ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2013

25 solo + 5 bands + (who knows how many band members) = 30/77 = really amazingly close to parity. 25 is fully 1/3 which is way better than most publications' lists.

Haha I totally thought Yamantaka / Sonic Titan was a project of Boredoms dude.

that F(x) album has been my fave discovery from this poll, need to start paying attention to the K pop thread.

Curious now how many all-dude bands placed apart from Daft Punk & Vampy W/e?

YT//ST aren't all female, I'm pretty sure. Though the two main songwriters are.

wikipedia implied the core of the band was a duo (both women) with other "supporting members", and 90% of the promo shots just seem to consist of the two main members

xp i will never understand how it can be sexist to say that a girls band is a girls band, that is maybe a tautology but what the hell does it have to do with sexism? may i say that i love women or is that sexist as well? thinking about it the only world imaginable without sexism in this sense is a world without sexes. is that what you dream of, lex?

Haim? HAHAHAHAHAHa' HAIM ?? half ridiculous,half sublime.
much better than v. weekend, that's for sure.

Saying that you "love" "women" is totally sexist, though. That can fuck right off.

25 solo + 5 bands + (who knows how many band members) = 30/77 = really amazingly close to parity. 25 is fully 1/3 which is way better than most publications' lists.

yeah i think ilx has always been pretty good like this (another reason i respect this EOY list more than most!). TONS of female frontwomen in mixed bands, it felt like

*counts*

seven i think? plus prob some more females in mixed bands who aren't the frontperson

lex did you include DJ Sprinkles in that number

l never understand how it can be sexist to say that a girls band is a girls band, that is maybe a tautology but what the hell does it have to do with sexism?

it's sexist because you mentioned "girls" as if their sex were a reason to dismiss them

Plus by my count 12 (?) mixed-gender acts

My Bloody Valentine
The Knife
Paramore
These New Puritans
Chvrches
Goldfrapp
Arcade Fire
Quadron
Young Galaxy
Factory Floor
Thee Oh Sees
Melt-Banana

Is that all?

xp i will never understand how it can be sexist to say that a girls band is a girls band

b/c every other descriptor you used for haim was meant in a derogatory way

xp yes re: dj sprinkles

this album is so monumental to me. i know it disappointed a lot of people but it's just an album that needs an incredible amount of time to sink into, to wrap your head around. the amount of ideas here is overwhelming. i can understand if people didn't want to do that but trust me, it was so worth it for me. i could actually rarely listen to it except all the way through as an album - it just made so much sense that way.

how i feel about the laura marling lp

ILM list also includes a lot of females who didn't get much or any EOY list love from major publications: i.e. amel larrieux, k. michelle, ariana grande, f(x), quadron, fantasia, y // st, charli xcx

MY GOD IT'S FULL OF GIRLS!

xp no, i said that their music was ok. which is quite positive as most music around is not ok at all.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads21/ClintonBinderFullofWomenReverie1350564061.jpg

nationality breakdown

USA (39): Haim, Beyoncé, Sky Ferreira, Vampire Weekend, Paramore, Kacey Musgraves, Kanye West, Chance The Rapper, Dawn Richard, Oneohtrix Point Never, Janelle Monáe, Kurt Vile, Brandy Clark, Julia Holter, Classixx, Amel Larrieux, Deafheaven, Ariana Grande, Darkside, Miley Cyrus, DJ Rashad, Fantasia, Matmos, Laurel Halo, Waxahatchee, Ashley Monroe, Neko Case, DJ Sprinkles, Ka, John Grant, K. Michelle, Parquet Courts, Ciara, Danny Brown, Kelela, Thee Oh Sees, Bill Callahan, Fall Out Boy, Julianna Barwick
GBR (20): M.I.A., These New Puritans, Disclosure, Charli XCX, Chvrches, The 1975, Boards Of Canada, Holden, Burial, Laura Marling, Pet Shop Boys, Goldfrapp, Fuck Buttons, Maya Jane Coles, Jon Hopkins, Savages, Carcass, Arctic Monkeys, Factory Floor, Cut Copy
CAN (6½): Tim Hecker, Tegan And Sara, Arcade Fire, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Young Galaxy, Rhye (½), Gorguts
DEN (1½): Quadron, Rhye (½)
FRA (1): Daft Punk
IRL (1): My Bloody Valentine
SWE (1): The Knife
GER (1): DJ Koze
NGR (1): William Onyeabor
ITA (1): Donato Dozzy
KOR (1): f(x)
CHI (1): Föllakzoid
NZL (1): Lorde
JPN (1): Melt-Banana

I need to get:

75 MELT-BANANA Fetch
61 ARCTIC MONKEYS AM
33 DARKSIDE Psychic
31 DEAFHEAVEN Sunbather
14 M.I.A. Matangi

Woah. Just got to read the last of the countdown. How about that? I'm actually really pleased. But but where did Floorplan place?

