thread to dis hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about

let's keep it in here, folks.

Jlin - if I wanted to hear a quantized sample of a CD skipping, I'd listen to an Oval CD from 1999

Caretaker - this is just a bunch of thrift store record samples

Oh yay I can post here AND in 'vent your bullshit'! Maybe the latter can be non-2017-specific though

yes this is just to keep your attention during the EOY poll, submitted with love

Bjork - I found this slow, gloomy, and unengaging. her mix that she did for Mixmag (?) was great, though.

*warms up FPing finger*

happy to help!

this is a safe space

;-)

Caretaker - this is just a bunch of thrift store record samples

otm, I've never understood the hype.

Angel olsens new one gets seriously dire in the second half. Love her but hate to say it's a bummer record

i'll just get this out of the way: most of the 2017 music is bad

Caretaker's not hyped though. It's got a steady following, but that's something else iirc.

Anyway I can't get enough of it.

no defences of albums itt imo

I've said this elsewhere I'm sure but the Julien Baker love-in is an album late; the new one is flat and mostly a disappointment

Where's the fun in that? xp

OK fine

but no holds barred. except like actual bigotry

KING KRULE is kind of boring.

oh yeah I can't take his voice for a second

Not as boring as The National though

That Big Thief album is boring as well. A charisma vacuum.

:o you're dead to me

I do like the Big Thief album a lot :(

LCD Soundsystem should be banned on the basis of that atrocious album cover alone. The music stinks, is completely irrelevant up to the point of self-charicture, and seeing critics hailing this has-been baffles me.

*caricature

thoroughly agree with every dis so far btw*. sleeve ur emperor palpatine

*not heard the bjork or big thief yet

Guided By Voices - the songs are twice as long and half as good (tbh I dunno how hyped this really was, but let's open the thread up to all contenders regardless of hype level/EOY standings)

I tried listening to the War on Drugs album once and I had to check the album wasn't starting over at some point. Still can't remember any of the songs in there.

@Moka, same here. It's drab.

Lorde is the new Carly Rae Jepsen - "pop" music that non-professionals spit out after a single taste, but which critics will continue to ride for forever.

Xp that is sort of the point with WoD - it's aural valium for the inhibited and the terminally nostalgic.

Me included.

Sounds like WoD do The Caretaker better than The Caretaker does!

I can't really diss it because I don't hate it at all but Yaeji seems overrated as hell to me. There's just not much going on musically and lyrically... every song seems she runs out of ideas and she just resorts to repeating words in the same monotonic voice.

Again, I don't hate it but I don't see what's so special about it either or why she's making it into so many EOY best songs lists.

Ok I'm done taking those out of my chest... I think... those are the ones frustrating me about their roaring approval.

Well, those an Bodak Yellow heh

i rate the yaeji EPs (2 isn't as good imo) but found it pretty easy to get burned out on her stuff. Not much replay value as there's not a whole lot of depth, ya

laurel halo album was a disappointment for me, way too esoteric and weird for weird sake

Xxp Kirby has a concept, though. Granduciel is walking in socks over cold coals.

I still don't really get what everyone liked so much about Black Beatles. I don't hate it, just does nothing much for me.

I think this is the first Laurel Halo album I like mainly on the strength of Moontalk alone but yes... it's way too dependent on its own quirks and weirdness.

moontalk is an amazing song! yeah

moka check out the king felix stuff if you haven't heard it, "spring" by king felix and her halo album "king felix"

I did not know about that project. Listening to spring now and it sounds amazing! Thanks for the recommendation.

:) sweet

the Fever Ray album was really disappointing to me

why? show your work :)

Sleaford Mods - this guy used to sound angry, now he just sounds bored (I do like most of the previous records)

Fever Ray was also so-so for me. I like the knife and the first fever ray album a lot, so I thought for sure this would be one of my favorite albums of the year but alas it ended being one of the most dissapointing ones for me. It’s just so hard to sit through... even harder than ‘shaking the habitual’ and that’s saying something.

