Best album from the 2018 ILM EOY album poll that received only ONE top 3 weighted vote

xp It is! Brodka probably more my thing as you'd guess, but this is bringing the tunes nicely.

i've heard about five of these? out of those, the Roy Kinsey is easily my favourite and i highly recommend it to anyone who liked last year's Saba album or anything similar.

i thought all year the Django Django album was sadly overlooked

and if you haven't heard Sunwatchers, may i suggest changing that ... II is great, but their new one Illegal Moves is out later this month and it's even better

Can't believe I was the sole voter for Phew. Voting for Blood Claat Orange as that was my number two, but also wondering who else voted for my number one (the Anatomy album).

The Roy Kinsey is good. I haven’t heard the rest.

I’m going to take this opportunity to highlight my #4 album, Onipa Akoma by Ghanaian rapper Akan, which is a beautiful piece of work, all about vibes, less about jams. Akan is obviously influenced by Kendrick Lamar, but sound- and beat-wise the album leans very much Ghanian. This goes for the language as well. I don’t understand Twi, but it sounds particularly beautiful coming from Akan’s mouth.

Check out the videos for “Me Sika Aduro” and ”Helebaba”, if you like.

I was the voter for Hilary Woods. A beautiful, sparse album. Perfect music to listen to in a deserted train station late at night, as I discovered last week.

But I think something went wrong in the counting of votes, because I had the SOB X RBE album in the unweighted part of my ballot, after my top ten.

Lionel Marchetti & Cat Hope - The Last Days of Reality (2nd)

This was my #2 and it's an incredibly rewarding listen

Meg Bowles - Evensong: Canticles for the Earth (1st)

This barely missed my ballot — it's a fantastic ambient album with some deep space new agey vibes

crüt also gave Gann a whole bag of points I think

― imago, Sunday, February 10, 2019 2:29 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true

I'm probably voting for my #1--Earthling Society--but I'm going to listen to everything here

yes! thanks sbahnhof for the links

Hold on a sec

"But I think something went wrong in the counting of votes, because I had the SOB X RBE album in the unweighted part of my ballot, after my top ten."

Shocking if true! Sorry 1975 fans, the rollout was void

Did SOB X RBE have two albums on the nominations? Gangin' and Gangin' 2, something like that?
iirc Gangin' got a few votes

Ah, my bad. I never noticed there was a sequel...

The sole #1 vote for Meg Bowles was from me, obviously. I even started a thread about the album, any discussion on it or Bowles in general is welcome there:

Meg Bowles: "Evensong" - the new age/ambient album of the year?

I listened to the Bowles and promptly forgot it. Listening again now and it's really very good.

my #2 and #3 made it here this year,

will try give the rest a listen before the deadline as i dont think i know any!

This Bill Ryder record is good. Unexpectedly drifting post-rock elements to it (the soaring, EITS branch - not the Disco Inferno one).

that Kaku P-Model disc almost made my #1 and probably would've been had I not decided to go with something that actually had a shot at placing. I think those who voted for the Daphne & Celeste album ought to give it a listen

Is the full Kaku P-Model available online? Only individual tracks showed up on a search.

Same as nxt, my No.2 and No.3 are here. I will get the hat-trick one day...

I'd heard a Monetochka single thanks to ShariVari, but the other albums are new to me. There's always something amazing in there...

Boy Azooga and Goat Girl were mine.

Surprised both albums didn't gain more traction here, especially the Boy Azooga one which garnered Super Furry comparisons and was inspired by the likes of William Onyeabor, Caribou, Can, Brian Wilson and others.

Anne Garner - Lost Play (2nd)
Jean-Michel Blais - Dans Ma Main (3rd)

These were mine, both very quiet intimate records, I can see why few people would get really excited about them.

xxp - I don't think so...he's got that Prince-like drive to cover all distribution himself, though he doesn't pull tracks off YouTube. its slowly showing up on iTunes and Apple Music though

Apart from Earthling Society, I've heard Sunwatchers (my #3), A Forest of Stars, El Efecto, and Park Jiha, all of which are good to great.

Listening to SRSQ rn and it's pretty good also!

Good lord that Drone Not Drones release is waay longer than NTS Sessions 1-4. It's like a compilation of mini albums, or more realistically a compilation of every live performance at a largish festival... of drones. Definitely not going to get to all of that, but there are some noteworthy (to me at least) contributions from bands like Loscil and Low.

