ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2019

https://i.imgur.com/HMhWZkE.jpg
#25 – Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe (378 points, 13 votes, 1 #1 vote)

Nilufer Yanya

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/702533463/first-listen-nil-fer-yanya-miss-universe

CFCF was very "I appreciate this intellectually"* and not at all "I want these sounds in my ears" for me, though I'm going to put it on now and see if it connects.

*his write-up of the album is brilliant: https://cfcf.bandcamp.com/album/liquid-colours

CXCX

Oh I almost voted for a track off this, is it all nice guitar pop?

Good album, this. Not surprised to see it place.

Brilliant album. It just kept growing on me throughout the year. I Love her style so much.

xxp it's as much in common with sade as guitar pop

re: CFCF if I'm in the mood for this sort of thing I would just seek out mid 90s atmospheric dnb shit tho. Or Tosca's Suzuki which I still go back to at least once a year.

probably closest to joan armatrading if anything

It's got pleasant guitar pop numbers and sophisti-Sade ones as well.

xps

Liked this, especially the slower songs, but bumped it from my ballot.

hmm.. I never saw the point in (what I like to call) spa'n'bass. I liked my breaks tear-out, and didn't see a reason for fast dnb music to be 'chilled out'.
But this is really working on me. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Also CFCF is very close to my own initials

anyway this is a great album: "paradise", "baby blu", "melt" all classics in addition to the headbanging single "in your head". unfortunately i missed her when she came down here in december and played a very tiny venue; unlikely to be that intimate an enivronment the next time around

I even found myself enjoying the interludes on this.

Or Tosca's Suzuki which I still go back to at least once a year.

Ha! I think both operate on different levels but I can see where your coming from.

Never heard Nilüfer, will correct that.

CFCF was nice, but Stenny's Upsurge and Special Request's Offworld were my breaks records of the year, for those who want more

Haven't heard Special Request but Stenny rules.

For those who were into the Skee Mask record a year back, Stenny is on the same label and the album garners a similar style/vibe albeit a bit darker

okay, i'll check back in six hours after you get a chance to listen to #24

https://i.imgur.com/EgRUgWB.jpg
#24 – Underworld – Drift Series 1 (391 points, 12 votes, 3 #1 votes)

Underworld - Drift

https://thequietus.com/articles/27470-underworld-drift-series-1-review

this is a bit from the bandcamp page for the CFCF record that rob linked to, just to put the record into some sort of context...

Liquid Colours started just like The Colours of Life*, as a simple challenge to myself to see if I could follow through on a continuous 40 minute suite in one style. Much like COL, it was a break in working on another more involved, complicated album. I was interested in ‘corporatized’ pop jungle — totally inauthentic to the genre’s roots. The jungle tracks on ‘Ray of Light’, Everything But The Girl, Towa Tei, Bahamadia, each member of YMO has respectively released some solo work exploring the genre. Bill Laswell plowing his fucking bass over a DJ Spooky remix of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or something. TV interstitials, ads. At its most oversaturated, jungle and d’n’b was briefly the sound of capitalism. In fact once while I was in the middle of working on the album I had to make a call to some customer service line or other, my bank or something, and the on-hold music sounded exactly like this record I was making! I really knew I was onto something then.

*his previous album that iirc based its whole soundworld on one particular track ('Hand in Hand') off the first Phil Collins album

Right, so vols. 2-4 are coming up.

Spoiler: 2 is best and I hope it will be treated as such.

Nilüfer Yanya is very much Not My Thing normally but I found this record addictive, romantic, and compelling. I love the use of guitar-as-effect, and the way her dusky voice foiled it.

How so? It doesn't skimp on the poppish sophistication at all!

Spoiler: 2 is best and I hope it will be treated as such.

― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul), Wednesday, February 5, 2020 3:54 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

“drift series 1” is the name of the box set containing all five eps

Ohhhh nm. All are good tbf. And I'd forgotten there were 5.

I have made a great EP out of the entire Drift tbh

xp thanks for that tidbit NickB! I'll revisit it with this in mind - feels like a vaporwave motivated palette the way that is described.

the best music i heard last year all came from this project

right that's a cool summation of the CFCF album and I am on board with it.