I can get past the hamfisted lyrics (either way lyrics has never been her strong point), but the textures and production are sort of uninteresting too, the middle of the album is specially boring or annoying and contains some of her worst songs ever (“this country” really wtf is up with that).

I don’t know... I guess it’s just alright in small doses but I don’t want ‘just alright’ from her.

Ok maybe the production isn’t uninteresting... but it’s too harsh and irritating more often than not. I get that maybe that was her intent with this particular album but I’m not a masochist, sorry.

Yeah, my love for the first Fever Ray album is immense, this one is not bAd exactly, just very disappointing

yeah I agree with all of that Moka

the production mostly feels like lesser retreads of Silent Shout and the Fever Ray s/t, and the songwriting lacks the memorable melodies. the lyrics are a step down too - Silent Shout especially could be quite evocative but they're more hamfisted here and the BDSM subject matter of some of it is completely uninteresting to me

Sleaford Mods - this guy used to sound angry, now he just sounds bored (I do like most of the previous records)

heh this = lack of money > money

King Krule was the overrated hype of the year for me. Could barely get through that mess 3 times.

So I will probably dig his next record :P

Fever ray album is fucking great, just took time to grow on me. I mean it's not that different texturally from
The debut it's just more hyper kinetic arrangement wise. Give it some time, mustn't hurry

Lyrics aren't her strong point?? When I grow up and seven would put that theory to the test, memorable imo

heh this = lack of money > money

think dude had a pretty decent office job for a fair while before the band blew up so I'm not sure this is a big factor. latest album hasn't really landed for me like the previous ones though, could be a law of diminishing returns thing but I had (have) no issue with their complete lack of progression so idk

You’re right I take it back, heartbeats alone is one of the few sweet songs they have and it has some beautiful lines in there. The debut also has some stunning imagery... I’m just way too frustrated with this album.

moka, all good bud :)

i found the album hard to parse for quite a while tbh

This thread is tonic

Charly bliss - musical equivalent of doing lines of pixie stix

(Sandy) Alex g - i guess at a certain point all music / art will become a sort of lightly branded tabula rasa content for us to project upon

'Reclaims the avant-garde' is probably a worse line than anything in that 'overpraise' thread. It's nearly time for my hitpiece

Oh yea, the avant-garde has been reclaimed by some Berklee kid with an expensive synth set-up, a cloying lyrical sensibility and no songwriting skill to speak of! But it all sounds so burbly. Oo goo this be thee musick of thee spheres!

I could and will go on

man, fuck you

TBH I fully encourage him to keep all this annoying shit in here this year.

I've had a bad day, so fuck you

1. The Gorgeous
2. Sixth Album
3. From California
4. Landscapist Kaitlyn
5. Aurelia
6. Smith Reclaims The Avant-Garde
7. From Noiseniks
8. Dronesters, Moaners, Skronkers, Mathletes
9. And Art-Punks
10. Challenging
11. But Beautiful
12. Pastoral
13. But Hyperactive

this is a thread for slagging off and venting. slag off anything. slag off Richard Dawson. I won't care. but I'm not holding back here

you're engaging with both a record and with a fellow ilxor's writing in a totally disingenuous, obnoxious, shitty way just to tell your "truths" or whatever so like, fuck you, still

matt otm though

there are ways to slag off and vent without being a total shithead imo

i love music, the board for people who love music

as requested: sacred paws is just insipid tropical good-vibesy nothingcore imo, but it's no big deal really. if absolutely everyone loved it then I'd be more vituperative but they're a minor concern just doing what they're doing and that can remain someone else's business

imago otm

LOL @ hurt butts itt

Jlin - if I wanted to hear a quantized sample of a CD skipping, I'd listen to an Oval CD from 1999

what if you wanted to hear CDs skipping with heavy 808 bass beneath? oval has non 808 bass

also: king krule rools, u all drool

I know this is going to make me unpopular but I'm just gonna say it, I don't think Yes needed to release another live album in 2017

oh no u

just don't say it at late at night in the U.S.

