Your album of 2019 (that was released before 2019)

I've been aware of the Pop Ambient compilations for years, but I've never actually bought one until this year - I heard Leandro Fresco's "Buenos Amigos" on Sleepbot and picked up Pop Ambient 2003, and it's great. There are three killer tracks (Markus Guentner's "Express Yourself" and Klimek's "Milk and Honey") and the rest are solid. It even has a decent track by the modern-day Orb. Admittedly it's a multi-artist compilation rather than a proper album.

I find that the Pop Ambient compilations have an melancholic air. They're a throwback to the tail end of the glitch music boom of the late 1990s (the music is generally ambient-flavoured "glitch lite", e.g. "it sounds nice", and the production is a lot simpler than Autechre). The original concept is now years out of date, as if the NME had continued to release C86 updates well into the 1990s, but it persists. One day it will come to an end. There may, or may not, be a short article in The Guardian about the series, but otherwise it will vanish from the Earth without leaving a trace.

They PA albums are full of artists who released a couple of things on Kompakt in 2001-2005 and then presumably ran out of money and stopped. In 2019 there's probably masses of equally good music, but because it's not pressed onto records that are sold in shops with a marketing push I'm probably never going to hear about it. I have never met anyone in real life who knew of Arovane or Ulrich Schnauss. The irony is that music magazines are more indispensable than ever, because someone has to sift through the modern internet's detritus to find the good stuff, but music magazines are in the shitter.

Of the actual albums I bought this year the one that stands out most is Tides by Arovane (2000), mainly for nostalgia - it's derivative and frustratingly misguided but a couple of tracks stand out - and the "Subtemble / Beachfires" EP by Burial (2017), which feels like a terrific update of Orb-style ambient music, e.g. it's a bunch of samples thrown together seemingly at random but it's atmospheric and actually does sound like fires on a beach at night next to a temple.

pet shop boys - actually

Prefab Sprout - Jordan: The Comeback
one of my fave bands ~1987-1989 that i just lost track of by the time this came out and didn't listen to until a motivating Brad post earlier this year.

the Byrds - Untitled

nice JDL selection, jf !!

― budo jeru, Friday, November 22, 2019 2:12 AM

Thanks! I never really knew much about him until after he died a few years ago, and I'd started listening to a little here and there. Then I got a copy of this record for a steal and have listened to it SO MANY TIMES.

Shimmy Disc stuff in general has not been "rediscovered" yet it seems

― Evan

i ran across it looking for rock albums with clarinet on it only to find out daryl dragon was all over it?!? and this was two days after daryl dragon died, too. it was pretty spooky.

I feel silly for only having heard it for the first time this year, but Sleater-Kinney's The Hot Rock has defined the second half of this year for me. It was unbelievable to have become familiar with the band through their louder, more extravagent records, and then discover this. It was as loud and fast as their other records, but it sounded so wounded and introverted and outright sad... I can't get over how startling it is

A few stick out:

DJ Healer - Nothing 2 Loose
US Girls - In a Poem Unlimited
Sun-El Musician - Africa to the World

All three I found through the ILM Albums list too so thanks everyone! Would have made my top 10 had I heard them sooner.

Def the Bobbie Gentry jazz album that came out on her boxed set

does that have “thunder in the afternoon”? is that song available anywhere besides dodgy comps?

octobeard, have you tried Simmy’s Tugela Fairy? It’s produced by Sun-El Musician and even better than Africa to the World imo.

oor neechy and michael b's decade polls were very helpful

This is otm, between these and you, imago, getting into Scott Miller (thereby causing me to re-read his book Music: What Happened?) it really set the pace for a lot of my listening this year. If I had to narrow it down to one album, it would absolutely be Thin White Rope's Exploring the Axis. Like a goth Grateful Dead, except it actually sounds more like Talking Heads than either goth or the Dead!

https://frontierrecords-thinwhiterope.bandcamp.com/album/exploring-the-axis-2018-remastered-edition

(Close runner-up is Frozen Concentrate's A•Fro•Zen•Con•Cent•Rate, which is 100% unstreamable and which I barely could find on $l$k, though I guess the vinyl still goes for pretty cheap. It's totally glittering college pop, somewhere between Fleetwood Mac and Lizzy Mercier Descloux)

2020 time!

