ILM's 2018 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll / VOTING THREAD

the closest thing to a good new order single last year was krystal klear - neutron dance

That's true in that it is similar to a specific good single by new order but false in that it is bad

so lowest common denominator it's a jam because of not in spite of its australiosity, blew up in 2018, v powerful hair and energy in the vid: the chats - smoko https://youtu.be/j58V2vC9EPc

that is a superlative video

Smoko is excellent and I’m bending my normal aversion to ‘year of impact’ to vote for it.

“neutron dance” hate itt is only going to make me vote for it harder

moonshake miner on the flip is so much better than neutron dance though, huge joy bomb

the whole ep is great but "neutron dance" is the standout, it's no "inspector norse" but it's still a fantastic new order rip

Decided I was wasting too much time internally debating placement/inclusion for my ballots so just voted.

just a couple recs for songs and albums i'm gonna be voting for highly:

Superchunk - Black Thread -- the cathartic closer to the best Superchunk album in 25 years.

Sada Baby ft. Drego - Bloxk Party -- goon-friendly voters would do well to rally around this one, the most fun rap single (and video) of the year

H.C. McEntire - Red Silo -- No relation to Reba, the best song from the Mount Moriah lead singer's solo album. a warm love song with strikingly specific lyricism and a fantastic organ tone.

Petal - Magic Gone -- sweet and melodic indie rock with real emotional oomph. brad started a thread but no one commented, ce la vie. but this record is gorgeous and worthy of attention if you like Big Thief or any of the boygenius brigade.

Hermit & The Recluse - Orpheus & The Sirens - Ka's latest, and it's a unique thrill to hear him emerge from his hermetically sealed world (production is handled by Animos). it's still pitch black, but has a sweeping cinematic quality that Ka usually works hard to avoid.

yeah that petal record is great, kiley one of the best indie rock songwriters going right now (...if not the best). i regret not pitching it to pfork lol

Decided I was wasting too much time internally debating placement/inclusion for my ballots so just voted.

― silverfish, Friday, January 11, 2019 9:37 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always end up doing this too and usually have regrets. E.g., I'm listening to the Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids album right now for the first time in a while and wish I'd put it much higher

oh, I'm sure I'll have regrets, but I'll always have those no matter how long I wait to cast my votes. Also, as far as regrets go, leaving that DJ Koze album off my ballot probably won't haunt my dreams.

I heard that neutron record when I got locked in the changing rooms at superdry in birkenhead and I overheard some people saying "this is Limmy"

I've not heard of anything else on the list even though theyve all got 26 million views on youtube, though even my nan is up to 225K subscribers now this is why I dont go online much which is how I ended up in superdry in the first place

I am really out of the loop this year, its been great to catch up thru the noms list, a lot of great stuff this year.

One thing that I nominated this year that I would campaign for is Ghoomar I love the chaotic chanting swirl the song ends up in. Its my favourite bollywood hit this year.

Adikia ft. Mon-Sala, Yas Lo, Sofa, Yeboyah, Nisa, Donatella, F - Koskematon

I guess I should rep for this song, since it's probably gonna be my #1, but dunno if anyone else is gonna vote for it, since it's (partially) in Finnish... "Koskematon" is pretty much the Me Too -anthem of this country, with a whole bunch of fucking tough up-and-coming local rappers doing their take on sexual harrassment and self-determination. "Koskematon" is "untouchable" in Finnish, and the chorus goes something like "the daddies try to get on my skin / but they get seized up / you know the fact is / the matriarchate is untouchable". As for the rest of it, I'm sure you can figure it out from the (rather awesome) video, and a couple of the choruses are in English.

Oh and the PERFUME album is really underrated! "Let Me Know" is low key a classic Perfume single.

xpost to Tuomas: Love it! Aw, there's "Kvinnenes Kulturhistorie" at 0:17, Tootikki + Tove at 1:04, but most of the remaining masks and references elude me, shamefully. I guess it's Nurmi there, running, before getting a new face? Would love some pointers towards other parts. Thanks!

lol this downtown boys selena/pretenders cover is amazing: https://youtu.be/GO-KkVgxhK4

The first mask is Tarja Halonen, the former Finnish president (who also used to be the head of Seta, the national LGTBQ organisation back in the '80s). The second is Tuutikki and Tove Jansson, as you know. <3 Third is Sofi Oksanen, probably the most popular living novelist in here at them moment, and an outspoken feminist. The fourth statue is of Paavo Nurmi, a runner who won several medals in the olympics in the 1920s, so the mask they use is of Enni Rukajärvi, a snowboarder who's won silver and bronze in the olympics. The fifth statue is of Lenin, which for some reason we have in Helsinki, so the mask they put up is of Hertta Kuusinen, one of the most prominent communist politicians from the '40s to the '60s. So basically all the statues are of Finnish historical men, replaced with masks of respected women in the same profession.

(xpost)

hadnt heard this Prins Thomas flip of the De Lux tune and it is making my day awesome

Talaboman Superpitcher remix is sweet

who the fuck nominated this Audrey Chen asmr track that sounds like someone gagging on spaghetti?? My night is ruined now.

Thanks, Tuomas! (multixpost)

Seconding imago's shout-out for stellar indie-pop band Trust Fund. It is just the cutest and most dynamically hook-y final album imaginable. They continuously progressed their sound throughout their short career, but this is particularly ambitious and crushingly personal and the songs sink in and stay for months. I really hope more people hear it and love it.

I do like Trust Fund (and have played w/ them several times) but seem to always miss the full albums. Will make sure I check it out but have so many albums in the running I doubt it'll make it with such a short time to go.