i'll just get this out of the way: most of the 2017 music is bad

― brimstead, Friday, December 15, 2017 3:58 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel this way too? idk. there is little that i feel excited about or drawn to when i go through most 2017 lists

i totally agree w/r/t almost everything that isn't a house 12" or a reissue of some sort

but i think that's down to the age of the listener (toll of 24 years of active music hipsterism) rather than the quality of the music

just don't say it at late at night in the U.S.

I don't really feel that way late at night for whatever reason

Jlin - one track limit with her stuff, just is way too maddening and jarring - def of acquired taste

that was just a tautology, most music from every year is bad

but

i totally agree w/r/t almost everything that isn't a house 12" or a reissue of some sort

yeah same here

vote gabor lazar this year for your "sounds like cd skipping" needs

i like literally dozens of records that came out this year but somehow i still wind up listening to nothing but '70s music all the time

at some point i'll stop pretending but not until i run out of disk space

Wow @ people shitting on Jlin. I thought Black Origami was way more interesting/fun than Dark Energy

my assumption is that they are new to footwork in general and don't really *get it* yet

Loved the final ;_; DJ Rashad album but this has been a bit arid for my tastes. Might return to it

"arid" is a good way to put it

i definitely didn't get it till i saw her live at Day For Night, experiencing it in a physical space really made me engage with the album on physical terms instead of approaching it conceptually like i had been. it's tougher to crack than Rashad for sure, mostly because Rashad consciously aimed to create a "pop"-ish version of footwork and Jlin has absolutely no interest in that from what i can tell.

I think my only problem with Jlin is how people write about it, "futuristic sound design" comes up a lot. To my ears her tracks are these very dense, pointillistic arrangements of one-shot samples that haven't been altered much, they sound like sample packs. And that's very 'footwork', it's fine. Her main innovation imo is doubling down on the 12/8 feel that has been creeping into footwork, and turning it into this West African polyrhythmic thing.

I try not to post too much about music I don't like, cos this is I Love Music after all, and tbh I haven't heard that much 2017 music that I don't like apart from some generic hardcore/punk records that nobody here (save maybe DJ Mencap) listens to anyway. BUT! I can say I heard a King Krule single and thought it was shit! Participation!

Jordan, i definitely get that and i think it's mostly people mistaking density for innovation. i'm more interested in the cultural implications of, like you said, her blend of footwork with west african polyrhythmic stuff than i am in the ~experimentalness~ of it all.

xp i agree w the big main point of what you're saying jordan but 1) iirc jlin made her own samples for black origami and 2) it isn't just about the individual samples but also the mixing, mastering, etc. on a big-ass system jlin's tracks sound heavy and massive in a way that old footwork tracks don't

I buy that, even seeing a live clip from awhile back gave that sense.

iirc jlin made her own samples for black origami

I still don't buy this, although I guess it depends on the definition of what makes a sample your own. And I'm mostly talking about the percussion anyway. It's ok, not everyone has to record their own samples. I am curious to hear that dance score that she did, it would be cool to hear what a Jlin track that's not 160bpm in 12/8 sounds like.

Late great , that assumption is wrong in my case

duly noted

fwiw ppl in chicago dont really see her stuff as 'footwork' any more, its def more of a hybridization thing

(i quite like it)

I adore Jlin and the album will be very very high on my list (fuck, it might even win it), but I kind of agree with people that it's not that "futuristic" or "experimental". The techniques and stylisation aren't super new, they just sound fucking awesome.

