29, 2014 8:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gracias karl...arlk...rlka...lkar...

Absolutely loving this Holden record that people voted for.

lifehack: try listing only the records you have something to say about. nobody actually needs to see "haven't heard" over and over. of course nobody has heard all of these albums!

True, but someone might see that ad say "omg you should hear this one, it's right up your street!" ymmv.