Poll-runners, what is the policy on write-ins? I nominated an EP for the albums list but would prefer to vote for a single track off it - I know I'll likely be the only vote but I like having my ilx ballot be as "accurate" to my year as possible.

Aaaw, it's lovely you've played with them! Maybe its charm will still work in time... Any standouts to speak of from your favourite albums this year? xp

I voted :)

I should have nominated the Alva Noto album.

xp: this poll runner says "if it feels good do it"

Write-ins are not guaranteed to be counted (if everyone's ballot was all write-ins the system would break down) but in practice they always are.

My ballot will include one write-in because I accidentally nominated a different Laura Veirs track than I intended to, but I don't suspect the impact that this will have on the results will be all that dramatic.

It's my own fault for slacking off re: nominations, but I just noticed that no one put up Amen Dunes' "Blue Rose." Oh well, I guess I'll just get him on my albums ballot.

i like the two four tet remixes upthread but also listened to the originals they were based on and the differences are not especially pronounced? i might prefer the unremixed daniel avery track. (remember when people were praising four tet's remix of that eric prydz track left and right, writing thinkpieces about people's reactions to it in clubs and blahblahblah and then it turned out when you listened to the original all the good/interesting/'innovative' parts were actually there all along, just nobody had bothered to notice b/c no one expected anything good to come from eric prydz? good times.)

I love this Yubin, "Lady" track. Much thanks to whomever nominated it. I included it in the weighted top 4 of my mixed tracks ballot.

Tracks ballot in tonight, btw. I'll come back and do albums in a day or two.

i think i will submit my ballot soon. here are some tracks i like a lot that i will probably vote highly for.

kash doll - for everybody :: "if a girl answers (don't hang up)" for 2018, but actually even better. (it actually first came out in 2017 but got picked up and re-released by republic a year later.) one part knowingly over-the-top catfight, an equal part tough love, plus a lucid rumination on sexual politics lurking just beneath the surface. in the moments when the bass falls back and the piano line descends to a vamp on its more somber chords, my mind inevitably wanders to the man, un-pictured yet firmly and sadly at the center. i've heard very little else from this artist, but of what i've heard nothing grabbed me anywhere close to how this did.

gerardo ortiz - egoísta :: i worked in texas for a month this year, giving me more opportunity than i usually have to listen to spanish-language radio and otherwise experience latin music in spaces where it's not just a crossover curiosity but an all-consuming phenom. i don't think i'll ever quite forget driving down the highway late at night hearing the hauntingly ethereal cumbia of raymix's "oye mujer" or seeing the way the glorious peal of ozuna's supernatural voice delivering the "te boté" chorus got an entire packed club moving. but surprise, it's actually this, a romantic ballad over a beautiful-tho-conventional banda arrangement that had me coming back the most. i wish i had better reasons to justify it, but it really just comes down to that chorus: enormous and booming, unfurled so immediately like a revelation from the mountaintops. completely gorgeous.

kurt vile - bassackwards :: i'm so glad he finally managed to release a great song that doesn't sound like one of his older great songs for the first time in who-knows-how-long. (don't tell me if there's actually another song of his i've overlooked that sounds just like this -- i prefer my ignorance.) a lush, unrelenting arrangement i can just let myself completely sink into, plus a beautifully freeform, wandering lyric: "there was no format because, well, we like it like that."

marsha ambrosius - old times :: every year there's always a handful of r&b singles that i feel are more slept-on than they should be, even here, in favor of bigger hits and buzzblog-friendlier work alike, so i do feel the need to echo the love i've seen others express here-n-there for songs like jacquees's "you", mariah's "with you", and toni braxton's "long as i live". and then there's this, a hauntingly sublime rendering of our need to hide those we love from the world, unsure whether we're actually protecting them or shielding ourselves from heartbreak -- or trying both but accomplishing neither. marsha's vocal is pained and impassioned, at times broken like a sob, and when the anguish collapses to the final fadeout, it gives way to a mood not quite serene but also certainly not resigned.

VOTED

I'd like to rep for:

Emerson Kitamura - Rock Your Baby: a cover of the George McCrae classic that doubles down on its potential as a lullaby. Balearic? Soporific? I think it's really beautiful.

DJ Koze - The Love Truck: the B-side of "Pick Up", Koze doing what he does best IMO; certainly this is better than most of his album.

ZHU and Tame Impala - My Life. The collaboration nobody asked for and, as one wag puts it, "I can't believe they made a whole song based around the Windows 10 eject USB sound effect" but I love getting lost in this.

And finally, as all of the above are a bit on the smooth side, how about some funky 70s-style crime caper 'n' car chase music from Calibro 35?

just voted!

Voted (again) for albums. I'm done now!

Emerson Kitamura - Rock Your Baby: a cover of the George McCrae classic that doubles down on its potential as a lullaby. Balearic? Soporific? I think it's really beautiful.

oh this rules, thank you jeff

A little lobbying for my most-listened song of the year. The Regrettes doing a song from Hamilton turns out to be the perfect Taylor Swift pop-punk song Taylor has failed to write.

The Regrettes - Helpless

i'd like to get into a bit more detail on my recommendations, but i would strongly recommend that anyone who hasn't already listened to the dj koze album do so..

I heard that neutron record when I got locked in the changing rooms at superdry in birkenhead and I overheard some people saying "this is Limmy"

― saer, Friday, January 11, 2019 6:30 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Stellar post imo

Voted.

Voted; it was fun!

seandalai, I submitted my albums ballot a second time because there were two things I couldn't live with leaving off. Disregard my first attempt please!