ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2021

Nala Sinephro made it! Had no expectations of that one placing, but I'm stoked others recognize how gorgeous and well produced it is. Definitely play that one on your best system/cans sometime

The Floating Points record is one where conceptually it should have been one of my favorites, but it just left me empty and it didn't even make my ballot. I'm sure it makes top 5 though...

table/imago otm

do think the need to state "why would you listen to female-fronted pop music when you could listen instead to this guy farting into a tuba for 4 hours" is an impulse worth interrogating

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, February 11, 2022 1:52 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

You tell that cloud!

https://i.imgur.com/ceZ1atL.jpg
5. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
559 points / 17 votes / 1 #1 vote
Video from the album: “Secrets (Your Fire)”
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=110343

Mercurial World the only album on this list i truly love

maybe i just don't like music anymore

Honestly, in the context of what's to come, too low. I wasn't completely impressed with the whole, but I was VERY impressed with parts. I think they have greater in store. They're a sort of music I expect and demand ILM to champion.

can't believe birthday ass made top 4

This list has been 50% 50 year old rockers and 50% instrumental introversion and some posters still have the gall to complain about a few pop albums showing up.

No way Floating Points is in the top 5, although from the discussion on the album thread there would be riots.

Lots of alternative rock music today, huh.

Love this album, also my personal #5.

I'm think we might need a goon-style rolling thread where me/table/imago/Raymond can just talk about noise/free improv/sound art/field recordings without having to constantly butt our heads against the Jepsen Actuallys

I swear every pop singer sounds exactly the same nowadays (well, the men all sound alike and the women all sound alike), don't know how ppl aren't sick of it by now *shakes fist at cloud*

https://i.imgur.com/kbjLYK7.jpg
4. Cleo Sol - Mother
587 points / 20 votes
Song from the album: “Promises”
Sault - What's the story?

And there's always a build up to a I'M STILL SINGING THE SAME WAY BUT NOW I'M LOUDER chorus

Jepsen rocks! Magdalena Bay are v much in that upbeat lineage, albeit with a few bells and whistles. The ubiquitous...vibes are more what I object to; none of these artists are bad on their own but together they create a Vibe don't they

Inflo Industries are thoroughly plugged into said Vibe

do think the need to state "why would you listen to female-fronted pop music when you could listen instead to this guy farting into a tuba for 4 hours" is an impulse worth interrogating

― castanuts (DJP)

I like female-fronted pop music but I want to heard this guy farting into a tuba album, please.

After having very few votes place the first few days, I voted for a lot of today, including what I'm assuming are the top 3...Arooj, Floating Points, Low. Cleo Sol was on my long list and has grown on me a lot.

Guess I'm going to have to revisit that Wolf Alice album!

But yeah, the lack of variety within pop (and only secondarily, lack of variety of genre and lack of interest in music that decidedly WILL wake the baby) is as ever the issue, not the fact of pop, which is ILM's primary Cause after all

I'm think we might need a goon-style rolling thread where me/table/imago/Raymond can just talk about noise/free improv/sound art/field recordings without having to constantly butt our heads against the Jepsen Actuallys

― Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note I'm (Whiney G. Weingarten)

You mean something like Rolling weird music // time travel // unclassifiable 2021 ?

the consensus picks go to the top that's just math ???

glad to see Cleo here after all!

cleo sol album brings "vibes" the same way that riperton's come into my garden does. it's a cohesive collection of beautifully sung and performed songs.

This is basically what Billie Eilish/Olivia Rodrigo sound like to me

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/6206b40052985-ilx-poll-winners-2021.php

that might just be your tinnitus

Soft Sounds From Another Planet did place in our 2017 list Indexed, but much lower down. In the 40s I think?

― kitchen person, Friday, February 11, 2022 12:22 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah cool. Still like that one as an album more than Jubilee. Psychopomp is dream pop ear candy, too.

I get the same vibe from Cleo Sol that I do from Riperton, and, sure, I have moments when they bore me despite liking their albums (I top twentied Sol).

I liked the Wolf Alice album because it functioned as a sampler of most alt-rock styles since 1992.

After having very few votes place the first few days, I voted for a lot of today, including what I'm assuming are the top 3...Arooj, Floating Points, Low. Cleo Sol was on my long list and has grown on me a lot.

Guess I'm going to have to revisit that Wolf Alice album!

― Indexed

Two of those are correct, the other is Ms. Musgraves

https://i.imgur.com/9tsvSaZ.jpg
3. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra ‎ - Promises
592 points / 18 votes / 1 #1 vote
Fan Video from the album: “Movement 6”
Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders and London Symphony Orchestra - Promises (2021)

I'm amazed Cleo Sol landed so high, I thought it was quite a drop off from her last one

whaaaat no Arooj? Come to think of it i was surprised how few track votes she got, on the spreadsheet (wasn't in top 77)

Oh maffew.

I also liked Cleo Sol’s previous one a whole lot better, but this one is perfectly good as it is. Wont complain at the high placement, really enjoyed this one for a couple of months.

sadly mirroring the Obama situation where he was apparently all about her in the summer but a fake friend at year's end

https://i.imgur.com/U5DPTwu.jpg
2. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
639 points / 18 votes / 2 #1 votes
Live from Joe’s Pub with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, 2019
Arooj Aftab

:tears of joy:

what a run. thanks pollrunners!