I probably should stay away from this thread, though, b/c it'll just bum me out.

xp deej is footwork still a going concern in chicago? or are the kids onto some new trend?

its fallen off as a super popular thing basically as rap music started to rise, but there are def people who still hold onto it & do events at schools and shit like that

seem to remember that 'experimental' was suggested by jlin herself as an alternative to 'footwork', but if neither of those are any good then what the heck do you call this music? two things i'd say to the haterz tho: spotify + earbuds or whatever don't really do justice to this record, and also it's the last songs on the album that are the real bangers imo, especially 1%: "you're all going to die here"

oh fuck i screwed up the quote already

1% is def placing well on my tracks ballot

it would be cool to hear what a Jlin track that's not 160bpm in 12/8 sounds like.

she has several tracks that are around 120bpm.

all the stuff i really hate is so niche it feels too mean to shit on it. but there's some real stinkers out there getting undeserved praise

nah, you should go all friedrich niche and denounce these recondite idols

they don't deserve the esteem of upwards of ten blogs!

srsly

bring it on

ogmor bile is amongst the more restoratively potent on ilx atm

it's actually extremely overrated and superficial

superficiality of bile is one of its more refined characteristics. a connoisseur can really pick it out and appreciate it

anyhow until I am more reliably informed I am going to assume ogmor is being so crass as to inwardly impugn kasabian

vote gabor lazar this year for your "sounds like cd skipping" needs

― brimstead, Tuesday, January 9, 2018 12:19 PM (three days ago)

Isn't that like, all gabor lazar output? ...

so? vote for him, his stuff rules

i don't know anybody else besides mark fell who does that SSRI withdrawal brain zap sound that's like a deep brain massage

st vincent is so, so terrible now. and i liked her before, a bit

Yep

Good god, the Equiknoxx album is awful. I’m not sure of the last time I was so consistently annoyed by a record. Dancehall with all the reasons people like dancehall stripped out is not a promising concept to begin with but it surely doesn’t have to sound like an Ableton Live abandoned sketches folder.

Re: top 77 tracks

Poptimism needs to die, it's been going on for too long. Pop neutrality is the only reasonable attitude.

xp I like it. I like them. I like their productions with and without vocals. Colon Man is admittedly a bit less fun than Bird Sound Power. The albums work as DJ tools for me (to get an mv to work with) or as an avantgarde extension of dancehall that you can mix into other styles. Do people feel the same about dub music etc?

I didn't see that much outre poptimism in this year's tracks poll? much less than normal in fact seeing as Lex wasn't around to complain about the rock songs

What are nos. 1-4 then? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the term.

I've given up on even trying to like the stuff in the tracks polls

kind of agree - completely boilerplate efforts from CRJ, Selena Gomez (it's basically The Wire by Haim) and Charli XCX got rewarded (the Dua Lipa seemed to have a bit more going on). it was imo a disappointing ending to an otherwise good tracks poll. but otoh those were undeniably big hits from ilx-adjacent artists, so it would have been weird if they hadn't shown up high. i guess we just live with it

xp they're pop songs but this isn't uncommon for the tracks poll and the rest of the poll reflects a huge diversity. other than the CRJ track, I'm not fussed about those records but I don't believe people voted for them to take some sort of stand or prove a point. they voted for them because they liked the songs

nope wrong its gotta be "poptimism"

good grief

2018

Ugh. Those songs are pedestrian as fuck, definitely not top 5 material, especially in light of the quality stuff that made the poll. Raise your standards.

(I thought this was the right thread for this kind of real talk?)

i wouldn't have voted for those songs i liked if not for that damn poptimism forcing me to!

REAL TALK

I'll save my fatalism for the other discussions.

complaining about poptimism in 2018 is the ILM equivalent of moaning about hipsters with their dubstep and their skinny jeans and their ringtones. It's not like it doesn't exist exactly, but it's hardly a going concern and the argument was done to death at least ten years ago

Overexposure of formulaic shit with little to no musical content – it's all about the image – is a tragic problem in an age of unprecedented stylistic hybridity and variety that barely anyone takes advantage of.

image is good! image is silent!

xxp
idk DL, 2018 *may* just be the right time for a counter revolution. Many of the Poptimists are after all parents now. Aren't you supposed to rebel against them? Can't see this board as the fulcrum though, especially if your best argument is "it's formulaic". (I kind of like "does not contain enough music" as a potential hill on which to plant your banner though. A movement of Neo-Mozarts railing against the charts by shouting "not enough notes" would be fun to watch.)

hai ;)

like any true ideology poptimism is the shades you don't know yr wearing.