Thanks for a wonderful poll J0rdan and seandalai

the american supremacy is pretty amazing. and there are hardly any non-english native speakers in here. that's a little depressing. föllakzoid are from chile? that's the first band from there i have ever heard of. and they seem to be cool. there used to be vicor jara but he was a political songwriter, iirc.

My Ballot (bolded titles did not place):

1 Iceage - You're Nothing
2 Chrome - Half Machine From The Sun
3 Gris - À l'âme enflammée, l'âme constellée...
4 My Bloody Valentine - MBV
5 Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance
6 The Body - Master, We Perish
7 Perfect Pussy - I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling EP
8 Watain - The Wild Hunt
9 Ghost B.C. - Infestissumam
10 Arcade Fire - Reflektor
11 In Solitude - Sister
12 Full Of Hell - Rudiments Of Mutilation
13 Black Sabbath -13
14 Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
15 Carcass - Surgical Steel
16 Austra - Olympia
17 Queens of the stone age - Like clockwork
18 Kvelertak - Meir
19 Blood Ceremony - The Eldritch Dark
20 Anciients - Heart Of Oak
21 Kurt Vile-Walking on a pretty daze
22 Depeche Mode - Delta Machine

I know that I am out of the loop on just about everything (even metal these days) but I am shocked that the Iceage disc didn't get more love as active as their thread was when "You're Nothing" came out...

By Country breakdown of the top 100 albums in metal poll -

44 - USA
12 - UK
9 - Sweden
7 - Norway
6 - Canada
5 - Germany
3 - Japan
2 - France, Finland, Italy
1 - Australia, Austria, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland.

You want this thread for ballots: Driver, roll up the partition, please: ILM 2013 albums poll stats and ballots

xp

stay tuned for a sneak preview of ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2014!

Cut Copy - these dobbers are australian fyi

Segue - Pacifica
The Necks - Open
Ensemble Pearl - s/t
Akkord - Akkord
Function - Incubation
Miles - Faint Hearted
Mika Vainio - Kilo
Fantasia - Side Effects Of You
Nils Petter Molvaer & Moritz von Oswald - 1/1
Patrick Cowley - School Daze
Dawn of Midi - Dysnomia
Kuniko Kato - Cantus

Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Two:Mississippi Moonchile
L.Pierre - The Island Come True
Omar S - Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself
le$ - e36
DJ Sprinkles - Queerifications and Ruins: Collected Remixes by DJ Sprinkles
Roc Marciano - The Pimpire Strikes Back
Alix Perez - Chroma Chords
Juicy J - Stay Trippy
Caitlin Rose - The Stand-In
Rabih Beaini - Albidaya
Bonobo - The North Borders
Force Of Nature - Expansions

weighted ballot

DUDES. THIS THREAD: Driver, roll up the partition, please: ILM 2013 albums poll stats and ballots

You want this thread for ballots: Driver, roll up the partition, please: ILM 2013 albums poll stats and ballots

― emil.y, Thursday, 30 January 2014 23:35 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nordic people (including uk, germany, ireland and canada) love metal, 42 albums, somehow that does not surprise me at all.

xp that's about the best thing about haim. imagine they would have been another boygroup, jesus.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Thursday, January 30, 2014 10:56 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry to return to this, but there are a lot of all-male groups that resemble haim, you should explore the canon!

I mean I just

I think you'd breathe easier

If you were given the haim-like man oeuvre

*stands, applauds*

*dies*

oh wow

wins!

Some albums I loved that didn't make it: Machinedrum, Queens of the Stone Age, Natasha Kmeto, Forest Swords, Moderat.

nb I didn't vote as was on holiday.

lol wins

Worth having the poll for just that.

Sat ire

Pun of the year!

had promised myself to DDOS ILM and nailbomb all relevant voters if Beyonce didn't win, apologize for this, would like to offer best wishes for all the not guilty during the oncoming destruction

YOU DEAF GOTH CUNTS

CVNTS

chill out folks. maybe listen to some of Haim's empirically superior music to relax yourself

JFCYP

You wins some

omg that haim pun

Thanks to all involved. Loved the countdown, great stuff to be discovered and as much as i love chance that new biebs song is the best.

