ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

Someone up thread mentioned Sleaford Mods as indie guitar music so who knows

Maybe it's the audience, like anything that appeals to undesirables

there is an unhealthy attitude espoused to anything slightly weird, but that makes it all the more gratifying when something weird does show :D

helg, *I* care about those things, potentially - there's always the yearly rolling time travel if you want to drum up support! it's all a case of knowing where to share

emil.y my lumping of richard dawson and pc music with indie shows my somewhat cavalier approach to indie, right :P my more considered genre-description of dawson can be found in the thread-title i started for him

you're right though - i probably shouldn't play fast and loose with the word, diluting what it actually is

it's not like the pop oriented ppl are gonna see it as anything other than an affront

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

those reactions to anything guitar (white male esp) orientated makes me lol but if you think about it its exactly the same thing they hated rockists doing to non-rock music and not sure they realise it is the same. ILX can be just as prejudiced as anywhere else I suppose. But I cant help but laugh when it happens so at least they're entertaining with it.

there is an unhealthy attitude espoused to anything slightly weird

Not really true - the attitude is I am ok with this but there is nothing but I won't devote anymore of my time to it.

pop/rap/dance is a million times weirder than indie in 2015

the weird self congratulatory attitude while playing super conservative music is what turns a lot of ppl off to the indie

Not really true - the attitude is I am ok with this but there is nothing but I won't devote anymore of my time to it.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is slightly unhealthy, you know

jho i love quite a bit of pop rap and dance as can be seen on my ballot - there is weirdness and blandness in all genres. a lot of indie is great but it depends how you define indie and how deep you search. i would consider myself not a fan of bland conservative indie, but then who would?

I mean the whole idea of polls is p silly like the conceit that OK for real out of 7 billion ppl and countless cultures etc etc r of the best 77 individual songs made by humans on earth were on the new Taylor Swift album that even her supporters seem kinda lukewarm on

Lagoon - I don't think any of us are talking about indie proper & I don't think the stuff I like is weird just good

i was impressed with ilm's reaction to Dawson, I must say.

Def depends on what you consider indie, though I think there's been a very strange smudging of avant fans and indie fans here that just doesn't work. A lot of the 'indie' I'm into at the moment is pretty straight-forward and doesn't share anything with e.g. sound artists, but it's hella political and vital and young and angry and has even less in common with the dreardrear stuff that is likely to make an ilx poll.

idk what indie proper is im just sayin accusing ppl of being turned off by weirdness when five young thug songs placed is kinda sus

yeah srsly, they rly tried, it was cute. pity they couldn't deal with the vox, they being the best bit xxp

*them being /pedant

Rap is definitely pretty weird right now

Def depends on what you consider indie, though I think there's been a very strange smudging of avant fans and indie fans here that just doesn't work. A lot of the 'indie' I'm into at the moment is pretty straight-forward and doesn't share anything with e.g. sound artists, but it's hella political and vital and young and angry and has even less in common with the dreardrear stuff that is likely to make an ilx poll.

― emil.y, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:15 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you say avant fans and indie fans like they're mutually exclusive - the stuff you're into would appeal to a lot of 'avant fans', i'd wager

Again who's complaining about Young Thug? Not me. I'm also not saying people are not liking stuff because it's weird.

like that dude dawson sounds like a lot of music that has been around for a long time, he is weird by the virtue of being uncomfortably yelly not by like having interesting new ideas or anything

Again who's complaining about Young Thug? Not me. I'm also not saying people are not liking stuff because it's weird.

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 23, 2015 9:18 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

duude i was responding to louis

this is slightly unhealthy, you know

jho i love quite a bit of pop rap and dance as can be seen on my ballot - there is weirdness and blandness in all genres. a lot of indie is great but it depends how you define indie and how deep you search. i would consider myself not a fan of bland conservative indie, but then who would?

― my shoes are deception (imago), Friday, 23 January 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This 'educational' mode forms a conseravtive attitude that turns people off to stuff they actually find don't engage them in a level that often doesn't communicates across.