What about the 'poptimism reinforces conformity' argument? You simply ignored that one. There has never been as much music as there is now yet we favour discussing the same limited palette of sounds, vocal styles and structures over and over again – there's very little to differentiate ILM's top 4 tracks when set against the broader background of genres and even sub-genres the rest of the poll exhibits. Odd how we consistently return to the same two or three focal points even when offered unparalleled diversity. I've said this before, but I get the sense that the cultural discourse surrounding music is ultimately more interesting to people (perhaps especially ILMers) than the music itself, which is why pop rules supreme: it's prime fodder for the cultural studies paradigm. Beyond the surface politics of it, however, there's very little going on most of the time.

Just to preempt, I'm not advocating for a return to rockism, which is equally dumb, albeit for different reasons.

What I want is a real level playing field, i.e. true neutrality, wherein every single genre and – in a more utopian sense – artist is given a fair shake. We now have the tools for it, at least in theory.

In an ideal world, every ILM poll voter would listen to every nominated track and album, and judge them all along the same subjective lines. I mean, I *try* to do something approaching that myself. But in practice it's impossible and the Carly will always rise to the top, because Team Carly

We aspies will ever rail against it, but this is How It Is. We must simply look between the lines for scraps of unusual excellence. Did you like Akrakabo? If so, the poll did its job

that ultimately comes down to exposure which isn't really easy to solve, would be nice though. did listen to a lot of nominated tracks that were new to me but still ended up voting for CRJ because it's a very enjoyable pop song (if uninteresting but i've yet to grow tired of her)

i like 3/4 of the top 4 but do find them a bit underwhelming as a top 4. it's not hard to understand why they'd end up as the top 4 in a year like this without a few overwhelming board favourites like there usually are though

btw pomenitul, take heart: you are basically saying what I said for 5-10 years. your ILX learning curve will hopefully be steeper

i didn't listen to most of the 77 stuff because the images didn't grab me but i really liked the LOONA stuff even though i'm not that much into k-pop. the red velvet song disappointed me though. it wasn't nearly as good as the 77 song they had last year.

even though i didn't listen to it i liked the idea of this year's 77. the notion that people are out there really loving stuff i've never heard of. i like the globalist ethos as well. does sun-el musician get played on the radio in america? is "poptimism" a thing in 2018 or is it just a rebranding of "populism" without its toxic nativist associations, the idea of being able to listen to what people in south africa genuinely enjoy instead of konono no. 1 or whatever vanguardist stuff got embraced by fourth-worlders?

nah man keep it coming with the carly rae jepsen or whatever, i won't be listening but i like that you are. is she _interesting_? fuck if i know, but if she's not isn't that in the nature of polls? regression to the mean, the bottom reaches of any chart are going to be more interesting than the top.

Haha, for what it's worth I first stumbled on ILM in the early 2000s and kind of forgot about it after that, so the shift in hivemind opinion that took place during my absence may or may not make it harder to (re)adapt.

xp

pomenitul come hang out on the "Sun Ra by year" thread, fun stuff

Sure, I'll check it out. Can't remember the last time I listened to a full-length Sun Ra record (last one was probably Atlantis) but I always enjoyed what I heard, without ever being bowled over.

In an ideal world, every ILM poll voter would listen to every nominated track and album, and judge them all along the same subjective lines.

I pointedly didn't listen to a single one and voted on the basis of what I actually loved in 2017. If you have to cram for a poll you're doing it wrong.

