ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2022 - 21st Anniversary Edition

Not until next Monday ;_;

It's OK, this is Steely Dan week

Did we ever find out about the book someone voted for? Intrigued...

see i love some easier-listening slices of softness but the mccraven album loves its weird time signatures a little too much for it to really fit into that for me

And by the same token, I'll bet the time thing going on in the first track is way more intricate than most proggy imago fare (11/16 I think? But meant to sound like a Dilla beat).

I liked the opening track! And a cute time signature on its own doth not extravagance make. I actually gave it all another listen after Tim said his bit and started to see what it was going for a bit more

still the all time best jazz joke pic.twitter.com/S8W15O8iEq

— alex (@shitshowdotinfo) February 7, 2023

I was unnecessarily terse the other night - obv people will like what they like. I think Nabozo’s summation above is good though.

oh god no, i absolutely deserve it every time

The first track / title track of the Hikaru Utada record is quite familiar. It's making me think of an old tv show theme but can't place it. I quite liked that one and the marseille track

In the upper part of the poll, The Soft Pink Truth is a nice discovery for me, somewhere between Studio and Luomo on my crude map (map isn't crude, I know). I don't mind an album being long when it's vast, springlike, playful, friendly.

Gave the Adigéry a proper listen last night finally - good stuff and like it when the highlights come later in the album (true in my case at least).

saer: good to know I’m not the only one, BAD sounds a lot like a tv theme but I’m on the same boat, can’t quite place which one it reminds me of.

Oh my god, imago, a "cute" time signature? Really? If you're into something and it has one chord that is slightly discordant you'll praise it as unparalleled creative genius, but when given proof that something you're not into uses complex technique you dismiss it as "cute"? That is so patronising.

I know that everyone is susceptible to the "my taste is what is objectively good" fallacy (especially me! I do it so much!) but honestly my dude, you need to rein it in. People are not cowards for making quiet music! Sometimes they choose to intentionally! I genuinely enjoyed your chess reactions b/c it seemed like you were realising that sometimes music can serve other purposes than being all-encompassing extravagance - sometimes it can help you focus, sometimes it can bring you peace. I'm worried this paragraph is moving into me being patronising in turn, so I will stop, but "cute"? Gahhh.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/cute

meaning 3 intended

i even said in the post that I'd gone back and rethought my approach to the music! it just seems obvious to me that using an unusual time signature isn't on its own a sign that something is going to be an overwhelming or unusual sonic experience, all about the context of such techniques. just like a dissonant chord on its own is nothing without the chords around it!

and i was responding in turn to the slightly patronising 'yeah imago thinks everything he likes is soooo complex but can it even 11/16' cmon lol

this is what happens with no tracks rollout, we get tetchy. forks' fault this

Meaning 3 is definitely patronising, though. It's "affected cleverness", which is basically saying it's pretentious, or "not actually clever but it thinks it is". And I still think you're assuming that overwhelming or unusual are the primary barometers of quality - they are indicators that I will probably like something too, which is why we share a lot of tastes, but they're not the ONLY thing to look for.

ILx polls would be much more boring without you around so I'm not really that tetchy. On the other hand, I genuinely did take offence wrt the "cute" comment, and it's not even an album I've got any stakes in defending.

next ballot poll: rank time signatures by cuteness

i really wasn't intending to imply that the song was pretentious! (i even said i liked it in the original post!) just that yeah okay, it has a neat time signature, which helps it settle into a cool, unusual groove, but it was much more 'relaxing' and 'calming' than 'mindblowing' or 'spectacular'. and yes, i possibly do overrate the latter qualities as compared to the former (insofar as they're distinct; of course there can be overlap!), which as i am always learning on here, not only have their place but can make for music that is very great

as i say, i was also responding to the idea that stuff i like is all mouth and no trousers when it comes to musicality. so maybe there was a TINY edge to the choice of word. but really, i would never call Makaya McCraven pretentious, nor really any other music

and i was responding in turn to the slightly patronising 'yeah imago thinks everything he likes is soooo complex but can it even 11/16' cmon lol

You bring it on yourself (or at least bring it out of me, lol). For me, digging into that very unusual time signature for a whole track and really squeezing all the juice out of it, while doing it in this very smooth way that can almost pass unnoticed (in comparison to say, the Horse Lords record which screams POLYRHYTHMS at you, and I like that too), is much more sophisticated than attention deficit-style constant changes. People like what they like of course, but yeah you did come off as a bit dismissive.

xp

the guitar solo on "the know untitled" is: "relaxing," "calming," "mindblowing," "spectacular"

i guess 'sophistication' is the alchemy by which the relaxing becomes the mindblowing and despite posting here for 17 years i haven't really quite gotten it yet. more Steely Dan required

going to use this opportunity to ask whether anyone has any idea what time signature is used on "I Am Damo Suzuki" as the internet seems to have no answer to this.