The Drones Not Drones show was my #3. I listened to that whole thing six times, and large chunks of it another six or seven times. When you're in the mood it's great.

My #1 was the Omit set. That thing cast a spell on me.

Haha EZ cast a protest ballot against Oughta-Care worship

I think my #2 (Jeff Carey - ZERO PLAYER GAME) got one other vote or I'd have a top three on here.

4-5 hours of one artist (Omit) is totally fine. Or 26+ hours of various people playing at a drone fest. 8 hours of Autechre is plain wrong.

About Earthling Society's album MO - The Demon, they set themselves a formidable challenge:

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1554525519_7.jpg

Mo - The Demon was recorded at Leeds college of music between November 2017 – February 2018. The basis of the album was to record an imaginary soundtrack to the Shaw Brothers batshit psychedicrazy Kung Fu horror ‘The Boxer’s Omen’ aka MO or demon.
The story is an everyday one.
After a Hong Kong kickboxer is paralysed by a cheating Thai competitor, his mobster brother vows revenge and journeys to Thailand for a duel. Along the way, our hero is met by bizarre visions, entered into a Buddhist monastery, and begins a quest to save the soul of a deceased Monk (his twin brother in a past life) who died at the hands of a powerful black magician.
We’ve all been there. However the movie descends into a kind of spiritual Jodorowsky mushroom fest that is completely deranged and is therefore one of those perfect midnight movies.
So we got free studio time at LCM in November and just went ‘fuck it’ lets make an imaginary soundtrack in homage to such a great movie.

The full film The Boxer's Omen seems to be online, and I was going to post the trailer, but got distracted by Demon Of The Lute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A6sVK_voec

Anne Garner - Lost Play (2nd)
Jean-Michel Blais - Dans Ma Main (3rd)
These were mine, both very quiet intimate records, I can see why few people would get really excited about them.
― Siegbran, Tuesday, February 12, 2019

They're the ones I'm looking forward to most!

The difference between music in the bottom 700 and top 77 isn't that great. It's affected by a lot of non-musical factors too. (Publicity/location/stanning threads etc)

^ Apparently Anne Garner had an unhappy religious childhood - https://www.textura.org/archives/interviews/fivequestions_garner.htm

my #1 was All Melody... which now makes me think my ballot wasn’t counted, probably I fucked something up.

Nils Frahm hasd one #1 vote but also 5 other votes so is rightly not included in this poll

The difference between music in the bottom 700 and top 77 isn't that great. It's affected by a lot of non-musical factors too. (Publicity/location/stanning threads etc)

This is how I discovered Lando Chill. And that made my ballot, so thanks stanner!

I would've stanned for Dream Wife, but couldn't be bothered with the boring reaction "it's too retro and not retro enough / I hate this century"

Meg Bowles' album of ambient atmospheric space music is on Spotify:

Meg Bowles – Evensong: Canticles for the Earth

(On Bandcamp it just has the first 4 tracks)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/thumb/8/85/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B4%D0%BB%D1%8F_%D0%B2%D0%B7%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%8B%D1%85.jpg/200px-%D0%A0%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B4%D0%BB%D1%8F_%D0%B2%D0%B7%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%8B%D1%85.jpg

We've got a short thread for Monetochka / монеточка

Her album is a charming pop.. thing, and there's an academic article on how it reflects Russia under Putin's fourth term, but that website is mysteriously down atm so you'll have to settle for this headline:

- https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/05/31/a-19-year-old-musician-just-released-the-best-russian-pop-album-of-the-year-seriously

“Coloring for Adults” rightly starts with the song “Russkii Kovcheg” (Russian Ark) — an aphoristic composition about Russia’s special path:
"Where’s their Slavic mass, oil, and gas?
They’ve got unisex, but we’ve got kvas,
Iconostasis and Mikhaylov, Stas. [...]
Pussy Riot took off their masks — a pity.
But they look good without them — they’re pretty."
Another key track is “90” — a satire on the myth of the “troubled” 1990s, and something like the opposite of a song with the same name by the band “Barto”:
"It’s fun to sit around and divvy up the shops,
But carving up a country is where playtime stops. [...]
It’s only thanks to tapes and to Krovostok’s song
That I learned with horror what had gone wrong.
That in the 90s people turned up dead,
And they ran the streets buck naked."
What’s important here isn’t just what is being sung, but how: Monetochka’s music has neither patriotism nor contempt. She brings only a keen interest in the land of her people, and a genuine love for its paradoxical nature. In the song “Russian Ark,” when a chorus of voices starts chanting “Rossiya!” it’s authentic, but it isn’t some pro-Kremlin cheer. Listen carefully and the sound might as well be people Gyrdymova’s age shouting the same word at some unpermitted protest.