I wouldn't say wrong, but I agree that different approaches are fine

If everyone voted on the basis of what they heard on a playlist in January 2018 it would be a complete misrepresentation of the board's taste last year.

well yes, but it raises the question of what the poll is for: is it "what did you vibe to in 2017" or "what was your favourite music released in 2017" - I favour the latter myself, but I see the poll as an amalgamation of the two approaches and honestly it's probably better off that way

pomenitul: "...the music itself..." < you are a disgrace to the nation of france with this shit

rushomancy: the idea of being able to listen to what people in south africa genuinely enjoy instead of konono no. 1 or whatever vanguardist stuff got embraced by fourth-worlders?

sounds like we're making great progress here

I'm not French. Also, hyperbole much?

Overexposure of formulaic shit with little to no musical content – it's all about the image – is a tragic problem in an age of unprecedented stylistic hybridity and variety that barely anyone takes advantage of.

― pomenitul, Monday, January 29, 2018 3:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you are Turrican and I claim my 5 quid

Just because the boundaries between aesthetics (text) and the sociopolitical (context) are porous, doesn't mean they're meaningless, btw. Outright dismissing 'the music itself' as an operative, useful notion to talk about music is kind of lazy tbh.

xp

If everyone voted on the basis of what they heard on a playlist in January 2018 it would be a complete misrepresentation of the board's taste last year.

― Matt DC

is that the goal of the 77? to snapshot an objectively accurate representation of the presumed "collective taste" of the message board? i question whether this is even possible. i'm not sure the 2017 music i've listened to can be meaningfully collectivized. i always took the 77 as a fun exercise wherein people who listen to a lot of music can list the music they like, obviously there's a collective element in that some people put a lot of work into promoting the music they like, but that collective element is a perpetually moving target. it doesn't stop at any point. god knows how many 2017 records i heard on random lists and loved and didn't get nominated because i didn't bother to mention them here or have the time to nom anything.

is it any different than any other list? people name records they like to try and persuade other people to listen to them. good enough!

Only a single person can have a vaguely similar, nonstandard opinion on ILM. Obviously.

xp

there's no distinction between them because that's how meaning works; the contexts which lend sound meaning are mostly other sounds. there will always be a context; neutrality is both a lie and another context

I can actively work towards suspending my own prejudices when approaching a musical piece I'm unfamiliar with. That I can never wholly succeed does not invalidate the process as a whole – quite the contrary.

bjork looks like a giant idiot with that vag on her forehead

so like, are we not allowed to say bad stuff about the stuff in the polls on the threads themselves now? it all happens here? I used to like it when the threads got clogged up with angry Deafheaven fans getting butthurt

I can actively work towards suspending my own prejudices when approaching a musical piece I'm unfamiliar with.

you can try to discount specific factors from influencing you, take the weight off certain superficial reactions and so on, but you need to positively build some sort of context in order to win yourself over to something. and of course people succeed in broadening out their understanding of what's going on and what it means all the time

I don't get why you assume I'm denying the role of context based on what I wrote upthread. Are you arguing that any proposition other than 'all is always contextual and nothing else' is a gross misunderstanding of context? If so, that strikes me as an exaggeration, not least because it denies things their singularity, i.e. their strangeness, alterity and difference.

I can't see music as singular given that it happens over time and is constantly changing, every repetition bearing an incrementally larger weight

strangeness, alterity and difference are all ways of framing an ignorance of context, a sense that there is a logic at work you haven't understood yet

Sure, but once again, that doesn't invalidate the singularity of a given piece of music. Yes, it fluctuates based on who is playing/listening to it and when, but to say that it possesses no form of its own strikes me as excessive. No two performances of Beethoven's late quartets are the same: on a microscopic level, that is an undeniable fact, but on a macroscopic level, so is the statement 'there is no context in which Beethoven's late quartets can be said to be the exact same thing as Migos's "T-Shirt".' The fact that context is insuperable doesn't mean that everything can suddenly transform itself into something else if the context is 'right'. Things tend to resist metamorphosis into other things so as to maintain their otherness, most often successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Lastly, even we can never wholly understand a given context. Even that which appears to be familiar can reveal its uncanniness at any moment – a mere breach is enough.

