ILM's Top 77 Albums of 2022 - 21st Anniversary Edition

and i was responding in turn to the slightly patronising 'yeah imago thinks everything he likes is soooo complex but can it even 11/16' cmon lol

You bring it on yourself (or at least bring it out of me, lol). For me, digging into that very unusual time signature for a whole track and really squeezing all the juice out of it, while doing it in this very smooth way that can almost pass unnoticed (in comparison to say, the Horse Lords record which screams POLYRHYTHMS at you, and I like that too), is much more sophisticated than attention deficit-style constant changes. People like what they like of course, but yeah you did come off as a bit dismissive.

xp

the guitar solo on "the know untitled" is: "relaxing," "calming," "mindblowing," "spectacular"

i guess 'sophistication' is the alchemy by which the relaxing becomes the mindblowing and despite posting here for 17 years i haven't really quite gotten it yet. more Steely Dan required

going to use this opportunity to ask whether anyone has any idea what time signature is used on "I Am Damo Suzuki" as the internet seems to have no answer to this.

no i do get why this MM album is an interesting artistic move. rather than letting it rip in an improvisatory and sonically open-ended setting, these are attempts at control and composition and that is ofc valuable; quite a few of them seem to work rather well. it is ofc my own prejudice in favour of sonic extravagance that sees me hark back to the 'wilder' stuff he did before, but as a fan of eloquent composition i'm equally happy to hear jazz that works within tighter bounds. that comet is coming album was a good example of something that worked within simple-ish (although still discursive) song-structures but had the sonic oomph i'm after. helped that it was basically a techno album lol

what are you talking about? mcraven was hardly a free jazz guy and his work process was always assembling loops from session and constructing records going back to in the moment. i feel like you just make shit up sometimes.

it seems like two different parts in 4/4 that don't quite sync up with each other

xp

but there is an underlying rhythm behind both of them, somewhere, I can feel it

I mean both drums and the guitar parts

i think it's in 4/4 with the occasional bar in 3 thrown in

maybe for the drums - but also bear in mind the guitar parts, they sound completely out of sync but there is some sort of underlying rhythm behind both.

what are you talking about? mcraven was hardly a free jazz guy and his work process was always assembling loops from session and constructing records going back to in the moment. i feel like you just make shit up sometimes.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 8 February 2023 16:50 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i get that 'universal beings' was a studio creation too but it definitely feels much looser (and at times noisier) than the new one, to me! forgive me if they are made exactly the same way

i mean this has a different feel, but i think that's the mark of a great artist, a lot of his albums have different a different character to a degree but they all feel very of a piece (imo)

The drums are in 4/4, the guitar is sometimes synced up in a straightforward 4/4 phrase and sometimes phasing or off.. if it was a more recent album I'd guess it was done on a computer or a sampler, since way easier to chop an odd loop or slide things around than play it. Maybe just an intentionally odd use of a delay or misaligned tape?

xp I know there's a thread for asking what time signature something is but I can't find it

Yeah MM's whole thing is chopping up pieces of live recordings and studio sessions to make his records, they've always been a blend of live & constructed. Some were definitely more lo-fi for sure.

off to start a new poll: cutest time signature

i'm voting 3/4 because awwwwwwww look how funny he walks but he's still able to do it!! great job, friend!

On "Damo Suzuki" I think what's happening is that the drum pattern is off a half-beat from the bass and guitar line. They're all in 4/4 but out of sync. But also the guitar and bass wander around a lot, not in a time signature way but in a "not always on the beat" way.

If you get the chance to see MM live, you may see him in a noisier, freer mode (you also may not). When I saw him last summer, I was a bit surprised that his band opened with an AACM "little instruments" style free improv — that might've been mostly down to the presence of Junius Paul, who iirc is an active AACM member, but as ums said it's testament to his impressive range, skill, and sensitivity as an artist & collaborator. Anyway, very little of what they played that night sounded much like any of the albums.

This discussion prompted me to listen to In These Times on headphones yesterday for the first time in a while — in partial defense of imago I do think it's easy to slip into thinking of this extremely pretty album as background music, and I'd gotten into the habit of playing it primarily during dinner with friends — and there were details in the mix I hadn't noticed before. The soft beauty of the album is built out of intricate materials

Hadn't thought of this before, but the difference between the titles In the Moment and In These Times strikes me as significant for the differing approaches taken, even merely at the banal level of how long he worked on the latter

tipsy mothra, that's how I hear it as well

xxp

For whatever it’s worth, the new one felt a lot more inviting to me than Universal Beings did - but maybe I’ve changed.

in these times he definitely leans more into orchestration, the strings and harp, sort of david axelrod vibes that make it feel unique in his catalog

If you get the chance to see MM live, you may see him in a noisier, freer mode (you also may not). When I saw him last summer, I was a bit surprised that his band opened with an AACM "little instruments" style free improv

interesting, the one time i saw him was a the walker art center and he was playing this composed piece that spliced in spoken word/interviews from civil rights activists with a sort of meditative art film presentation that had been created for the show, i think this might have been a one-off performance though

When I saw him last it was a trio with Junius Paul and a guitarist, tons of polyrhythmic drumming and soloing. Missed him with a larger group (at a larger venue) last time but I heard it was fantastic and intense.

ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2022: 17th Anniversary Edition

slowly working my way through the spotify list.

so far

love and knew it

real lies
big thief
the soft pink truth
makaya mccraven

love it and didn't know it before

sudan archives
junior boys (this is not what i thought they were like, i guess i thought they were like basement jaxx or something?)
dawn richards & spencer zahn

like it
rosalia
SZA
beyonce
the beths (i think future me hates me is always gonna be "the one" for me)

not for me

charlotte adigery & bolis pupal

The latest Junior Boys album is a bit of a shift for them, they were more moody synth-pop before (so never really like Basement Jaxx)

may have confused junior boys with vague memories of junior senior

i should’ve voted for the asake album

may have confused junior boys with vague memories of junior senior

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, February 15, 2023 9:20 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha i think that's it

I think junior boys may be junior senior's children?

no that's junior senior jr.

I was today years old when I learned that Senior co-wrote and co-produced Born This Way...

if senior was born this way, does that mean that junior was born that way too?

(sorry, we’re having a bit of a lull on the tracks rollout thread)

I just learned that a month or so ago!

their sound is clearly junior boys' own thing