TOP 10 NOW: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part II: 2008 ALBUMS)/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"inverts the paradigm" is maybe a bit far, I'm more for people who make striking, original, memorable artistic statements that also stimulate one's enjoyment receptors

Yeah, consensus material often tends to be the stuff that goes halfway to pleasing everyone, there are exceptions, but there is a tendency

As someone who loved the shit out of Night Ripper, Feed the Animals is just kinda more of the same and blah.

There are a lot of vocal Girl Talk haters on ILM, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are plenty of people who liked it, too.

I do agree with you quite a lot LJ though, but I also know that there's hardly gonna be a consensus on niche things I like, or even that certain things don't translate into tracks, I would never have thought of isolating one track from the Carlos Giffoni album, maybe one of my most listened to albums but I really hoped for Chris Brown since I listened to his singles an insane amount this year

yeah, I was just messin' with you on that too LJ

Louis you're setting yourself up as some kind of mirror-image Lex (or perhaps even Geir) which is ignoring things like diversity of opinion or interesting tangents in individual tastes in favour of creating some sort of ideological bogeyman to rage against, even when it doesn't exist, or not in the form you think. It's always beyond tiresome when someone does it and its why ILM threads tend to get derailed into everyone beating on one person.

The problem with music that can fall under the term "striking, original, memorable artistic statements" is that it tends to get hyper-specified in particular genres that it's not possible for everyone to be an expert on, let alone to agree where the striking, original, memorable artistic statements are being made.

Like, I think The-Dream album is one of the most striking, original, memorable artistic statements I've heard in ages (I hope it charts) but I can see why anyone who was not already a massive commercial R&B fan wouldn't get this.

This is a perspective thing that comes with knowledge-of-genre: what strikes the invested listener (close up) as a topography of daring strikes the outsider (standing further away) as undistinguished and insignificant musical wrinkles.

i agreed with your assessment at first, Rev, but after a couple of months found myself liking it even more than the debut. the samples seemed to be a lot less obvious + FTA sounded much more densely mixed overall to my ears.

xps

xpost - As I've said in different terms previously, listeners tend to think most strongly that ground has been broken when a particular piece of music makes them step closer and they suddenly perceive a mountain range where once they saw relative flatness. It's as much about a movement in the listener as a movement in the music vis a vis its context.

I wish I had voted, I could have pushed Boris higher. (At least it made the list though, which is the important thing.)

(I didn't vote because I was going to vote for so little and I haven't heard enough this year, and a lot of the nominations ended up being things that weren't familiar to me at all, which made me feel even more incompetent to vote.)

i only voted for three albums. i don't understand the people who vote for 20 albums but don't vote for tracks, that is insane

Well if there are people voting for three albums, I guess I should have voted. I feel like I still haven't heard most of the albums I expect will be my favorites (where I even have specific albums in mind).

TBH whenever I start going off on one in future, can we put up the bat-signal for Tim ASAP? He has this way of making things lucid

Matt, I'm sorry, and I'll stop/have stopped. Would be nice if every new dance record was QUITE as phenomenally, universally loveable as Studio's in '07 tho ;)

(that is basically the one ILM dancepop consensus album I am *completely* sold on, although I'd be interested to hear other stuff, of course)

did you listen to any of the Aeroplane remixes?

If Earth,Harvey Milk,Grails ,James Blackshaw and Torche and The Bug chart and Portishead win it i'll be very happy really.
If Lau Nau -,Paavoharju , Woods Family Creeps and Growing sneaked in,i'd be delirious,but sadly I cant see it. But no point in complaining if it misses out as most of ILM probably don't know them.

I don't get Studio. :-/

I can't imagine dancing to Studio.

Yeah, they feel slow and leaden to me. (Although there is plenty of music at similar bpms that I love to dance to)

"Balearic’s strategy is more oblique, preferring to fail on both rock and dance music’s terms, as if by doing so it could establish a new yardstick. As dance music it’s too torpid, decadent and tentative; as rock it’s simultaneously blanched-out and excessively manicured. A lot of my favourite records this year felt a bit like inspired failures"

-Tim F on his round up thread

I just really like that line

Haha LJ you like West Coast because its a big epic strung-out stoner psychedelic album than happens to be Balearic as well. Which makes me think the one record from last year that you'd get on with would be the Lindstrom album.

not last year obv, but do you like Manuel Gottsching?