Shares conceptual elements with James Ferraro's 'Far Side Virtual', but loses the tongue in cheek element because it actually sounds good, like he's reached into the genre and found its nucleus, worked out what makes it unique and spun a sort of fantasy DJ set out of it.

Actually it also reminds me of 'More Specials' which was partly inspired by the Muzak that would drive them mad while waiting in airport lounges and then acquiring a peculiar taste for.

haha yes i can see that

ha, never knew that about More Specials

I still think Far Side Virtual sounds pretty good fwiw. I will give CFCF a listen

damn, so much music in this roll-out I haven’t heard yet, it’s hard to keep up with it all.

I’m listening to the Ancestral Recall album for the first time, it is fantastic!

many xps

raphael saadiq was my #2, this is what i wrote about it in my personal EOY blog

Jimmy Lee tries to find the universal through the personal, taking a deep look into how drug addiction can tear a family apart. Throughout the project, Saadiq approaches his brother’s illness with radical empathy, singing from his perspective on the dangerously alluring “Something Keeps Calling,” and the zonked out “I’m Feeling Love.” He uses his personal tragedy as a springboard to talk about larger issues on the twinkling, self-explanatory “This World Is Drunk,” and the seething spiritual “Rikers Island.” The album veers from style to style--connected with a sound effect that mimics a channel changing on an analog TV--encompassing Prince-like grooves, languid quiet storm, simmering funk in the late Sly Stone mold, and taking detours into hip-hop and traditional gospel. Connecting it all is Saadiq’s raw passion, echoing the pain of everyone who’s lost someone to substance abuse, and singing as if his tenor is the only weapon powerful enough to end the epidemic.

'More Specials' - the first vaporwave album

:D

like rob said, it's worth reading the whole CFCF bandcamp thing, but this was another good bit:

Like The Colours Of Life, I’m being very sincere with the musical approach by focusing on song-craft, but there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek, slightly satirical thinking in there too. I know I’m doing it wrong, I know it’s stupid, I just think it’s more honest when I do it this way. I’m paying homage and teasing at the same time. One track is kind of a piss-take on Boards of Canada, it’s like ouroboros’d nostalgia loop - the 60’s viewed from the 80’s viewed from the 00’s viewed from 2019. I was also thinking about Roni Size’s New Forms; it won the Mercury Prize, it was viewed as this groundbreaking, futuristic work. It’s a really great record, but it’s fascinating to think now about the status it had compared to now. You can picture some young New Labour minister spinning it on his Discman between policy meetings. Just totally failed optimism.

Heh.

https://i.imgur.com/ELSuszU.jpg
#23 – Charly Bliss – Young Enough (414 points, 16 votes, 1 #1 vote)

charly bliss: guppy

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/charly-bliss-young-enough/

CFCF *otm* :)

Could easily be a dig at BagGymp

xp

I liked this Charly Bliss when it came up on shuffle, it was on my long list iirc

i'm surprised this is this high. it seemed like people dismissed it in a similar way to the second haim album (which ended up at #177 that year after the first one won the poll).

anyway i should give this another go because i liked something to tell you (and guppy obv) a lot

Saadiq was my #2, Underworld was my #1.

loved the Saadiq so much, kept listening to it over and over.

didn't listen to Underworld over and over, i listened to it like a lot of ppl watch the Irishman. But it was my favorite music of the year. I wasn't exactly writing UW off after Barking, but it seemed like they had maybe decided to just get a little lazy and that was their worst album (albeit still pretty fun). But they've caught their second wind, between this and Hyde's solo album and the Eno collaborations and BBWFASF (which was nearly on par with their first three albums).

Charly Bliss was just outside my top ten, it's fantastic.

wait give people time to listen to all of Drift first

afraid we gotta TURBO through there frogs

anyway it was my #1, its essentially 5 or 6 new albums of Underworld material and most of it is really good. I never really thought Underworld lost it that much but yeah all the stuff they've done since 'reforming' in 2015 or whatever has been incredible and IMO on par with their best stuff