It's been emotional lets do it again sometime

Ps sorry to see no hookworms

Finishing off yesterday's albums:

MILEY CYRUS Bangerz - This has washed over me without leaving any impression, really, and I've heard over half the album. Not actively annoying or offensive - it's listenable - but it's not for me. Get as far as FU then give up I guess. LOL I forgot to turn this off and Do My Thang is the best track by a miiiile. A mile! I legit love this. Gonna kill it afterwards tho coz the rest is not gonna live up. Seeya Miley.

DARKSIDE Psychic - intriguing darkwave instru-hop ambient shit (like so much else in this poll!) that is showing signs of going crazy-ish midway thru epic opener. Not yet sold, but will keep going (I always like an opening track that's longer than anything else on the record). Oh this is getting kinda wonderfully off-kilter, thought this'd be a bit boring but it's OH LOL this was because I accidentally started MBV at the same time as this was playing ahahaha. Right, so. Track 3 much more like it. Ach, not really liking this much now. Too much bloody ambientttt for me. MBV was the best bit by far haha

ARIANA GRANDE Yours Truly - Oh this first song is uh...quite arresting! It's obviously modern pop through and through but has a few weird sonic tricks - they're trying to keep it fresh and interesting. The rhythm isn't stable, shifts pleasingly. Nothing too spectacular for me but...more chances. Haha, 2nd song getting dull? KEYCHANGE! I get the feeling, sad to say, that these are some fairly uninspiring songs, written without much craft or depth, getting gussied up in the production process. But I always was a bigot. :D Stuck around until Tattooed Heart and there was ANOTHER FUCKING KEYCHANGE

DEAFHEAVEN Sunbather - I actually dig Dream House, the way it seems to be getting quicker as it goes along. I don't think it's very good melodically, instrumentally, texturally or vocally and I can't hear the lyrics, but it has undeniable energy and momentum. Oh UGH that quiet/loud bit. NEXT

BURIAL Rival Dealer EP - I quite liked the title-track in the traxpoll. Second song is a really lovely sonic experiment that decides to drop a massive beat and then abandon it. The 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) sample keeps cropping up. It's a vast and disorientating soundworld. I like it a lot - much better than any Burial I've previously heard. It's weirder and wilder. Last track even more gorgeous - spectral synths in threnody to some crushed dream, as static crackles, a singer submerges...this is really, really good! The found-sounds field-recording aspect is what really pushes it over the edge for me. Holy shiiiit, Come Down To Us is *amazing*, such a sad, angry, beautiful piece. Think I might have slept on Burial, my god. This was a brilliant, brilliant little record and the track I'd already heard was the weakest. I'm listening to Come Down To Us again ffs, I need to get on and listen to the rest of these allllbumzzzz

HOLDEN The Inheritors - already heard the first few songs + Blackpool Late Eighties which is fucking brilliant. Rannoch Dawn also incredible. Seems to be some mush in the middle - this album is probably half an hour too long. I won't relisten now but am broadly in favour, with some editing (I know, I know)

TEGAN & SARA Heartthrob - do I have to? Ach, ok. Closer isn't so bad second time around, but god knows I'm tired of this particular pop sound. *time passes* Tracks 3 and 4 aren't bad, actually. Pretty driving. Nothing original or exciting here - it's big, dumb music and you can't persuade me otherwise - but I'm not overly repulsed and there are some pleasing synth-textures. Next.

AMEL LARRIEUX Ice Cream Everyday - I fucking LOVE the songs I've already heard of this. And hey presto - already in this opening track, the overlapping vocal lines have me in psychedelic soul heaven - this is truly brilliant stuff. O GOD track 2 is even better THIS IS SO SO GREAT! That beat! Every track has something different to recommend it, except the vocal layering is consistently amazing. Also the album cover is GREAT, wtf the h8erz. I DO TAKE OMG EVEN BETTER SECOND TIME AROUND?! How can you guys go fucken mad for Ariana Grande and this in the same goddamned breath, it makes noooo seeeeense. Put it down to the vagaries of taste, huh. This is a goddamned swirling cosmic fantasy-dream soaring over the emotional landscape of music itself and dropping bombs of painful love errywhere. Moment To Reflect is so weird, poppy, tart to the taste - it reminds me of nobody so much as XTC at their happiest, even tho it comes from a completely different soundworld. SO GOOD. Oh this LAYERING! Argh yes. ALSO, this is really playful as well as soulful. Case in point: Orange Glow. See Where You Are is *so bizarre* my goddd there's no point liveblogging this any more is there? It's just. all. so. fucking. great. Listen to this album! Everyday!

