ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2017

61 BRIAN ENO with KEVIN SHIELDS "Only Once Away My Son" [163 points, 6 votes]
only listened to it a couple of times but this album was pretty satisfying. i disagree with Votes thrown at this Eno + Shields thing feel like a lifetime achievement award. Like, "I wish I could vote for Discreet Music and Loveless in every poll, so this'll have to do." (although i didnt vote for it or any tracks off it) the album seemed more like, 'this is exactly what i expected a collab between these two to sound like, and i wouldn't have wanted them to make anything else'. having said that this is sounding pretty boring rn

What album are you getting at, flopson? There wasn't a whole album of this, just this one song!

Despacito - Worst fears about this confirmed with the very first record. Unlistenable. 0
One More Fluorescent Rush - Crap film on aeroplane. 4
Volumes - Audi advert punctuated with shards of garbage. 5
Crew - They sound like they are West Bromwich Albion season ticket holders. two minutes of this dirge and I feel the same. 2
LMK - Sounds like the resignation of passengers on a boat that has run out of fuel. 2
Moontalk - Music might be ok, ruined by vocals. 5 and a half
Today feat. Sui Zhen - advert for chocolate ice cream. 3
Nightwork - sounds like it was made inside a toilet roll. 3
Ariadna - nothing here. 3
Blue Pedro - People in clown suits outside boots collecting for something except theyre not collecting for anything. 0
Likey - touch of Putin about this, 3
As If It's Your Last - Sounds like being in a market, bearable. 4
Unforgettable - no idea. 2
Wear Black - didnt mind this, needs better vocals. 5 and a half
Midnight - idk, 4?
Look what you made me do - pointless, 4
Only Once Away My Son - no, 2

I'm sorry but almost every one of these just sounds like anxiety in a box

id like to downgrade volumes from a 5 to a 3

the last two need to come down a point or two as well

<3333333333

I'm not sure I love the Tornado Wallace song much either saer. You had the guts to come out and say it though

I don't hear moontalk as warm or, heaven forfend, playful, it's blunt & jarring. always appreciated the distance laurel halo injected into her tracks, the oblique ways at which she'd position things towards each other, the coldness in the confrontation, but on top of something slick and tight and liquid. liked most of dust but moontalk's hollow brightness feels like sitting in the doctor's waiting room first thing in the morning head hurting from the stark lighting and ambient television, feeling like i need to go back to bed

Omg you're not wrong pic.twitter.com/YO4NhQRSLh

— Yung El Paso (@MitchWadeCole) January 12, 2018

ogmor OTM. Not heard the new album but I did really like Quarantine for reasons you mention (even though lots of ILMers consider it bad and hated)

I liked Quarantine too - I've only listened to Dust once and there's some good stuff on it but I've got to admit I found that phone noise on Moontalk really really irritating.

Surprised that Halo's work has attracted the P word that much. Still not got much at all out of anything she's done since Quarantine frustratingly, but Moontalk is alright.

my tolerance for indistinct fuzzy freeformness seems to drop year by year so I'm a bit sceptical about trying this third album but I'm still gonna give it a go

the guitar in blue pedro isn't an actual mike oldfield sample is it? it is v fine and much more deft than the rest of the track

It sounds like a sort-of interpolation of the Blue Peter theme, but not quite the same.

To be fair I only said the Laurel Halo track was playful compared the rest of the stuff I've heard by her, which is anything but.

The Blue Pedro sample is from Barnacle Bill by Herbert Ashworth-Hope, which the Blue Peter theme is based on but it's not a direct sample or an interpolation.

as it's the only thing i voted for that's appeared so far, and fyi for one brief (drunken) moment on friday night it was as high a first place on place on my ballot, i suppose i ought to say a bit more about blue pedro

have actually really enjoyed people mocking it tbh and it hasn't shaken my love of it at all - it's something that revels in its own absurdity in the tradition of lieutenant pigeon or penguin cafe or leyland kirby in his v/vm guise or even aphex twin (is it just me or does that grinning guy in the video not have the same sinister edge as afx on the cover of the richard d james album?)

dog latin mentioned dreadzone yesterday and i think you'd really have to squint your ears for a whiff of their ciderdelic skank, but you could perhaps argue that it's maybe coming from the same place as a track like 'little britain', which also plays with ideas of british heritage by fucking about with traditional military-associated music. and although i think it might be taking it too far to see blue pedro as some sort of lampooning of the ukip mindset, literally every other thing that my eldest boy sees when he's watching 'the inbetweeners' or whatever on All 4 catch-up is a fucking recruitment advert for the royal navy, so I definitely welcome our daft hornpiping around the kitchen table together to blue pedro as an accidental corrective to that.

