The 2018 end of the year music lists thread

Dan Weiss is NYC modern jazz guys (Monder! Taborn! Mitchell!) playing complex prog- and metal-influenced compositions, at least a couple of which are inspired by Twin Peaks.

Sounds cool, looking forward to it.

As for Séverine Ballon, parts of Inconnaissance are a little too wispy and Wandelweiser-like for my tastes (I very much enjoy the stuff, it's just that it never crosses a certain threshold – pun intended). Her Solitude recital from 2015, featuring works by Rebecca Saunders, Mauro Lanza, James Dillon, Liza Lim and Thierry Blondeau, is an even better showcase imho, but both albums are very much worth hearing.

^^ along with the Resident Advisor album list, the Aquarium Drunkard list is the most interesting for me. Deserved shout-out to Sandro Perri, too!

xp

oh cool
I've been waiting for the AD list!

Yeah, that's an exciting one.

And, yes, "wispy and Wandelweiser-like" sounds right. I kept having to pause the album when almost any other sound got in the way!

lot of interesting sounding music on the AD list and bonus points for including Gumba Fire, that record is amazing

that's funny, I thought Gumba Fire was an older comp I'd overlooked until this year. But yeah it's fantastic!

One of my favourite ever comps I think, just one perfect beautiful tune after another

This from unperson's jazz list is extremely otm: "the Afrobeat-inspired Kokoroko’s 'Abusey Junction' shows that they need to release an album, like, yesterday."

(that's on the We Out Here comp of London jazz)

Seems this year RA and Mixmag should be the sites I should frequent more, I don’t agree with most of the consensus picks on hip hop, rock and pop singles yet I unashamedly love those top picks for Neutron Dance, Itgehane and Pick Up which seem to be the consensus electronic picks for this year.

Neutron Dance in particular is great and I assume will make it top 10 of the ilm poll considering inspector norse took #1 that year and this one sort of hits the same spots.

In history books, 2018 will be remembered as when Travis Scott unleashed a temporal rift that allowed disembodied voices of music’s past and present to echo throughout the psychedelic darkness.

https://www.factmag.com/2018/12/12/best-rap-2018/

Aquarium Drunkard’s EOY list is great as usual.

Gorillavsbear, Said the Gramophone, Raven Sings the Blues and Aquarium Drunkard are the music blogs that I’ve been following for almost 15 years and they always deliver on-brand, special EOY lists.

neutron dance absolutely rips. hadn't heard this

dance track I spent most time w this year (other than itgehane) was probably the palms trax remix of christine's "damn, dis-moi"

What Is 2018's Most Iconic Album? (Includes responses from Charli XCX, Chromeo, Nile Rodgers, Snail Mail, Lucy Dacus, and more)

https://www.gq.com/story/what-is-2018s-most-iconic-album?verso=true

Some years you get Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Magical Mystery Tour, The Velvet Underground, Songs of Leonard Cohen, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, and The Doors. And other years you get Silent Shout by The Knife (no disrespect to The Knife).

This is starting off great.

the blurb on Timberlake's album is beyond ludicrous

waht

consider the source xp

I like Silent Shout better than any of those albums :(

And I still wouldn’t diss them like that... also should have picked something more recent to diss like Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

the MGMT album was good tbh

I totally forgot Timberlake and Jay-Z/Beyonce put out albums this year

It's funnier (at least to GQ readership) the way they did it, to pick a year that feels more random and an album with a stronger "never heard of it" factor for their readers. 2xp

Also it’s wrong, for that particular year (2006) I believe it was either J Dilla’s Donuts or Joanna Newsom’s Ys the consensus picks iirc.

god that parenthetical about The Knife is the dumbest 5 words written in 2018

Also it’s wrong, for that particular year (2006) I believe it was either J Dilla’s Donuts or Joanna Newsom’s Ys the consensus picks iirc.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, December 12, 2018 1:51 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How soon we forget

http://www.bobdylan-comewritersandcritics.com/largeimages/magazine_covers/20070207-village-voice-us.jpg

A Jew on a motortrike!

the bitter southerner: the 30 best southern albums 2018

https://bittersoutherner.com/best-southern-albums-of-2018

(what were they thinking? xp)

Omg at that Vilage Voice cover.

https://www.popmatters.com/tv-on-the-radio-vs-the-village-voice-truly-racist-2495813736.html

So should we instead wonder if the cover was an unintentional racial swipe? Perna angrily compares the cover to recent lynching incidents. Look at it this way- if you were in cartoon on the cover of a well-known publication and someone was running you over, how would you feel about that? Most likely, you'd be pretty angry. The cover was meant to show Dylan symbolically beating TVOTR in the Pazz poll but the question then is this: was the way they depicted it appropriate? They could have had Dylan and a TVOTR member in a ring with the latter getting punched or even just some grand illustration of Dylan to show that he won. The fact that they went for a conflict cover where Dylan whups up on someone is more dramatic than just having a picture of himself alone. It's likely that ANY photo of Dylan attacking/hitting someone in the band would have brought about the same response. Also, consider it an interesting irony that if many of the younger writers/voters hadn't gravitated to the Idolator poll this year, TVOTR probably would have beaten Dylan in the Pazz poll itself and the illustration would have looked very different as such.

well now

That cover is terrible on so many levels.

Rolling Stone's 20 Best Metal Albums of 2018

Normally wouldn't care but my boys Frontierer got in again!

fuck, completely forgot about that Portal album.

My first reaction was to think racism but this cover is actually quite funny.

xxxpost: But the album is called "blood on the tracks" not "blood on the ropes", which could have worked for the box analogy...

the album was called "Modern Times." If they wanted to reach back 30 years for a boxing reference instead there's "Hurricane."

oh yes you're right... I'm not very well versed on Dylan sorry... I assumed the album that won that year was blood on the tracks.

im having great dissonance w the name "dan weiss"

How soon we forget

[village voice cover]

That gq intro is hilariously well timed for the recent posts about poptimism v rockism

hyden's argument about man of the woods is pretty interesting to me

it goes in circles for way too long; it's a one-sentence argument (MOTW is emblematic of 2018 because Justin Timberlake release an album everyone forgot about his flannel shirts collection).

well whatever it's something he prob did for free for a place he doesn't work at... it's more interesting as an argument than like 95% of all EOY blurbs tho

There is some great dissonance on the Dan Weiss album, it's true.

lmao @ steve hyden deliberately humiliating himself

not that that isn't his primary mode

And culture writers will write anniversary pieces that attempt to link Timberlake's "log cabins and facial hair" iconography to the rise of white nationalism during the early years of the Trump administration.

i guess this is interesting but it's more likely that no one will ever write about this album again

I remember when JT was supposed to ride a starring role in a Woody Allen picture and an album into a new era of ultra prominence.

i mean he could be wrong! he could also be right? in any case it was nice to see some space on one of these lists devoted to a line of argument about a record that isn't one of the same 25 records all websites are currently talking about