The Riccardo podcast mix is great! There's an old interview about the label here - http://www.meoko.net/interviews/imprints-records-an-exclusive-interview-podcast-with-domenico-rosa-riccardo

didn't vote in this, but the Goat Girl record was my fav of the year. Such a great re-think of The Fall and Butthole Surfer's art-twang, but with a completely different take on the loathing.

The Riccardo podcast mix is great! There's an old interview about the label here - http://www.meoko.net/interviews/imprints-records-an-exclusive-interview-podcast-with-domenico-rosa-riccardo

― sbahnhof, Monday, 18 February 2019

The tracks in this are all unreleased, with exception of one which just came out. I presume some of the others are scheduled to come out this year!

I was the Yu Su voter - melancholy Vancouver house, probably my most listened to record last year.

Quite enjoying the A Forest Of Stars's combination of black metal and Celtic folk. Maybe they really are one of those "admittedly awesome bands that would fare better with less unhinged thespianesque vocals". Or maybe they'll all be doing it next year.

Earthling Society just placed in the ILX metal poll:

ILM METAL POLL 2018 RESULTS THREAD!

That's not metal, it's space rock, it's got a multicoloured album cover

(I know, I know, that poll is metal + heavy rock... Have any voters ever tried to move the needle far away from 'metal' for spurious reasons?)

This could be metal, it's got guitars and swearing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeONrInKnGE

Dream Wife's my fav on the list, but I'll give 1 vote to The Adults because it's too sad to see that unloved band name get zero. It's a wonderful album. (And the record company actually forced the name on them!)

I really like Park Jiha but I think Philos, which came out last year (Communion is a reissue), is quite a bit better

Have any voters ever tried to move the needle far away from 'metal' for spurious reasons?

Many times a year, yes. Koenji Hyakkei and Machine Girl made the rollout this year alongside the usual psych-rock and emo that gets a pass (i'm not really complaining)

Metal poll tends to be less like Decibel or Terrorizer & more like the late, great Rockarolla (a point I'm about to make in the actual poll thread)

I might end up checking out that Goat Girl album next

I don't really see post-hardcore emo and psych rock as being any more distant from the tradition of Sabbath, Purple, Priest, etc than extreme black metal artists are.

Goat Girl live: one of those bands where the drummer puts it over the top.

I <3 A Forest of Stars

Senyawa just placed too in the top 20

and Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

firstly, this sunwatchers is killer !! just wow.

also was happy to discover dream wife and carla dal forno. thanks to whoever voted for those.

i had written up a list of 2-3 sentence responses to everything here (except the compilations) but lost it somehow. oh well.

the corsano et al. was my vote -- just an amazing free record. you can buy the digital album for £6 at café oto:

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/chris-corsano-bill-nace-steve-baczkowski-mystic-be/

thee open sex record also mine. very impressive krautrock workout, very focused, very groovy in spite of being almost puritanical in its devotion to repetition.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Kaku P-Model - Times = Times (Kai=Kai) - by Susumu Hirasawa - Individual tracks are online

There's a playlist of the album on YouTube atm:

- http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwlET339SalrCl_xi8mGJ2bC-3lJdYibD / (Discogs tracklisting)

https://img.discogs.com/jdjdBBcqm3vyEc7GynCROax5mEg=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-12463681-1535801084-6743.jpeg.jpg

Heard a few more today - I can only add to the praise for the Roy Kinsey album. Tenderlonious/22archestra and the chill beats on Junes' A View sounded good too.

Hard to choose between the Job Sifre and Meg Bowles. The brief mention of Lando Chill upthread got me listening to it and I love it. Probably would have made my albums ballot.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Why'd you vote for them? They can't even play in tune.. nah, just kidding

I still need to listen to all the 3rd-placers. Mystic Beings sounded astonishing from the previews.

man, i missed this thread, the niche records are very much my thing, looking forward to exploring!