Introspective by an absolute mile. Why didn't you tell me, ILM. (Oh, you did?)

Special mention to Patricia Taxxon's Pix & Bit which came out late last year and which I didn't find out about until June

y no nü thred

quite a specific concept idk

Oh man I’m glad you got into Introspective... I got really into it a couple years ago... turns out PSB are better album artists than single artists!!!

I noticed your answer for last year was Actually!

oh god introspective is the fuckin best

lol i liked that you mentioned my love of Rio just now as I sort of group those two records together in my head

the fuckin widescreen 80s

Hydroplane - S/T

Oops looks like that was my answer last year. hmmm

oh wow i have a very easy and obvious answer for this year: night nurse by gregory isaacs

The song "night nurse" is fire ... guess i should listen to the whole album

the whole album is on the title track's level it's ridiculous

Real answer is probably Son House's Father of Folk Blues.

Mine is either Lloyd Cole's Standards, East River Pipe's Shining Hours in A Can or Voodoo. I don't know *why* no one on here mentioned the D'Angelo record before.

Carlton's The Call Is Strong (1990) and Joe McPhee's Nation Time (1971), were those records, personally

didn't discover it in 2020, but i did enjoy my time with gene clark's no other more than any other album this year

Mine is either Lloyd Cole's Standards, East River Pipe's Shining Hours in A Can or Voodoo. I don't know *why* no one on here mentioned the D'Angelo record before.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, December 2, 2020 11:48 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That collection of East River Pipe is some of my all time favorite music. How has a song like 40 Miles not made into a pivotal scene in an HBO character drama yet? Why isn't Springsteen covering his songs? He's being a bit too overlooked honestly.

Bill Fay, Time of the Last Persecution without a doubt. Absolutely floored me.

Re Your Album of 2019 (that was released before 2019): why did ppl cite the Arthur Russell album that was released in 2019? Oh well, great album (Iowa Dream, on bandcamp with a bunch of his others).
In recent years, I've been belatedly discovering more by Robert Wyatt, incl. prev unreleased solo, expanded reissues of Soft Machine and Matching Mole, also, if you scroll upthread here, his work with Michael Mantler etc---lotta links to streams:
Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?
Also, on YouTube: the first two Soft Machine studio albums---new to me!

For me, this year, would be between Elvis Presley Elvis in Memphis, Hypnosia Extreme Hatred and Evil Spirit The Imageless Mirror.

Pat Methany & Lyle May - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

Evelyn "Champagne" King's Get Loose is probably the best album I heard this year.

that is def the best album ever made

Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington. It was a gift from a friend a number of years ago that I never played, and forgot I owned until recently.

Evelyn "Champagne" King's Get Loose is probably the best album I heard this year.

― kitchen person, Thursday, 3 December 2020 02:24 (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This probably would have been my answer in whichever year I first heard it.

the best album i discovered this year was probably jimmy giuffre — "western suite"

i listen to it all the time now

I can't even remember how I stumbled across this Barbara & Ernie album, but I apparently listened to it so much they ended up my #1 artist in my Spotify Wrapped for 2020. It's quite nice.

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

Michael Head & The Strands - The Magical World of the Strands
Takashi Kokubo - Jamaica ～ Waves And Light And Earth
Sign Libra - Closer To The Equator

veedon fleece. i'd listened to it before but never with sustained attention

it's the best album ever made

probably danny brown's last lp.

The first album by The Left Banke, and Forever Breathes the Lonely Word by Felt.

100% Proof - The Tubby Hayes Orchestra

NRBQ at Yankee Stadium, or Pretzel Logic