ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

Whoa, didn't expect Oneohtrix - actually haven't listened to this one much but I approve generally.

oh i remember now, yeah, video game synths but a real lack of variation and none of say ikonika's club elements to stop those noises being a bit annoying

So I've never been a big fan of what people at one time referred to as IDM. For me, OPN fits squarely into this category because it is abstracted, largely beatless electronic music, but there's a strong compositional core to his tracks that make them much more enjoyable than a lot of other recordings that I'd lump in with IDM.

I liked this ok but didn't return to it much.

barwick is kind of ambient in a way

I think Run the Jewels still has a chance. Dawn Richard is the one I question showing up.

this music makes me so happy.

xp wow thanks dave for that video!
i remember the one for problem areas, enjoyed that

I think Run the Jewels still has a chance. Dawn Richard is the one I question showing up.

otm MarkoP

I'd be okay with both of those missing out altogether if it meant some other surprise sneaking in.

like ...the National!

http://i.imgur.com/bEoLz0k.jpg

12 DAWN RICHARD Goldenheart (733 points, 24 votes, 1 first place vote)

Spotify

these threads tend to have impeccable timing

Haha! Guess I was wrong.

hahaha

i said El-P didn't do it, so get the fuck outta here

OH THANK GOD I WAS SO NERVOUS

Meh. "86" is the only song off of that I managed to love.

Doesn't really deserve to be this high but neither does MIA I suppose and both of those have made enough records I love by this stage.

I didn't vote for this but every year I cherish those albums that place high on ILX and are invisible in every other poll.

i like that this record placed even though i never have any desire to listen to it

Did inspire my favorite post of the year tho:

LARP&B

― Ξ̿̿̿̿̿̿Ξ̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿̿Ξ̿̿̿̿̿̿ (乒乓), Tuesday, January 15, 2013 4:53 AM Bookmark

Meh. "86" is the only song off of that I managed to love.

― raggett neds of your summer dress (The Reverend),

me too. I preferred lex's encomia.

lol like the tnp record i find it really impressive but impossible to pin down

the font on the goldenheart cover is unconscionable

I didn't write about this Goldenheart on Facebook but it's great

"Pretty Wicked Things", "86", "Riot", "Return of a Queen", "Northern Lights", "Gleaux"... all wonderful

I was playing the title track the other day and my wife was transfixed, all "OMG WHO IS THIS BECAUSE THIS IS AMAZING AND WONDERFUL CLARE DE LUNE 4EVA"

M.I.A was my #1. So far I've enjoyed every M.I.A album more than the previous one.

Just realised that my problem with this is much the same as Run The Jewels in that both of them favour a kind of monolithic stomp over the musical landscape at the expense of groove and lightness of touch. Both have their moments but the overall effect is just wearying.

this album is so monumental to me. i know it disappointed a lot of people but it's just an album that needs an incredible amount of time to sink into, to wrap your head around. the amount of ideas here is overwhelming. i can understand if people didn't want to do that but trust me, it was so worth it for me. i could actually rarely listen to it except all the way through as an album - it just made so much sense that way. if pushed to pick out highlights

"return of a queen" - sets out her battlefield from the get-go, the terms on which she's fighting, what she's fighting for
"riot" and "northern lights" - probably the album's two best "bangers", the first a more straightforward EDM thing (albeit opening with a quote from william penn) and the second this incredibly polyrhythmic NOLA bounce inspired track
"frequency" - and then we get into the slow jam section; ladies and gentlemen dawn richard is floating in space
"300" - and then the penultimate song, the post mortem, summing up what's been won and lost and where we're going next. "we could've parted seas just / to walk on the floor of oceans / ohhhhh"

if you're talking albums to get lost in, this was the MOST lost i've been in music for a long time.

(imago you especially would be into this prog-r&b opus)

I thought Goldenheart placed last year for some reason??must be mistaken.

Giving this OPN album another go. It's idiotic. Like a sound collage made up from an old Encarta CD-ROM. This must be what older people must've felt like listening to Apex Twin when I was younger.

Monolithic stomp? It's all about wildly polyrhythmic beats.

yh stoked for this when I get home

OneOhTrix was a fabulous surprise to me, sounding quite unlike how I imagined. Then I realised what I was actually hearing was a youtube of Nipsey Hussle I'd bookmarked from the rap thread.

So if there's no Run the Jewels (or 2 Chainz, Drake, etc) but Kanye and Chance place then Danny Brown and Ka are the only other hip hop albums? That seems unusually low.

Enjoyed Lex dropping a Spiritualized reference just then.

i can understand if people didn't want to do that but trust me, it was so worth it for me.

I probably gave it 7-8 tries and hated it more each time. I really wanted it to open itself to me but blargh.

a kind of monolithic stomp over the musical landscape at the expense of groove and lightness of touch

this is ridiculous, it's one of the most VARIED albums that were released last year - an incredible amount of styles, almost all impressively sui generis, packed into it. and of course it's not "light" it's a fucking war, it's a crusade, a marathon, you're meant to feel exhausted and overwhelmed

I have a feeling one of the big hitters is going to be next. Maybe Kanye or Daft Punk?

this has been imo the best rollout in ilx history, wd 2013. don't even care that I dislike much of the inevitable top ten

Enjoyed Lex dropping a Spiritualized reference just then.

haaaaa the phrase just popped into my head and i didn't know where it was from ;_;

I wasn't really into Dawn Richard and couldn't really get into Goldenheart, but I had some sort of REVELATION about Armor On a few months ago, so maybe that will happen with this one at some unforeseen point in 2014.

Yeah, only 4 rap albums is nuts, but I guess I'm kind of partially to blame. I didn't listen to or vote for a ton of rap albums this year and most of the ones I did were kind of niche interest.

this is ridiculous, it's one of the most VARIED albums that were released last year - an incredible amount of styles, almost all impressively sui generis, packed into it. and of course it's not "light" it's a fucking war, it's a crusade, a marathon, you're meant to feel exhausted and overwhelmed

― lex pretend, Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:33 AM Bookmark

OTM OTM OTM

Do people who have listened to Goldenheart a lot get the sense of an emotional/cathartic arc to the flow of it? I didn't experience that the handful of times I listened to it, and am wondering if a sense of that will come with time. It's one of the things I loved most about Armor On

huh this is not what I expected Oneohtrix Point Never to sound like

maybe I will spend some time coding to this

wasn't a lot of consensus in rap circles last year

Couldn't even agreee which Kevin Gates album was better

I went with Luca Brasi

http://i.imgur.com/3oBk5LA.jpg

11 CHANCE THE RAPPER Acid Rap (872 points, 26 votes, 4 first place votes)

Do people who have listened to Goldenheart a lot get the sense of an emotional/cathartic arc to the flow of it? I didn't experience that the handful of times I listened to it, and am wondering if a sense of that will come with time.

absolutely though to be fair it took a lot of listens for it to sink in. tbh i still feel like i'm hearing new things in it every time

Doesn't rap usually do better in tracks than in albums?