*not 'even we can never' but 'we can never'

what is happening??

'thread to dis hyped 2017 releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about'

okay. I want to complain

there will always be myriad forms to understand at every level. I see no value or use to singularity in this context. you can still have yr mystical encounters once you accept yr sense of the limits and distinctions between things is one of many things that is up for grabs.

You may not see the value of singularity as a concept here, but

you can still have yr mystical encounters once you accept yr sense of the limits and distinctions between things is one of many things that is up for grabs

doesn't go against my overall argument.

it makes it hard to understand how you think yr engaging with music as in any sense a singular thing

I engage with every piece of music as a simultaneously singular and multiple thing.

my contention is that saying music is singular or can be thought of just "in itself" is meaningless given its complex structure and inter-relationships

Think of it as the blind spot or case vide of those complex structures and inter-relationships. You would argue that said blind spot is merely a different context of which I am ignorant. I would then reply that that may or may not be the case (it remains to be seen), and that when I am faced with a given piece of music (or work of art) that ignorance is an invaluable part of the aesthetic experience as a whole.

not sure what the 'it' is you're talking about & so I don't understand this post. what remains to be seen?

Whether the blind spot is merely reducible to a different or encompassing context that I am simply not aware of at the moment (this seems to be your position) or if the blind spot is a byproduct of the artwork's singularity. There's usually a bit of both: the first time I listen to an unfamiliar piece of music, I am still working on acquiring the context (whether aesthetic or sociopolitical or both) that will allow me to gain a better appreciation of it. Once I've listened to it enough times, I either start to get bored (the blind spot that so fascinated me in the beginning is no more) or I come to realize that there is something irreducibly mysterious about the work, something singular that I will keep returning to and that I will never fully make sense of. In the latter case, the work partly escapes its overarching context or, if you prefer, creates a wholly singular context for itself. That is what I am interested in.

I am not keen on 'blind spot' as a shorthand/running together for any sort of vague/ignorant or maybe just negative experience with music. there is obviously no definitive context, hence everyone liking everything slightly differently, dancing differently and all the rest of it. a constant state of mystical wonder and other ineffabilities are highly personal which suggests yr not dealing some pure separate thing so much as v much forging yr own strong context with it. music 'escapes its context' in the sense of you changing how you hear it all the time, to say that every rehearing creates a new singularity doesn't seem v useful to me

I take ignorance a step further: I don't know if that singularity is wholly new every time, which implies that it's potentially more (or less) than a synonym for the unknowability of perpetual flux or some such.

Besides, I'm not sure that your overly broad definition of context is actually helpful here.

I guess if it isn't distinct then it isn't v singular. I think the singularity thing is a red-herring. maybe there is some use to talking about the impression of unity and coherence, but my concern was picking apart this idea that there is some pure, perhaps strictly musical form, and that therefore socio-cultural concerns are nothing more than an optional filter we can apply for a bit of colour. arguing for two distinct categories is a lot more work

We're obviously not going to solve this particular problem on ILM but I certainly don't believe that socio-cultural concerns are mere varnish. I do think our current aesthetic paradigm tends to overstate their importance, though, which is why I'm interested in the alternatives.

I mean we're talking about pop-as-unremarkable but the poor showing by major pop stars such as Katy Perry (nil), Taylor Swift (one), Fifth Harmony (nil), Zara Larsson (nil) etc suggests to me that ilx generally likes pop in a discerning and critical way?

