ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2019

2019 was a miraculous year bc jenny hval didn't just manage to make a record i like, but one i LOOOOOOOVE

was hoping for Galcher Lustwerk

― omar little, Wednesday, February 5, 2020 4:32 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

High on my ballot - doubt it will place at this point.

I'm expecting TNP!

I love Self Esteem but the album was frontloaded. She'll do better with the next one.

I did have "The Best" on my tracks ballot

I forgot to nominate anything but I'd have nommed Self Esteem. You're right, it could do with a couple of tracks less. I got to see her do a live acoustic in store set with three other singers and it was really good

I'm really sorry about not voting this year, but I only listened to 5 new albums. Had I voted, the Holly Herndon would have been bumped into the top 20, maybe the Shura bumped up, but nothing else would have placed. Really glad this poll introduced me to Barker and The Comet Is Coming, they've already been paid fish & chips via bandcamp.

Just realising that there's no chance Emily King is going to place. I kept hoping that album would take off on here.

Surprised The Juan Maclean didn't sneak in somewhere. There wasn't much buzz about the album, so I'd be shocked if they were in the top 20. We've been very good to them in the past though.

The only other album that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Japanese House one. Didn't that get some decent support?

wasn't the juan maclean album this year a compilation of singles from the past few years? probably why it didn't get much buzz

could certainly see the japanese house placing

Yeah, it was a part compilation I think with some new material. Works really well as an album.

PROTO bangs! It's such a jam. Sure it's got its upside down but t he amazing thing with Herndon is how strikingly unique her sound is whilst still doing catchy bangers that explode in your room.

if the whole thing was the weird catchy bangers i would have loved it

some great discoveries for me here. i like the men i trust, very nice relaxed easy listening. the raphael saadiq is so soulful, i love it. the christian scott sounds interesting, have to check it out more thoroughly.

The Holly Hendon album is beautiful all the way through - especially its low key moments. Everything clicked when seeing her perform it live with a choir onstage.

Also I have helped train Spawn how to sing so feel personally invested now.

Nilufer Yanya album is great as well, hitting the middle ground between grungy Pacific NW indie rock and 80s London sophisticated soul is a terrible idea on paper that she pulls off brilliantly in practice.

There were some good recommendations upthread for fans of the Kali Malone album. Allow me to add a few:

Satie - Messe des Pauvres (organ-only version) Spotify

Feldman - Principal Sound Spotify

Blake Hargreaves - Improvisations on the pipe organs of Europe bandcamp

Heck, maybe even Keith Jarrett's Hymns/Spheres... you never know. Spotify

Thanks for that, Chinchilla!

Of my ballot, I only expected These New Puritans and Bill Callahan to place, but don't think either will make it now.

I voted for TNP - maybe not their best record but every time 'The Trees Are On Fire' came on my headphones while I was walking around felt like a total gut punch. This awful sense of loss, of the world burning down around us.

I second the Satie (and the Jarrett!). I'll check out the other two, thanks.

Hey Pom, you might be interested in this - I was digging around on spotify last night and CFCF has actually done a playlist of classical stuff that looked like really good stuff:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2OpZHVHkp6LX1PP0PAn440?si=aWS4xnByTICYLn_Iao7tcg

It's not the case with CFCF, but tbh I often end up enjoying artists' playlists more their actual albums. Spotify's secret weapon! Well that along with driving musicians into lifelong poverty obv.

disgraceful grammar, apols

Other ideas that sound terrible on paper - mixing Balearic beach music, prog house and late 90s intelligent drum and bass but the CFCF album is really working for me on first listen. Why aren't all dance albums mixed together ffs?

Really enjoyed the Barker record as well last night. I'd been ignoring it on the basis that 'Ostgut Ton album' is a pretty tedious prospect in 2020 but it's wonderful.

Other stuff I'd expect to place based on the results so far - the Japanese House, Copeland, Sudan Archives. Slowthai and Dave feel like wildcards but I think we're too high for either now. These New Puritans will definitely place.

Thanks! I like all the familiar names on that list (well, except for Max Richter…) so I'm curious to hear the others.

2xp

What is Japanese house? Can't see any mention, unless its the Japanese New Age record, which I am going to try find time to play today

Fwiw I expect I'll be on board with maybe 20% of the top 20.

is the Japanese house supposed to have a the in front of it? Like with the Asda?

I never undstand this though, why is it the Asda, but not the Greggs?

The French have this sorted: l’Asda, des Greggs, la maison japonais, some Foals, etc.

*japonaise* sorry

i can agree that the japanese house is a truly terrible band name

Still rather beholden by the CFCF album and its concept. I'd love to see more of this kind of thing. If I had the time I'd do a gabba one.

CFCF was pretty high on my ballot and listening again now I'm reminded how lovely and buoyant it is. Soho Sushi restaurant circa 1998 is my bag, evidently.

what i like about it is that for 'ambient dnb' it's actually fun without being a comedy album. it would be so easy to either make it super generic or to crowbar loads of irritating tropes to hammer home the idea of 'hey remember the late 90s??'. I like that it ended up being its own thing.

Oxygen Lounge is probably as close as it comes to edging into twee and I can cope with that.

Everyone otm re: CFCF. Can't remember which track it is (don't have the tracklist at hand), but there's a coy call-back to the flute melody of Origin Unknown's classic Valley of the Shadows ("31 seconds") somewhere. And that's just one echo of way more classic dnb tracks - either real or imaginary - woven through this album. It's so good.