And of course to surprise of absolutely noone in the board:

https://i.imgur.com/ZnHq8zv.jpg
1. Low - HEY WHAT
1114 points / 30 votes / 5 #1 votes
Video from the album: “Disappearing”
Too LOW: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low - RESULTS
Do You Know How to POLLtz?: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low

they sort of deserve it this time

Deserving winner. Thanks to everyone running the poll.

the chvrches record was instrumental in me realizing i'm a woman, so, like how the deafheaven record is impossible to extract from how depressed i was last august, it is impossible for me to separate screen violence from that realization. also horror movie tropes are very smartly employed as metaphors throughout the record, there was no way i wasn't going to like a record that did that. regardless: synth-pop revival isn't free jazz or harsh noise i guess but i always thought chvrches provided a very original vision of it, always a little faster and crisper than it should be, like it was being blinked out by an overclocked processor, and the melodies never recalled anything of '80s vintage for me, they were definitely written by someone who fucking loves jimmy eat world and other early '00s emo. surprisingly they are the only band i can think of who spliced these two things together. and instead of any contemporaneous synth-pop act they might be associated with, they remind me most of garbage, who also made pop-rock that sounded as if it had been fed through something and come out almost unrecognizable and partially-to-totally danceable on the other end

so if screen violence is their best album, which i think it is, it's because they further darkened and fragmented their sound by incorporating goth pop guitars, breakbeats, and a total confidence in these choices that contrasts with the pools of anxiety the lyrics keep melting into, that it provides indelible hooks to latch onto even as it clings to the cliff's-edge of sanity, even as it is surrounded by threats and double-standards that do not abate but reinforce themselves and gradually suffocate the atmosphere, like something determined to remain itself no matter what it has to survive

it's also totally hypocritical to love the sayonara wild hearts soundtrack and not give chvrches the time of day, imago

[FULL RESULTS]

1. Low - HEY WHAT
2. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince
3. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra ‎ - Promises
4. Cleo Sol - Mother
5. Magdalena Bay - Mercurial World
6. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
7. CHVRCHES - Screen Violence
8. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
9. Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
10. Tinashe - 333
11. L'Rain - Fatigue
12. Dawn Richard - Second Line
13. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour
14. Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
15. Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime
16. Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
17.(TIE) Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
17.(TIE) Sault - Nine
19. Grouper - Shade
20. Koreless - Agor
21. Tirzah - Colourgrade
22. Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2
23. Men I Trust - Untourable Album
24. Mr Twin Sister - Al Mundo Azul
25. Erika de Casier - Sensational
26. Sons of Kemet - Black to the Future
27. Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
28. CFCF - Memoryland
29.(TIE) Lil Ugly Mane - Volcanic Bird Enemy and the Voiced Concern
29.(TIE) The Armed - Ultrapop
31. Snail Mail - Valentine
32. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
33. Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki
34. The Bug - Fire
35. Wau Wau Collectif - Yaral Sa Doom
36. The Weather Station - Ignorance
37. Jane Weaver - Flock
38. HTRK - Rhinestones
39.(TIE) Lingua Ignota - SINNER GET READY
39.(TIE) Wild Up - Julius Eastman Vol.1: Femenine
41. Rochelle Jordan - Play With the Changes
42. Tyler, the Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
43. Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
44. Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall - Marfa Tapes
45. Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective - Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế
46. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales
47. aya - im hole
48. Insides - Soft Bonds
49. Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club
50. Flock of Dimes - Head of Roses
51. Nite Jewel - No Sun
52. Bicep - Isles
53. Yu Su - Yellow River Blue
54. Joy Orbison - still slipping, vol 1
55. Mogwai - As The Love Continues
56. Loraine James - Reflection
57. Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark
58. Natural Information Society & Evan Parker - descension (Out of Our Constrictions)
59. Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble - NOW
60. Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying To Tell You
61. Mach-Hommy - Pray for Haiti
62. Sarah Davachi - Antiphonals
63. Howie Lee - Birdy Island
64. Black Midi - Cavalcade
65. Vijay Iyer Trio - Uneasy
66. Altın Gün - Yol
67. Kabza de Small, DJ Maphorisa & Tresor - Rumble in the Jungle
68. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!
69. Can - Live in Stuttgart 1975
70. Vanishing Twin - Ookii Gekkou
71. Eris Drew - Quivering in Time
72. Emeka Ogboh - Beyond the Yellow Haze
73. Spellling - The Turning Wheel
74. Hayley Williams - Flowers for Vases / Descansos
75. Doja Cat - Planet Her
76. Manchester Orchestra - The Million Masks of God
77. Various Artists ‎ - Heisei No Oto- Japanese Left-Field Pop From The CD Age, 1989-1996

FULL RESULTS IMG WITH STATS

https://imgur.com/a/UozxiGg

Wow I stand corrected re: Floating Points!

in isolation I'm sure I'll enjoy Chvrches and I'll be testing that very soon :)

good post Brad

(I just thought that even the target audience for ambient jazz on ILM was divided on the FP/Pharoah Sanders record)