If Earth,Harvey Milk,Grails ,James Blackshaw and Torche and The Bug chart and Portishead win it i'll be very happy really.

i am 99% sure that portishead and erykah badu will be the top 2, and that portishead will win. both have large numbers of backers and will pick up a ton of No 1 votes, but i think in the end more people heard portishead.

This is a perspective thing that comes with knowledge-of-genre: what strikes the invested listener (close up) as a topography of daring strikes the outsider (standing further away) as undistinguished and insignificant musical wrinkles.

yeah - also especially in genres where a degree of formalism is not only important but essential, an outsider will probably listen to an album like the-dream's and only hear where he follows the genre's rules, whereas followers of the genre have internalised those codes to such an extent that they can hear the interesting things going on around them.

I would be optimistic about Harvey Milk and Growing.

would be pleased with Quiet Village making it somewhere, but I really have no conception of its popularity.

After the tracks poll I'm making no predictions about this one. There's probably some utterly random thing up there that was a relative minority concern but ended up with seven people voting it #1.

Ah who am I kidding, it's fucking Vampire Weekend and Portishead ;)

I have no problem with Vampire Weekend doing well, they are the first big indie band since the Strokes that I really really like.

IKR I need to listen to those Aeroplane remixes properly, yeh

Will also check out Lindstrom, cheers :)

I'm guessing that The Bug probably got a few number ones.

West Coast was structured and realised in a manner that really sparked my imagination, regardless of how Balearic/stoner-psych it was.

It was also a really varied-yet-cohesive record, the sort that covers loads of ground effortlessly

Kerr, Paavoharju may well have snuck in if I'd got my ballot in, as it was ordered and they were number 3 or 4, can't remember exactly what I fixed it as. Doubt they will now, though.

emil.y, you said you'd have given The Chap 19 points but forgot to send it in, how can I forgive you ;-)

also there are some things that didn't make the top 50 that made me go omgwtf, like, search my spam folder to make sure that i didn't lose some ballots kind of omgwtf.

― lil waynes babymama (musically), Monday, February 9, 2009 5:08 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^this intrigues me! i am hoping it refers to vampire weekend

the two i'm hoping to place which i genuinely have no idea about are solange and jazmine sullivan - pretty consensus R&B picks but no one's No 1 or anything, so it'll depend on whether they picked up floating voters from outside the R&B thread

i doubt anthony hamilton will place but if he'd released it a month or two earlier it would've been a shoe-in.

If Earth,Harvey Milk,Grails ,James Blackshaw and Torche and The Bug chart and Portishead win it i'll be very happy really.

I would bet the mansion on Portishead being top five.

Pretty sure The Bug will get a mention. Maybe Torche, but not counting on it.

Anything more would be a stretch... unfortunately.

^^this intrigues me! i am hoping it refers to vampire weekend

Yeah, I wish too... not gonna happen, though.

It's a lock for the top ten.

there should be a mention of where merriweather pavvy would have placed had those votes counted. for anger-lols, mostly.

stoked for the '09 madness with Pavvy :(

but then the end-of-the-Kid A'd poll will outshine it :D

(seewhatididthere)

I wish emil.y had been allowed to vote now. I think that if any of those albums were going to chart it wouldve been in the 50-45 range. But you never know.
Torche will chart. Om were 31 last year and Alcest 26 so id hope Torche,Harvey Milk and Earth place. The others I mentioned probably not.

Aww, you made a Pablo Funny! xpost

Om were 31 last year and Alcest 26

?!

Forgot about those. Damn.

Herman, I wish I'd voted for James Blackshaw. Saw him on Saturday night - I was totally burnt out on the whole Takoma revival thing, but that guy was a fucking champ.

I'm pretty convinced The Bug will place comfortably in the 25-40 range.

Oh I know the bug will chart high. I meant the other bands i mentioned. Id hope the bug is top 10 or close

Certainly expect it to be top 20. If it was only no41 id be shocked

maybe louis was right. on the trax poll, i knew about 45 out of the 50. i don't know most of the stuff ya'llz are talkin about. i didn't even know alcest released an album in 2008!

oh wait, misread. scrap the alcest comment. feel a bit better.

43 - Alex Moulton - Exodus
88 points, 6 votes, 2 #1 votes

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8139/exodusdigitalcovervg6.jpg

Full album streaming: http://www.last.fm/music/Alex+Moulton/Exodus

ilx I kiss you for introducing me to this album. the packaging is amazing amazing amazing but somehow the music manages to be EVEN BETTER
― jamescobo

Huh?

yeah, there was a massive clusterfuck around this for a while