ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2020

ehhh i kinda think carti is a lock

hope i'm not wrong!!!

me too!

Slum of Legs record is great, the strings sound ripped up in an awesome way

Nice to see the beths place this high! I guess once you're in the ILM canon you get graded on a curve (this wasn't a noteworthy as the first one, but was still one of my personal favorites of the year)

breastcrawl, ty dolla $ign almost always brings it, tho i can definitely hear him sounding bland when trying to creep into starboy territory

Was too busy to post yesterday but have been checking in on things on & off.
From yesterday's results, I had Theo Parrish & KeiyaA on my ballot. From today's, I voted for Yves Tumor, Actress, clipping & Pa Salieu.
Pa Salieu was my #1, definitely the album that had the biggest impact on me on a first listen this year. I remember messaging Paolo and basically saying "If you haven't heard this yet, you need to listen to it right now!".

I'm way waaay behind on listening to things that I hadn't heard before but enjoying working through them. Charles Webster album had lots of cool things going on, and the Ana Roxanne album clicked nicely with me at the end of a long day yesterday. Got Perfume Genius on now, wasn't sure at first but I think I'm into it.

Ty Dolla $ign (who is on some of my least favourite Wizkid tracks).

― Long Tall Arsetee & the Shaker Intros (breastcrawl), Wednesday, February 3, 2021 3:03 PM (eight minutes ago)

But they're also on Kranium's Can't Believe together!

just two more days and 2020 is over

Pa Salieu has persuaded me into a second full listen even though I have like 10 things I need to check out this second, very inconsiderate of him

Pa Salieu was my #1, definitely the album that had the biggest impact on me on a first listen this year.

same here...slightly regretting not making it my #1 now

I already said this once, but I listened to the Charles Webster last night and thought it was amazing.

voted for clipping. and Oranssi Pazuzu from today. Still catching up on a lot of stuff, but except for the ambiant-ish stuff, I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've listened to from the results so far.

got totally blindsided by that pa salieu album

The Slum of Legs album is really good and like with Owen Pallett and others it's cool to know that someone who's part of our community is out there doing stuff like this.
From the albums I had high up on my ballot, the one that now feels unlikely to place is the Shackleton & Zimpel album. Thought it had a decent chance of placing lower down but not this high up. A bit concerned for Shabaka and the Ancestors as well, although the last Sons of Kemet album placed pretty well in 2018 iirc (note: I may well not rc).

I've only had a few albums place so far but think the top 30 is where my hivemind score is going to really take off. Thinking I must have 11 of the top 30 on my ballot. Really appreciating how varied the poll has been so far. Day 1 especially I found a ton of new gems.

voted for clipping. and Oranssi Pazuzu from today. Still catching up on a lot of stuff, but except for the ambiant-ish stuff, I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've listened to from the results so far.

― silverfish, Wednesday, 3 February 2021 20:15 (thirty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

omg me toooooo, to all of this haha

ok y'all have persuaded me that i might have been unnecessarily dismissive of jump rope gazers

This is sounding great now; I poss gave it 1.5 listens last year and then moved on. Sorry, Beths. FMHM is a perfect record so yeah, unreasonably high bar etc.

When their albums click they do suddenly feel like the kind of band that you should always have total confidence in and just buy everything on sight without listening first because they are right and all of their records will fall into place eventually and nourish you completely and you need to trust. The artwork for this one didn't do them any favours though

Yeah that album cover is awful

breastcrawl, ty dolla $ign almost always brings it, tho i can definitely hear him sounding bland when trying to creep into starboy territory

― tiwa-nty one savage (voodoo chili), woensdag 3 februari 2021 21:09

But they're also on Kranium's Can't Believe together!

― rob, woensdag 3 februari 2021 21:13

yeah, I'm aware that he's done lots of good stuff, but I just checked my last.fm stats and I've barely played him after 2017. pretty sure that's because of the traumatising effect of those two dud tracks on Sounds From The Other Side.

meanwhile, listening to the Pa Salieu album, and no question (and also no surprise) that it would have been much higher on my ballot if I had started listening to it earlier

Very cool how different this is from the tracks poll btw

*whispers* so farrrrrr

all this talk about Wizkid duets and the country of Gambia can only lead to one thing: me posting the remix with Wizkid of the awesome "Yahna Balla" by Gambian rapper Gee, also featuring Senegalese singer Wally Seck, from 2015:

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

"Yallah Bahna" even, jeez

(sorry, forgot to embed it)

Hum is hitting a nice grunge-shaped spot. Wasn't familiar with them or their previous work before.

