ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2017

woah this is gorgeous
pachanga boys vibes

I'm going to sound like a square if I say the percussion is too loud and the synths+vox are too quiet, aren't I

reminds me of thomas melchior

This is the kind of sound I used to go for when I fucked around in Fruity Loops 3. Creeping, repeating strings over driving beat with interesting hi-hat stuff at work. S.A.M. is about 1000x better at it than I was.

i really wanted to like the Richard Dawson album a lot more seeing as the previous one 'Nothing Important' was so so great. I actually thought 'Peasant' was a little too polished. I like Dawson at his spikiest and the 4 x long format songs on the previous albums seemed somehow more palatable than the 12 x shorter songs on Peasant. Shame. Anyway, people should stop waaambulancing about him cos he's a treasure really and emil.y OTM

Also every time someone bangs on about how terrible Richard Dawson is a section of his fanbase gets that little bit smugger about how you just don't get it man.

(I think I like RD more in theory than in practise, on paper he's great I just never have use for his music in my life)

smugger more perplexed

RD hate doesn't make me smug, it makes me sad! anyway i'm sitting through giant bobbins here save us johnny fever

I voted for the title track as well but this was the massive ubiquitous hit so I guess that's it for Hus until we get to the albums poll.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, January 24, 2018 9:52 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

switched my vote from the title track to Did You See at the last minute--the early '00s Roc-a-Fella beat is better on the title track, but the rhyming and flow is a lot more interesting on Did You See, so that won out for me. Plus, I'm a sucker for a good kazoo solo (or whatever that is)

https://i.imgur.com/GWcVH9X.jpg

32 ALGIERS "The Underside Of Power" [238 points, 11 votes]
https://youtu.be/lGZXzmM1smM

FUCK YEAH

slaps

the album really grew off of me if that makes sense but the title track is still amazing

fuck yeah, what a beast of a track. the best song on a stacked album--just as a title track should, it synthesizes all the project's themes and musical ideas into a whirlwind 3.5 minutes

the term makes sense but the sentiment makes me sad, the album just cohered more for me over time. (helped that they were v good live and pulled off things I wouldn't have predicted) xp

YES! My number 2. I agree with Brad - the album was great on first couple of listens but the impact faded. This song though is a perfect distillation of what they do and never fails to hit me in the windpipe when I play it. The tension of the verse rubbing up against the elation of the chorus really works for me

idk i think i wanted more songs to be hook after hook like this one and many of them try to get by on mood/sound

thought the first algiers album was heavy-handed but this and its album were a big leap forward

The Underside Of Power is sounding great this morning. That's how you do a chorus. I probably need to go back and give the album another listen.

will need to give this a listen
just hitting up this SAM track for third time in a row

it takes a powerhouse band to pull off this song without it turning into a mishmash--from the feverish post-punk intro, to the stomping verses that crib the bassline from The Tramps' "Disco Inferno," opening up into a chorus that could have felt at home on a classic Stax record.

Pour Aisha :) gorgeous, 31!

many xps, but I voted for "Magnolia" in my top ten. It is literally impossible to not move your body when that song comes on.

That Mondo Grosso / Shinichi Osawa song is amazing and didn’t see it on the noms list :/ thanks for the voters!

First time looking at the video and I love it.

Wow, I like this Algiers song a lot. Will listen to more of this band.

I'm still really surprised that the Algiers album wasn't more of a hit with the critics. It sounds like the kind of thing they'd get behind.

it got a lot of positive notes outside of that weird P4k pan

one of the little things i love about algiers is the way that the richard hammond-looking dude on bass holds his instrument like it's a machine gun that he just ripped off a tank turret

think they got geoff barrow involved for this record and it shows. third-era portishead being one of the touchstones for the album's sound

Also had this at #2 (somewhat tactically, my #1 is probably at 200 in the full rundown).

Pour Aisha is pretty but a little too minimal for me to love

The Underside of Power is my favourite post-punk thing i've heard in ages, shame they didn't really get any 'buzz' despite some good reviews outside of p4k. it was Adrian Utley who produced some of it not Barrow but yeah it's clear

oh yeah that's it

'hymn for an average man' is full portishead and a recommended listen

for anyone who struggled with he album as a whole I really recommend the NPR track-by-track thing

finally listening to the lcd track and wow this guy has like three albums tops in his record collection. i guess "how do you sleep" is gonna place bc it's way better than this

yeahhh really hoping the album tops out at like 40 in the rollout but I gather that's optimistic :/

I still think having a multi-night goodbye party for your band at MSG, releasing a fucking movie of it, and then bringing your band back five years later is a fucko thing to do. Especially with shit like "Oh Baby."

https://i.imgur.com/ZXrPB3U.jpg

31 KELELA "Frontline" [244 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote]
https://soundcloud.com/kelelam/frontline

wonderful song

xpost I was surprised how much I enjoyed the LCD album when it came out, but I haven't gone back to it much at all. After all the ridiculously high end of year placements I've started to resent it a bit.

Sorry that soundcloud link is just a :30 clip, but the song isn't on youtube at all. xps

no one asked for an LCD Soundsystem reunion. Their 'final' album (before the comeback) was weaksauce and his big 'I'm leaving Facebook forever byenow' gesture was overinflated and self important, so reforming the band only a few years later to do this just made no sense

or what JF said

omfg frontline is so good

forget whether I voted for the album or "Frontline" but yeah great song. We had a good run of no repeats but Kelela is a good one to break the streak with

oh this is why LMK seemed low, love this

i enjoyed a fair bit of the LCD album but it was way overrated in most EOY stuff. How Do You Sleep was one of the real duds, it's such a slog

oh this is why LMK seemed low, love this

Huh, they both have 7 votes. Just ballot placement thangz, I guess.

Didn't check out the Algiers album last year but from what other ilxors had said about it I thought I'd like it a lot more than I actually do. It just seems a bit full of rock stodge.

Oh Baby - sounds like the cover looks. terrible. 1
Shadow - dreary, whenever i look in the middle distance I see a carpet warehouse. they must see something better but no idea what. 3
Ogre - this is from that episode of Star Trek Original Series where they go to a planet of ancient greeks and the one with the red shirt gets vaporized again. would be a 5 but its always good to see Spock smiling so an extra half for that. 5 and a half.
Red Flavor - the Korean version of the music they play on Norwegian airlines for three hours straight when you are delayed on the runway because Norwegian Air have the lowest priority at the gate. 1
Magnolia - Quite like the production, its even a little bit genial! 6

Mondo Grosso - first 40 seconds or so are alright, vocals are completely characterless and then it gets sappy and overdone and whatever was there disappears. 4
Did You See - no idea 2
Pour Aisha - first artist on list I own a record by (not this one), the sounds are nice but really it needs a touch of Riquelme to think about reaching bank holiday deckchair status. its growing on me though 7
The Underside Of Power truly dire. when you complain about music in a coffee shop and then in 10% of them it plays this which is much worse than the other sort (the vampire one we had from before) 0
frontline - bearable i guess 4