Best pair of albums by the same artist/band in a single calendar year

Black Album was pressed and promoed in 1987, it's fair to count for thread purposes. Thread title only says "by."

But duh, an obvious recent case is Kabza De Small & DJ Maphorisa’s Scorpion Kings/The Return of the Scorpion Kings one-two, both on my 2019 album ballot.

Not to mention there was also their Piano Hub last year, as well as Kabza’s solo Pretty Girls Love Amapiano mixtape.

- and just this week the pair dropped another excellent album.

Beat that, you Big Thieves people!

― breastcrawl, 6. februar 2020 22:48 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is wrong. Scorpion Kings is by DJ Maphorisa & Kabza De Small, whereas Return of the Scorpion Kings is by Kabza De Small & DJ Maphorisa

Obviously that is a joke, but it is slightly annoying they are not grouped together in my Apple Music library

You are absolutely right tho, Fred - I was this close to raising the same issue with the Singing Nolans: one album by was by “The Nolan Sisters”, the other by “The Nolans” for godsake.

What went wrong between you and the Scorpion Kings tho? Did you vote-split both albums outside your ballot? I had you down as one of my fellow voters.

A couple examples of artists releasing multiple great albums in one year:

Lucette Bourdin in 2009:
Silver Moon
Radiant Stars
Golden Sun
Under Currents

Uwe Schmidt/Atom Heart in 1994:
Orange [Monochrome Stills]
A.D.
Softcore
Morphogenetic Fields
Dots
Flextone
Halograms

Both of them actually released even more albums in those years, but the ones I listed are the best.

x-post: I just didn't really rate them as albums, I think. Overlong, a bit samey. Didn't vote for Sha Sha either, though it's hardly overlong. But did put Lorch at seven on my track ballot.

Or rather, I just listened to a lot of albums this year, and there's only 25 spots on an album ballot. Feel like I left off a lot of incredible jazz as well.

Coltrane 1961 - Africa/Brass, My Favorite Things

guys, how could we forget Use Your Illusion 2 and whatever the other one was called?

Neil Young - On the Beach, Tonight's the Night
and then Tonight's the Night, Zuma

and Comes a Time, Rust Never Sleeps

On the Beach and Tonights the Night were released 11 months apart, but in different years

oh, my bad. but i reckon Live Rust and Rust Never Sleeps fits the criteria.

xp to Fred: that’s fair, I guess. (I wouldn’t call the Sha Sha “samey” tho, if that’s what you were implying).

Oh no, that one really went places over a pretty short runtime :)

Frank Sinatra released 2 or more great albums every year from 1957 to 1962 except 1960. It would be hard to choose between

1957: Close to You; a Swinging' Affair!; Where are you?
1958: Come Fly with Me; Frank Sinatra sings for Only the Lonely

Peggy Lee was doing the same thing during the same period. My pick would be

1958: Jump for Joy; Things are Swingin'; Sea Shells

Gentle Giant - Three Friends & Octopus, both released in 1972

1973 Waylon Jennings- Lonesome On'ry & Mean/ Honky Tonk Heroes

Blondie - Plastic Letters and Parallel Lines in 1978

Just to raise the four album per year record of Fela Kuti 1975. Frank Zappa 1979:

- Sleep Dirt
- Sheik Yerbouti
- Orchestral Favourites
- Joe's Garage Act I
- Joe's Garage Acts II & III

Sault and Moses Sumney should be on here

I'm sure John Zorn has released 25 or so decent albums in a year at some point

A couple of those Zappa ones were recorded years earlier though and then held up by some sort of legal dispute? Notwithstanding the fact that it's Frank Zappa so none of the individual albums are that great.

was going to say '94 Pete Namlook/FAX crew etc, but of course Tuomas beat me to it with his Atom suggestion.

I think Gucci Mane is not really highly regarded on ILM (at least his recent output) but he did it a few times over the last few years imo (2019, 2017, 2016).

Sault, otm.

Sault - 5 + 7
Tom Waits - Blood Money + Alice

Kabza de Small’s tally so far this year (there were four last year, see upthread):

February: Scorpion Kings Live (with DJ Maphorisa) (note: it’s a studio album)

April: Pretty Girls Love Amapiano, Vol. 2

April: Once Upon a Time in Lockdown (with DJ Maphorisa)

June: I Am The King Of Amapiano: Sweet & Dust

These are long-ass albums, they are a lot to take in, people might even say (and have said, on this thread) they can get a bit samey, but it’s quality stuff and there’s plenty of gold* as well as new and exciting directions explored on all of them.