For some reason this makes me think of an inverted Fucked Up in that the music is fairly heavy and driving but the vocalist sounds like he's from a different type of band, but it still works?

Similar in a lot of ways to Kairon in that regard!

hum album is amazing. “desert rambler” <3

penultimate track of the Delay album kind of like if you asked a mad noise artist to try and simulate a steam train

voted for pa salieu, hum, and ariana. glad everyone is enjoying discovering pa salieu! it was in my top 5. the hum album is my favourite thing they've done by a fair way, one of the best guitar sounds i've ever heard. ariana album is kinda low-key but also solidly her best work.

rina and grimes were both super disappointing, the poppy album is kinda a better version of both of them. obviously it's way more committed to pop-metal than either of them but it's also way better at that

simmy album is good but didn't quite make my ballot, not quite as good as her debut. same with the beths, even though "out of sight" is incredible

LBI, Rakka is next when I tire of Pa, but that isn't happening yet for some reason

voted for yves tumor and thee slum ov legs today, probably the two most "rock" things on my ballot haha

did we clear up who'd got the #78 yet? i think all my remaining votes are either dead certs or stuff that never stood a chance in the first place

rina and grimes were both super disappointing, the poppy album is kinda a better version of both of them. obviously it's way more committed to pop-metal than either of them but it's also way better at that

i think you could throw yves into the former category too personally. and i agree i regret not voting for poppy

i did vote for hum tho, outside of my wheelhouse but that shit rips

personal bias at work but my bet for 78 is jeff rosenstock

My new guess for 78 is Bufiman

Surprised to hear so many ppl dissing the Grimes album, I thought it was super cool (fwiw, I find Poppy unlistenable; I think these artists are scratching different itches for different folks).

I’m starting to have my doubts about Amaarae placing, please tell me I’m wrong - otherwise she could very well be our #78

Okay so I'm very pleased with that Hum album. Will be going back to it v soon

My wife walked in while I was sampling the Hum album (which is good!) and said, "This sounds like 1999." (Meaning the year, not Prince.) I said, "Funny story ..."

xp
aw Amaarae placing would be an extremely pleasant surprise at this point

at this point in the rollout I would like to bid farewell to Loma, Ka, Bonny Light Horseman and a whole bunch of other great albums that I now accept may have been contenders but will not be placing

i think you could throw yves into the former category too personally

yeah that was another real disappointment for me, as others have said it went too rock compared to safe in the hands of love which was fantastic. 'rock frontperson' just doesn't really work for them. the hayley williams album was also kinda disappointing after the last two great paramore albums, i agree with brad and simon there.

morrisp, you don't even like "sit/stay"? that's probably the most grimes-could-have-done-this track on it. "we appreciate power" was co-written & co-produced by poppy's collaborators too.

can’t really see her placing higher than the Pa (in the Albums you started threads for category)

xp

i'd really hope loma still make it, basically everyone in the thread was very enthusiastic so it should still have a chance?

I don't think my #1 is going to place (tbh I never did)

can’t really see her placing higher than the Pa (in the Albums you started threads for category)

― Long Tall Arsetee & the Shaker Intros (breastcrawl), Wednesday, February 3, 2021 4:35 PM (five minutes ago)

ha, certainly not if post count is indicative (which it has often not been so far, but still)

of the albums in the rollout that sounded like they could be interesting (there've been quite a few!) so far I tried the Ana Roxanne and the Charles Webster. AR was pretty, but not really my cup of tea. Charles Webster very much is tho, what a great album. especially loved the r&b-ish "Music">"Wait And See">"Secrets Held" sequence in the second half.

yeah that one really went places I wasn't expecting, though fwiw I thought the Burial remix was the weakest track by kind of a lot

I had Amaarae very high on my ballot. I still have faith in the electorate.