so tell me, why is Kaputt better or worse than Let England Shake?

yes the indie rock domination of the ilm polls has gone on FAR too long

the arguing about popular indie rock albums domination of ilm however

I like kaputt but lex is right, awarding the best album award to pj harvey would have been a chance to deliver a slap in the face to canonical indie rock

a million lols

^^^

Beyonce is #1 in our hearts.

in my defense, i've been on ilx for ten years and i've had to put up with all kinds of crazy shit from you crazy old ladies. so bite me.

and, to be honest, i only went on youtube to look up kaputt cuz i didn't know what it was. see, i was trying to LEARN. but then i got sidetracked by german kaputt-mania. i'll go back and check out destroyer songs. just to see what the hubbub is about.

destroyer's kaputt....so damn good.

Scott Seward Image Bombings/Threads, The Complete Guide To

scott,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVHr5T5HO2I

Scott is the best at youtube bombing imo

okay, this stuff isn't bad. i like the music. it's produced well. and i'm very picky about 80's retro stuff. most people are bad at it except for dance music people. i would definitely listen to this if it were all instrumental. the 20 minute thing is nice too. still wish i could find that stuff by ilm fave Studio on cd. i wouldn't know where to find it. i should check discogs. THOSE guys were amazing to me. this is way less amazing, but still okay. though it does kinda make me want to go listen to source material. but that's okay too. its a decent homage.

PJ's album was my favorite new record of the year.

do i even do that that much anymore? when was the last time i even did that?

i mean i did go a little crazy at first but i think i got over it for the most part.

i forget how sensitive people are about destroyer. i remember that one legendary thread. hoo boy that thing is a doozy. for the longest time i couldn't tell if it was real or not! thought it was an elaborate prank.

I don't know who/what Destroyer is, so Let England Shake is better

idgaf about any other destroyer album but that didn't stop be from realizing that kaputt was indeed the #1 album of 2011

gr80 you might take a listen to both Thief and Streethawk: A Seduction. They are very fucking good. I do not generally rep for much indie but that dude was on a tear for those two (tho they don't have the chill-vibe synth-wash that I suspect is a big part of kaputt's appeal for you but still I must speak up for those records, they're really good)

Kaputt seems to have begin with a structure & feel idea and put all else afterward.

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, February 5, 2012 10:27 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true, but let england shake is similarly defined by a distinctive, unifying texture. hazy, abstract and seductive vs. bright, sharp and ringing. main difference is that PJ harvey pushes so much harder at and farther into the sound she's chosen.

listened to these back to back a couple times this morning, i can't say i don't understand the appeal of kaputt. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts. let england shake is quite challenging by comparison and does have its ups and downs. "all and everyone" is a bit dull, for instance, and "england" gets on my nerves. it nevertheless strikes me as a vastly superior piece of work, overall. heartstopping songs, real political & artistic ambition, and a dramatically unusual sound palette (where kaputt mostly sound like bejar hanging out in his bathrobe, taking stoned tips from kurt vile & ariel pink).

i had LES in at #6 on my albums ballot, and in retrospect, i did it a serious injustice.

xpost i checked out Rubies last week and was kinda feeling it-- will get to those two next, thanks for the pr0 tip

oh england oh america

I'm w/ gr80 in that kaputt is pure genius, destroyer's other stuff, eh, seems okay

ok i'll listen to pj harvey as soon as i listen to the gucci tape that just dropped

i guess i mean that PJH takes this core sound/texture and shapes it, pushes at it, makes it do a bunch of different things. bejar is more content to let his sound be, to let it set the terms. neither approach is intrinsically superior, but i get a good deal more out of let england shake.

destroyer, on this thread:

i took a walk and threw up in an english garden

I think Destroyer newcomers who are taken w. the new one should give Your Blues a go next.

why are these two albums being compared?

i wonder

ts: 'the laziest river' by destroyer vs. 'ride across the river' by dire straits

I would like to remind ilm that I made a much better poll kaputt vs. sound of silver

I had some conflicting feelings when listening to Let England Shake. As with Aerial a few years ago, the album felt a little rudderless to me. I think her writing is formally experimental, but experimentalism had previously been grounded in a modernist aesthetic and this is not. I needed to know what it WAS grounded in and what the purpose was of this experimentalism and abandonment of tradition.