Grow up - its not a duty to do healthy listening (lol).

aargh sorry so damn garbled but basically there is no need to force it onto people and make assumptions because they don't quite engage to things in the way you might want them to.

Haha OK Louis has now taken over the discussion per usual

i shd just let him do his thing but it was just so indicative of something

young thug is weird within the narrow-ish parameters of a very very very clearly-defined 'trap' sound, surely. not that he ISN'T weird, and he's vocally very striking, but he's not reinventing trap is he? or is he

bobby shmurda's song was imo weirder anyway, it was trap gone full evil, kinda electrifying

richard dawson's package (haw) is like nothing else i've heard - avant-folk-prog from a humorous & poetic geordie perspective & an ornate pastora melodic sensibility w/ wailed vox - it's out of the trad but utterly avant-garde imo. i would level it @ u that u aren't differentiating it v well due to lack of love for 'this sort of thing'. i do it too, but i'm trying not to

xyzzzz lol that is maybe the worst sentence, linguistically, that i have ever seen. am i rly forcing it on ppl? i'm not forcing it on ppl. 11 people voted for it in a democratic poll which ppl voluntarily followed. christ

evil & desperate & vulnerable too. like it more each time i think of it. get well soon bobby

whatever man

you say avant fans and indie fans like they're mutually exclusive - the stuff you're into would appeal to a lot of 'avant fans', i'd wager

― my shoes are deception (imago), Friday, January 23, 2015 2:18 PM (6 minutes ago)

Um, wut, no I didn't. I said that people have been referring to them like they're the exact same thing, which they obv are not. I'm not entirely sure how you could think that *I* think it's impossible to be both?!?!?!?!?!?!

like that dude dawson sounds like a lot of music that has been around for a long time, he is weird by the virtue of being uncomfortably yelly not by like having interesting new ideas or anything

― lag∞n, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:19 PM (4 minutes ago)

HE'S A FOLK MUSICIAN FFS.

oh well ok

He reminded me off the bat of Alice in Chains and an acoustic Modest Mouse song.

xyzzzz, just saying it's unhealthy to dismiss something alien on first listen, as i've learnt with, say, pop-rap

aaah emil.y but what then did u mean by the very strange smudging - when almost all of one venn set also fit in the other to some degree - it's natural to like both styles maybe?

ha, modest mouse otm.

lj did you ever listen to the Ugly Casanova album?

like that dude dawson sounds like a lot of music that has been around for a long time, he is weird by the virtue of being uncomfortably yelly not by like having interesting new ideas or anything

― lag∞n, Friday, January 23, 2015 8:19 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, it wasn't what I was initially expecting but once I got to his guitar/vocal jam bit I realized I'd seen a ton of shows like that, but it's been a really long time

Does Richard Dawson do gigs with other Folk musicians? I can see he comes from there.

also not all folk is like that, for sure

I mean the whole idea of polls is p silly like the conceit that OK for real out of 7 billion ppl and countless cultures etc etc r of the best 77 individual songs made by humans on earth were on the new Taylor Swift album that even her supporters seem kinda lukewarm on

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

Hardly surprising when voters include "taytay fan" who nobody has seen post (admit it markers it was you! ;) ) are taking part.

The question is why do certain types not vote? if they dont care enough then fine. But if they're not voting because of reactions such as "name and shame those voters" (however jokey they may be) then thats not good. I always recall several posters saying they left off anco one year because they were fearful of the reaction (one i think was blueski who no longer posts)
and i do know metal fans who wont vote because of similar reactions - theres still some ilxors who are snobbish about metal/fans and that puts people off.

As lex says however people should still vote and , unless its deafheaven, no one seems to object to metal placing , they just ignore it. But as much as seandalai asks them, they just wont vote here so you simply cannot complain about a lack of metal. If they wont vote then that is that. Obviously if a metal album ever won the reaction might be quite bad but it will never happen.

No idea why the actual indie or avant albums dont get enough consensus around them.

aaah emil.y but what then did u mean by the very strange smudging - when almost all of one venn set also fit in the other to some degree - it's natural to like both styles maybe?