also i genuinely carry an enduring (crum)horn for pretty english folk music be it john renborn or indeed mike oldfield in blue peter/portsmouth/moonlight shadow mode (and let's not forget mike's own cosmic disco credentials with foreign affair), and this hits exactly the same bit of my brain and i don't really care if it's ironic or not (i'm not sue it is?)

ogmor, i don't know if it's bullion himself, but this is someome playing the guitar line, it's def not a sample:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcKplEIhi__/?taken-by=bullionness

xp that's been bugging me, cheers. i've now read a whole wikipedia entry about Blue Peter trying to work it out

Nice writing NickB. 'Dreadzone' wasn't my comparison (Maybe Tom E's?), although despite loving it to bits it does skirt dangerously close to the pip-pip chappiness of electro-swing, albeit with its tongue firmly in cheek.

sometimes the diddle-diddle is grandiosely presented in a way which makes it hard not to cringe, but the embarrassment has gone too far, sometimes it's tight and syncopated and nutritious, gurning optional

gr8 post nick

Indeed.

I don't think its tongue is in its cheek, I think it's sincere in its appreciation. It'd be insufferable otherwise.

Obviously there only needs to be one record like this ever.

could be a banner year for the english pastoral, with stuff getting in on 5 votes i almost wonder if there's an outside chance dbh's funny might slip in, but I don't think brigadiers vote

I'm sorry but almost every one of these just sounds like anxiety in a box

― saer, Tuesday, January 23, 2018

are you sure this is true about "Despacito"?

That's closer to "Dick in a Box."

Yeah great writing NickB. My problem with Blue Pedro is entirely down to my dislike of the reels and jigs side of UK folk.

the best side

my fav swae lee feature of the year (non-“perfect pint” bracket, was it rtc who compared that hook to sade?) was prob his hook on davido’s “pere,” whole song shifts around him

saer winning EOY so far (would we expect any different?)

Day 2 begins at the top of the hour...

xp until ienjoyhotdogs inevitably shows up

great day yesterday, lots of songs i had no idea existed which i immediately fell for
ariadna probs my fav of the bunch, volumes is a very interesting one

"Wear Black" has a real Warren Zevon vibe to it

I was trying to place it. This sounds OTM.

https://i.imgur.com/9VHaKBf.jpg

TIE-59 DRAKE "Passionfruit" [164 points, 8 votes]
https://youtu.be/UfCuu-dp2Bw

are you sure this is true about "Despacito"?

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 23 January 2018 12:23 (twenty-nine minutes ago) Permalink

Perhaps more than any of them. The minute it came one I felt my core tense up like when the phone goes and its someone selling insurance for a car I don't have (which is partly why I gave the phone away to a local fistfighter)

Though there are two kinds of anxiety in a boxes out of these. The visceral ones like that one where the wrongdoing is happening in real time, and then the foreboding boat capsizing West Brom type ones. In these ones its like the terror is partly about the dismal resigned moroseness currently happening and knowing that a despacito like kick to the face is imminent in the next one. In this case the wrongdoing is a half today and half tomorrow like feeling, and that never works, might be better to get it over with. its a dilemma

As far as Drake songs go, this is one I made it all the way through.

damn it I was hoping we might have a drake-free countdown for once

Aubrey is forever.

saer winning EOY so far (would we expect any different?)

OTM

passionfruit is decent but i kinda wish it had a bridge or something, it just drifts along without going anywhere

the yaeji & paramore covers were both much better

The minute it came one I felt my core tense up like when the phone goes and its someone selling insurance for a car I don't have (which is partly why I gave the phone away to a local fistfighter)

reading these words is sweet respite from drake

I wanted to start a Drake thread similar to this one: post your made-up tom waits lyric but I realised that by now it would be way too easy and not very funny

Though there are two kinds of anxiety in a boxes out of these. The visceral ones like that one where the wrongdoing is happening in real time, and then the foreboding boat capsizing West Brom type ones. In these ones its like the terror is partly about the dismal resigned moroseness currently happening and knowing that a despacito like kick to the face is imminent in the next one. In this case the wrongdoing is a half today and half tomorrow like feeling, and that never works, might be better to get it over with. its a dilemma

― saer, Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Come over around 6:30 p.m. and explain this to my seven-year-old niece.

the yaeji & paramore covers were both much better

This isn't too bad as far as Drake songs go but yeah, OTM.

I might have voted for Blem. Passionfruit is cool though.

this song is total knobrot, and i quite liked Hotline Bling

https://i.imgur.com/qDedGlO.jpg
TIE-59 CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG "Deadly Valentine (Soulwax Remix)" [164 points, 8 votes] [80 points for original]
https://youtu.be/wISc326_7OM

much better

(haven't heard and won't listen to passionfruit)

This Soulwax remix reminds me of Robbie Williams' "Rudebox."