TIM HECKER Virgins - Begun really well! Nicely disorienting. Ohh, I should really be listening to this while lying in the dark. It's still lovely now, though. Music I just want to give in to, but not engage with on a close intellectual level, more subsume within. It invites a purely psychedelic state of absence. Not that it's a purely sensual experience - there's a lot of craft here. Lovely depth in the mix - so much background detail - overlapping moods, a cavern of semi-hidden treasures...it's losing my interest a bit now, though. This is a pattern with all of the ambient artists in this poll, except Burial, who isn't really ambient. Just as I say that, Live Room gets really noisy and jarring, which is a good thing (here is where the lex and I diverge) and I've decided to give this a few more tracks. Ah, but midway through track 6 I am compelled to turn it off. Sorry. *goes to turn it off, juicy melodic line creeps in* ANOTHER stay of execution! Ye gods. Lucky I'm in a patient mood. OK, that was nice. NEXT.

CLASSIXX Hanging Gardens - Is this 'house'? Built up really splendidly, shame that the drop was so telegraphed, so thuddingly obvious. It's much more boring now after the drop. I guess there was only ever going to be one way this went, which is a shame because I figured we might be in for a wilder ride. This just isn't for me, part-way into track 2. Doesn't bang correctly. Enough. *mutters something darkly about ILM's weakness for music that has a 4/4 beat and a house bassline*

BOARDS OF CANADA Tomorrow's Harvest - I've listened to this album probably 5 or 6 times in full, all during a weird and somewhat stressful long-distance car-ride. The leaked preview track, New Seeds, is easily the best thing here (I have time for Jacquard Causeway too). I just don't get the rest of the album and consider it another of the ambient albums here that I really don't get into, at least in terms of foreground listening. I think it's their weakest and least interesting album by an absolute street and I'm not going to listen to it again now.

JULIA HOLTER Loud City Song - :o whoa! This is completely unexpected! Utterly arresting opening layered-vocal gambit. Ah, right, so...HOLY SHIT, track 2 fucking EXPLODED omg :D yessssssssssss this is what I listen to music for :D that moment there, ye gods! Um, oh my hellbound angelblaze, Maxim's I is a bloody marvel. I think I might really like this album! It's disorientating, impossible to place or predict, vast, translucent and thrilling. Well, that song was. Two songs later and I'm less intrigued. Why can't this all be as good as the first two tracks? It's all frantic and mumblecore now. Have we not learnt the lessons of hipstery? Yeah, really suddenly I'm done with this and I can't really articulate why beyond 'it got boring'. Almost as if the album were a dream...

BRANDY CLARK 12 Stories - I've listened to 2 songs of this and it hasn't leapt out at me. I know y'all got severe economic and social issues, so why are you trying to rouse anger at the circumstances of the working-class poor with bland country-pop that doesn't pack any sort of original punch? Impeccable neat'n'tidy hooks? Dammit, I want righteousness, I want intensity! The lyrics to 'Get High' are making me angry but not in the right way. This isn't insightful, nor even witty. Next. Southern-states postcard music and I'm not afraid of the bigotry, there's better where that came from.

THE 1975 The 1975 - Why is this album 16 tracks long? It's...not as bad as I expected! I mean, obviously it's horrible overproduced electro-rock crap of some base and abysmal order, but...it's listenable, plenty of sonic texture. These are the worst track-titles in the history of music, though - that's inescapable. I seriously can't imagine what sort of a terrible, terrible person you'd have to be to call your songs by these titles, especially in aggregation. It comes off like a list of vacuous lifestyle tropes, a sort of consumer-catalogue of topics The 1975's shadowy record-label cabal told them to write about. "Write songs about...the city, money, sex, girls, clothing, maybe a sexual encounter, maybe settling down with a loved one...and keep the titles simple". Clearly these 1975 boys have the imagination of a breezeblock. Right, starting to really, really hate the music as well. I know it's IMPOSSIBLY NOW, and yet this knotty paradox compels me to rid myself of it before it might perplex me entirely! I shall listen until 'Sex' just to see if I really can rile myself up into some sort of homicidal rage. Oh Christ, dear God. I shouldn't be listening any more. This is utterly loathsome, the textures of 'The City' long forgotten amidst shambling priapic aural vomit. FUCK OFF. Jesus, this is the worst album in the entire list so far, just hideous. AND YET I still have to listen to 'Sex'. I will refrain from typing until it's done. *3 agonising minutes pass* This isn't about Poptimism. These cunts are Glasvegas remanifest. GLASVEGAS.