(what's weird is that Pitchfork/Sherburne have been championing CFCF since day one - 2009 - but haven't reviewed this album)

I like the little acoustic guitar parts that recall Beau Mot Plage or is it Barcelona?

Still rather beholden by the CFCF album and its concept. I'd love to see more of this kind of thing. If I had the time I'd do a gabba one.

The previous one Colours Of Life from 2015 is worth checking out too

https://1080pcollection.bandcamp.com/album/the-colours-of-life

I started writing this stuff in the first half of 2011. I was living in Paris for a few months in a tiny one-room apartment with my then-girlfriend, and didn’t really have any proper music equipment on me aside my laptop. I was really getting further into some really cornball music like the Windham Hill label, and some of the outer edges of Innovative Communications. The song that really inspired the first iterations of ‘Colours of Life’ is “Hand in Hand” by Phil Collins, from ‘Face Value’. It’s a super simple corny song built on a Roland CR-78 loop and just the silliest pan-global optimistic tone. And I got into the idea of doing a record of music like that, that would incorporate a lot of this stuff I was listening to and be of use as like, call waiting background music, just the most pleasant thing and kind of trying to push to the edges of tolerable cheese in some places, but also have it be totally sincere and not ironic, like actually purely pleasurable music.

Initially it was one song the first song, and then for whatever reason I had the idea to have that one morph into another one, and then another one, and eventually I had 12 pure pop instrumentals leading into each other. It was fun for me because having 2-3 minutes per song and a larger structure meant I could write small simple chord progressions and melodies that I maybe wouldn’t have explored on single tracks, and it meant I could go and meander here and get really specific there. There are a lot of obvious influences all over, like the aforementioned Phil track, a lot of Manuel Gottsching, Suzanne Ciani, and tons of different individual balearic tracks. So it was a really fun thing to work on, and I finished it that summer, and pitched to a couple labels.

Eventually I sent it to my friend Matt of RVNG Intl, where I released my EP ‘The River’ in 2010. He had the idea of bringing on collaborators to sing on some of the tracks, and we got some contributions from really amazing people, but the thing sadly fell apart for reasons I won’t go into. One of the collaborators who I will name were Dip in the Pool, an incredible pop band from Japan in the 80’s, and they are incredibly sweet and wrote two amazing songs for the record, one of which appears on their latest album Highwire Walker. Some of their work is still present here on the movements “Rain Dance” and “Intimacy”, where Tatsuji Kimura elaborated on the chords I wrote and really improved on it immensely."

And talking of gabba

full remix for @jacquesgreene is out now! fun fact: had to pull myself back from the edge of making this a ludicrous 180bpm eurodance gabber stomper; the final hybrid result is only mildly more tastefulhttps://t.co/Bko651sXFd

— CFCF (@CFCFmusic) January 31, 2020

colours of life is the one that made me a fan of him but adding the dnb breaks to his sound on liquid colours really took him to the next level

I also love Exercises which I guess is Modern Classical/Ambient

also new fans of cfcf should absolutely check out his mixes from this year

https://soundcloud.com/cfcf/night-bus-4-memory-of-night-bus

https://soundcloud.com/cfcf/liquid-colours-nts-special-081219

'On Vacation' is another really good album that CFCF did, which came out on Mark Barrott's International Feel label just to link this back to previous polls. Barrott formerly made a living as music consultant for the Sheraton Hotel chain iirc, I like to think he would have been putting Liquid Colours on permanent global rotation in their spa rooms if he still had that job

Played a few tracks from Japanese New Age, quite nice - I liked the Masashi Kitamura + Phonogenix one best so far, on Phonogenix's discos page there is a hard rock 12" released in 1984 which I didn't really expect. But why not eh?

Also discovered that the Japanese house is a real thing, though in general I far prefer the Asda, even though I don't shop there anymore after I got banned following a run in with a self-service check out machine that got mouthy

I've loved the breakbeats revival. the cfcf album is good but my fav instance (& what wld have been my #1 had I voted) was default genders' main pop girl 2019, which had no vapourwave sheen or whiff of kitsch but, yknow, songs, and even I'm not immune to songwriting when it's that good. some great records yesterday - erika de casier, sault - but iowa dream, man!, it was so unexpected, such perfect tender wintry walk in the park music. greatness is one thing but when you really need something and it's there, it's hard to express the sense of gratitude. and from someone who'd already done that for me so many times before. he's a good sport

My favourite jazz album of last year's was Marilyn Mazur's awesome (and aptly named) Shamania, but wonder if anyone else here voted for it at all? Frederik?

― Tuomas, 5. februar 2020 23:13 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Late answer, was out yesterday. No, I never got into Shamania. Also, a few days before the release I heard her play a few tracks with the great avant group Selvhenter, and the album kinda paled in contrast.

Also agree with the poster upthread about Shabaka and the Ancestors still being the best thing he has done. My embarrassing opinion this year is that the London jazz thing I responded to the most was the Sgt Pepper Tribute Record they did...

Arthur Russell was sounding really charming yesterday, the song Everybody Everybody in particular. Will hear the rest today. Nilufer Yanya album also seems v enjoyable based on the first few tracks

Copeland

only i love this record that much. it won’t place

Agree with beard papa on CFCF - just pale and tedious from what I heard. Listen to Djrum's 'Tournesol' which I nominated instead.

CFCF has a great write-up and is a lovely idea; almost better to leave it there than spoil the illusion with listening

You're not wrong.