no i do get why this MM album is an interesting artistic move. rather than letting it rip in an improvisatory and sonically open-ended setting, these are attempts at control and composition and that is ofc valuable; quite a few of them seem to work rather well. it is ofc my own prejudice in favour of sonic extravagance that sees me hark back to the 'wilder' stuff he did before, but as a fan of eloquent composition i'm equally happy to hear jazz that works within tighter bounds. that comet is coming album was a good example of something that worked within simple-ish (although still discursive) song-structures but had the sonic oomph i'm after. helped that it was basically a techno album lol

what are you talking about? mcraven was hardly a free jazz guy and his work process was always assembling loops from session and constructing records going back to in the moment. i feel like you just make shit up sometimes.

it seems like two different parts in 4/4 that don't quite sync up with each other

xp

but there is an underlying rhythm behind both of them, somewhere, I can feel it

I mean both drums and the guitar parts

i think it's in 4/4 with the occasional bar in 3 thrown in

maybe for the drums - but also bear in mind the guitar parts, they sound completely out of sync but there is some sort of underlying rhythm behind both.

what are you talking about? mcraven was hardly a free jazz guy and his work process was always assembling loops from session and constructing records going back to in the moment. i feel like you just make shit up sometimes.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 8 February 2023 16:50 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i get that 'universal beings' was a studio creation too but it definitely feels much looser (and at times noisier) than the new one, to me! forgive me if they are made exactly the same way

i mean this has a different feel, but i think that's the mark of a great artist, a lot of his albums have different a different character to a degree but they all feel very of a piece (imo)

The drums are in 4/4, the guitar is sometimes synced up in a straightforward 4/4 phrase and sometimes phasing or off.. if it was a more recent album I'd guess it was done on a computer or a sampler, since way easier to chop an odd loop or slide things around than play it. Maybe just an intentionally odd use of a delay or misaligned tape?

xp I know there's a thread for asking what time signature something is but I can't find it

Yeah MM's whole thing is chopping up pieces of live recordings and studio sessions to make his records, they've always been a blend of live & constructed. Some were definitely more lo-fi for sure.

off to start a new poll: cutest time signature

i'm voting 3/4 because awwwwwwww look how funny he walks but he's still able to do it!! great job, friend!

On "Damo Suzuki" I think what's happening is that the drum pattern is off a half-beat from the bass and guitar line. They're all in 4/4 but out of sync. But also the guitar and bass wander around a lot, not in a time signature way but in a "not always on the beat" way.

If you get the chance to see MM live, you may see him in a noisier, freer mode (you also may not). When I saw him last summer, I was a bit surprised that his band opened with an AACM "little instruments" style free improv — that might've been mostly down to the presence of Junius Paul, who iirc is an active AACM member, but as ums said it's testament to his impressive range, skill, and sensitivity as an artist & collaborator. Anyway, very little of what they played that night sounded much like any of the albums.

This discussion prompted me to listen to In These Times on headphones yesterday for the first time in a while — in partial defense of imago I do think it's easy to slip into thinking of this extremely pretty album as background music, and I'd gotten into the habit of playing it primarily during dinner with friends — and there were details in the mix I hadn't noticed before. The soft beauty of the album is built out of intricate materials

Hadn't thought of this before, but the difference between the titles In the Moment and In These Times strikes me as significant for the differing approaches taken, even merely at the banal level of how long he worked on the latter

tipsy mothra, that's how I hear it as well

xxp

For whatever it’s worth, the new one felt a lot more inviting to me than Universal Beings did - but maybe I’ve changed.

in these times he definitely leans more into orchestration, the strings and harp, sort of david axelrod vibes that make it feel unique in his catalog

If you get the chance to see MM live, you may see him in a noisier, freer mode (you also may not). When I saw him last summer, I was a bit surprised that his band opened with an AACM "little instruments" style free improv

interesting, the one time i saw him was a the walker art center and he was playing this composed piece that spliced in spoken word/interviews from civil rights activists with a sort of meditative art film presentation that had been created for the show, i think this might have been a one-off performance though

When I saw him last it was a trio with Junius Paul and a guitarist, tons of polyrhythmic drumming and soloing. Missed him with a larger group (at a larger venue) last time but I heard it was fantastic and intense.

ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2022: 17th Anniversary Edition

slowly working my way through the spotify list.

so far

love and knew it

real lies
big thief
the soft pink truth
makaya mccraven

love it and didn't know it before

sudan archives
junior boys (this is not what i thought they were like, i guess i thought they were like basement jaxx or something?)
dawn richards & spencer zahn

like it
rosalia
SZA
beyonce
the beths (i think future me hates me is always gonna be "the one" for me)

not for me

charlotte adigery & bolis pupal

The latest Junior Boys album is a bit of a shift for them, they were more moody synth-pop before (so never really like Basement Jaxx)

may have confused junior boys with vague memories of junior senior

i should’ve voted for the asake album

may have confused junior boys with vague memories of junior senior

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, February 15, 2023 9:20 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha i think that's it

I think junior boys may be junior senior's children?

no that's junior senior jr.