I've begun to think of it as some kind of new classical music that succeeds, at least in this case, on the basis of its discipline!

(Just to clarify, by "abandonment of tradition" I mean genre tradition. I don't think her music is very based in genre.)

From the little I've heard the PJH rec dives inside traditionalism to rescue a 'radical' edge that has been seemingly lost, which is a tactic sometimes used by new classical composers, no? xp

I do need to hear this.

i can't say i don't understand the appeal of kaputt. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts.

FYI you are working with a really bad definition of "ambition" here.

kmt what definition of ambition could you possibly apply to that limited bitch dan bejar

that limited bitch

dan bejar is a musical genius who has been in a buch of band including destroyer, new pornographers, work with great talent like spancer krug... he has making music since 96. who is pj harvey?

:D

Regardless of what you think of destroyer, equating "smooth and sexy" (which I'm sure lex you would say doesn't apply in any event) with a lack of ambition is wrongheaded IMO.

It's the kind of thing that gets written about Sade:

i can't say i don't understand the appeal of love deluxe. perhaps as a product of its relatively limited ambition, it provides a very consistent and comfortable listen. it's soothing, quietly sexy and nothing really juts out to wreck the flow. i could see it "working" quite well in a number of contexts.

FYI you are working with a really bad definition of "ambition" here.

― Tim F, Sunday, February 5, 2012 2:55 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh, thanks for the tip, tim. you wanna provide a better one? to my mind, kaputt is an album of "relatively limited" artistic ambition. it works within its chosen palette of sounds and what the artist already knows he does well. it does not challenge itself, its aesthetic or its listener to any remarkable degree. this is not a bad thing. to the extent that the album is successful on its own terms, i'd call it a virtue. hence the "consistent and comfortable listen".

OMG you did not compare sade to destroyer

The Spancer Krug? Wow...

tim i think one day you might actually kill me

i cannot breathe right now

Except it doesn't sound at all like any previous Destroyer albums

OMG you did not compare sade to destroyer

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), maandag 6 februari 2012 0:26 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He, indeed, didn't.

Regardless of what you think of destroyer, equating "smooth and sexy" (which I'm sure lex you would say doesn't apply in any event) with a lack of ambition is wrongheaded IMO.

i didn't say that. i didn't directly equate the vibe of kaputt with a lack of ambition. i merely suggested that the former might be a product of the latter. crucial difference. fwiw, i'm equating ambition with artistic experimentation and rigor, self-challenge, and the willingness to push an aesthetic hard enough to see what happens at its outer reaches. but i'm not necessarily making a virtue of that sort of ambition, or a fault of its absence.

fwiw, i think that, in terms of the definition i'm using, the diamond life is a much more ambitious album than kaputt. its synthesis sounded instantaneously familiar, even nostalgic, in its moment, but it wasn't. sade created that sound out of whole cloth, and in terms of pop refinement, pushed the experiment a hell of a lot farther than destroyer. you know, imo...

if only dan bejar had the ambition of paris hilton

if you are releasing music, you have ambitions imo

fwiw, i'm equating ambition with artistic experimentation and rigor, self-challenge, and the willingness to push an aesthetic hard enough to see what happens at its outer reaches.

what would the "outer reaches" of this particular aesthetic look like to you?

yeah! well you've also got "suicide" as merely "stupid pride", a somewhat hardline xtian sentiment which that indeed daring pantheism x astrology "gods are crazy / stars are blind" double whammy immediately vexes. and then yr everyday manichaean "be the devil and angel too" chaser. paris milton more like.

― rtccc (mwah), Sunday, August 27, 2006 1:17 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

let me know when bejar comes up with anything a quarter of the worth of this

it's ambitious enough. certainly sounds better made than most indie crud. that's my high praise.

in honor of this thread i'm gonna listen to kompakt all summer.