I don't think almost all of the set of 'indie fans' fits into the set of 'avant fans' or vice versa at all. I know an awful lot of serious avant-garde musicians who wouldn't touch indie with a bargepole, and I know a lot of Geirite melody-central indie fans.

The 'strange smudging' is literally what I just said: people on *this thread* have been referring to 'indie and avant fans'. It's weird to have the assumption that they would be the same. It's not weird for them to overlap, but it's not necessarily obvious that would happen.

because some music doesn't have universal appeal and that's cool? xp

I don't read singles jukebox or anything like that on the regular but I'm always kind of happy to see the occasional divisive song where it gets a middling score but it's due to one or two people really getting into it and giving it a 9/10 and others all thinking it's garbage.

Once again people are all defaulting into putting "weird music" and "popular music" into different boxes that never cross over. Go back to 2004 and play Young Thug to a load of rap fans and people would be pretty confused, take Richard Dawson or even Katie Gately back the same distance and play those records to folk or avant listeners and the reaction would be much the same as it is now, I suspect.

Go back to 2014 and play Young Thug to a load of rap fans and people would be pretty confused

Does Richard Dawson do gigs with other Folk musicians? I can see he comes from there.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:30 PM (3 minutes ago)

Yes, there's a v. vibrant folk scene in the North-East at the moment - a lot of it is pretty traditional, some of it is more experimental, they do a lot of Sacred Harp stuff up there too.

nay, but it is added to a list somewhere xps to gr80

when i saw dawson he was on a bill with *deep breath* a dutch folk musician, a drumming duo, an african folk musician, a legendary post-punk band and a jazz improv trio

Also not to be whatever but Dawson is fine but hardly unique in his approach to folk music and I think there are dozens I rate much higher

how many beards were there xp

xyzzzz, just saying it's unhealthy to dismiss something alien on first listen, as i've learnt with, say, pop-rap

iirc some Reactions to Katie Gately basically equate 'this is ok, not my thing'. And its fine, why should you force yourself to engage something that doesn't communicate in any way? Music isn't medicine.

how many beards were there xp

― mh, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:38 PM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

richard dawson was alone in this regard. the drumming duo were female, as was the drummer/singer of the legendary post-punk band

xyzzzz music is not medicine but i can say that i have benefitted enormously in a cultural sense from, say, forcing myself to listen to rap music

Also not to be whatever but Dawson is fine but hardly unique in his approach to folk music and I think there are dozens I rate much higher

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 23, 2015 2:38 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

go to the dawson thread & post youtubes pls

It only makes sense that a pop-friendly board's EOY poll results would favor pop over niche genres like metal and avant-garde. The shunning of commercially-successful rock, indie & country might seem less axiomatically preordained, given the broad run of ILM's enthusiasms, but hostility to the former two genres has long been common among many of our most pop-centric posters. It's sometimes expressed directly, as when that War on Drugs track placed, but often takes more passive forms. However it's expressed, the message is clear: this poll exists to enshrine the primacy of certain genres over others. ILM is validated in its own eyes by its appreciation for chartpop, dancepop, rap and R&B. To the extent that they dominate the EOY poll, the system works. When indie and rock intrude, eyes roll and tempers flare. This simply reifies ILM's anti-rockist origins.

how many beards were there xp

― mh,

lol

Richard Dawson is an interesting one. Yes, there are similarities with other avant garde guitarists like Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey, but those dudes strike me as being very deliberately deconstructionist to an almost academic degree whereas Dawson's playing style is 100% expressionist and very audibly so. His lyrical approach and the regional, historical and autobiographical references he incorporates into his work are truly unique. Also, the influence of art and world music in his work is as strong as any English folk music. Not to mention the way he amps his nylon string guitar through a Fender, which is considered highly unorthodox but achieves a very particular tone. There's a reason Wire mag has been going crazy over him this year.

xyzzzz music is not medicine but i can say that i have benefitted enormously in a cultural sense from, say, forcing myself to listen to rap music

― my shoes are deception (imago), Friday, 23 January 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha oh poptimism look at what you've done ;-)