*including song-of-the-year-so-far “Emcimbini” on February’s offering

mount eerie - clear moon / ocean roar (2012)

Billy Childish has done this several times, in terms of actual numbers of albums it looks like he was busiest in 1987 with 7/8 actual albums not including live and comps, but not sure they were all actually good (they definitely weren't all actually good)

I do rate these though:

1984
Milkshakes - Nothing Can Stop These Men
Milkshakes - They Came, They Saw, They Conquered
Milkshakes - Thee Knights of Trashe

1986
Thee Mighty Caesars - Acropolis Now
The Delmonas - Delmonas 5

1990
Thee Headcoats - Beach Bums Must Die
Thee Headcoats - Heavens To Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats (Already)

1994
Thee Headcoats - Conundrum
Thee Headcoatees - Ballad Of The Insolent Pup

1996
Thee Headcoats - In Tweed We Trust
Thee Headcoats - Knights of the Baskervilles

(warning - do not listen if you hate garage rock/punk)

A couple of those Zappa ones were recorded years earlier though and then held up by some sort of legal dispute? Notwithstanding the fact that it's Frank Zappa so none of the individual albums are that great.

as always with Zappa the sum total of good stuff on those albums is pretty impressive, especially since most of those are doubles

thinking we could call this the Kabzappa Phenomenon

Sault

― change display name (Jordan), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 7:25 AM

Sault, otm.

― Gerneten-flüken cake (jed_), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 7:48 AM

Sault - 5 + 7

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 8:23 AM

because it bears repeating.

hell, add the new one and that's three in just over a year.

was going to say '94 Pete Namlook/FAX crew etc, but of course Tuomas beat me to it with his Atom suggestion.

Let us not forget Elvis Costello's 1986: King of America / Blood and Chocolate

The Doors 1967: The Doors and Strange Days

Heldon, 1975: Allez Téia / It's Always Rock and Roll

(the latter is a double LP)

Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures and Conquistador! were both released in 1966, at least according to Wikipedia.

If you count each disc that makes up the Cecil Taylor In Berlin ‘88 box as an individual release — which is how they were most widely available, as the box sold out quickly — then it’s around seven or eight utterly classic records of his all released in 1989.

Damn how has this thread gone on for so long without any mention for Iggy Pop in 1977:

The Idiot
Lust for Life
Kill City EP

Low / Heroes

... and The Idiot / Lust for Life, all '77.

― (includes digression on farting) (Tom D.), Thursday, 6 February 2020 21:48 (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Amon Duul II, 1972: Carnival in Babylon and Wolf City
Alice Coltrane, 1971: Journey Into Satchidananda and Universal Consciousness

The Idiot would have been a 1976 release if not for Bowie holding it up

Yeah, I think Atom Heart's record of 7 great albums in 1994 (amongst the 10+ albums he made that year) is almost unbeatable, at least in electronic music.

Underworld from '93-'94 might have that topped in terms of sheer amount of great music - the 5 CD dubnobass reissue doesn't even cover everything

Xxpost: my bad I searched iggy pop with no results. Still, no mention of KILL CITY which is magnificent.

Underworld from '93-'94 might have that topped in terms of sheer amount of great music

For those not familiar, they only released one formal album in this time, but breaking down the output of the new lineup of the band in their early years:

warming up in 1992: a neat CDs-worth of 12"s (79 minutes), if you leave out one track they put on the album the next year.
- PLUS 2 CDs worth of remixes for other artists (1 hr 45)

1993: a tidy 48-minute LPsworth of four songs, on 2 12"s. (Two remixes of one of 'em could take up 13 minutes on a CD reissue.)
- PLUS 3 CDs worth of remixes for other artists, nearly all over ten minutes each (3 hr 10) {one of these is from 1994 but let's compile them together}

1994, barely: a real actual 72-minute CD-length double album, released three weeks into the year
and 2 CDs worth (2 hr 20) of B-sides - up to 20 minutes long - and a couple of self-remixes, almost all probably also recorded in 1993

- the 5 CD dubnobass reissue doesn't even cover everything

Across this and a couple of other archival projects c. 2014, they also released over two and a half hours (3 CDs worth) of demos recorded 1991-93.

Well, if non-album tracks, tracks made for other people and even unreleased tracks count, then surely Prince outranks most people in this thread? The 1999 box set alone has 4 CDs worth of B-sides and unreleased songs from the same era the album was made, and it doesn't even include stuff he wrote, produced and mostly played the instruments for that was released by other acts, such as The Time and Vanity 6,

Underworld doesn't actually count, I was just annotating, but albums Prince made under other names totally does imo

I think for me the current champion is Sault with '5' and '7' during 2019 (+ 'Untitled' within 13 total months).

(Reading after posting--very happy to see others had the same thought re: Sault.)

holy shit, the two towering pinnacles of my Magnetic Fields binge (The Charm Of The Highway Strip and Holiday) came out within 6 months of each other in 1994!

The close release dates of the two albums meant that some magazines reviewed the albums together, which annoyed Merritt.[7] It has also been speculated that this would have meant consumers would buy one of the two albums, but not both.[7]