I don't think there is a current aesthetic paradigm or a musical one or even an ilm one.

the best i can make sense of yr position is that you are arguing for the importance of some sort of ineffability/pure experience shorn of the all-too-effable (but not yet defined) 'socio-cultural concerns'. obv I think unmediated experience is a nonsensical (& corny) idea and see the most transcendent musical experiences as having the same underlying mechanics as the most numbed, alienated and mundane. I don't see the purity, the essential core from which we can judge the relative importance of various aspects.

'Ineffable', 'pure', 'unmediated', 'transcendent', 'essential core' – your use of these words to describe my position is disingenuous, to say the least. There's no dialogue at this point.

I'm putting something out there because you've not made your position clear, but it's a sincere effort to try and work out what you think. if there's no dialogue it's because you're unwilling to talk

I'm not exactly 'unwilling to talk', as these exchanges have made clear. I think you're mistaking the ambiguity of my position for a non-position, which I suppose is fair enough – it's a risk worth taking as far as I'm concerned. So I'm going to try and formulate, one last time, what I've been trying to get at…

Aesthetic objects are simultaneously multiple/relational (context-dependent) and singular (context-disruptive). That which disrupts context is not 'substance' or 'essence' in the old, premodern sense. Rather, it is a kind of withdrawal that is more-or-less synonymous with the thing's strangeness and otherness – its inner black hole, as it were. This withdrawal is an ambiguous, disorienting operation from our vantage point, which is why I spoke of 'blind spots' and 'ignorance' – it points towards myriad (im)possibilities that are necessarily unfinished and inconclusive, i.e. left in abeyance. As such, withdrawal does not resolve the strife between context and its other(s) – on the contrary, it compels us to consider, be it only for a moment, the undecidability of this antagonism.

I've yet to be persuaded by aesthetic models that explicitly privilege one over the other. Neither purely contextualist nor purely textualist (so to speak) positions make sense to me, which is why I am interested in what happens between, even beyond the two (assuming there is such a thing in the first place, to which you'd no doubt reply 'there isn't'). In other words, you've made up your mind, whereas I'm still on the fence and thus gruellingly – and no doubt failingly – trying to account for this doubt and indeterminacy.

But insofar as so-called 'absolute music' is now a taboo notion (hence my allusion to the 'current paradigm'), any position that puts pure contextualism into question is bound to appear absolutist in the obsolete sense, even when it seeks a provisional, and hopefully more nuanced, third way.

Wow, did this thread stop being interesting and entertaining.

wow, did this thread start being interesting and entertaining?

I like Charli XCX a lot but "Boys" sounds like my daughter playing Smashy Road and is dull, that is my complaint

well she was
prolly
thinkin
bout

Yeah I don't see ILM as being particularly poptimist, ogmor and boxedjoy OTM basically. None of the top four songs appeared on even a quarter of the ballots submitted (although I'm not sure how that compares to previous years' winners) and I'm not seeing loads of pop-only ballots on the stats thread. (Did anyone vote for all of them? FWIW I voted for Boys, love New Rules and am indifferent to the other two). People have varied tastes and I think the overall results bear this out.

If the list was full of the Chainsmokers and Ed Sheeran then the handwringers might have a point, otherwise I'm just assuming it's another "eww girls pop music" kneejerk reaction and leave it there.

Those aren’t pop songs, they didn’t reach the top of the poll and I think girls have cooties. QED.

Yeah, it's interesting. I never heard the Charli XCX or CRJ songs before this. Acc to Wikipedia, the latter didn't chart anywhere other than Japan and the former didn't chart at all in the US, reaching #60 in Canada and #30 in the UK. They also do sound different from the chart pop music I hear all the time. It's like a completely new kind of 'indie pop' or something. That said, "Boys" also sounds like garbage to me so pomenitul OTM if that is his point.

My suspicion is that the very occupation of engaging with music as a critic or connoisseur is ultimately incompatible with trve kvlt poptimism/populism.

Pomentiful - no offence dude but any definition of pop that excludes ED SHEERAN could probably do with being loosened a bit.

Looks like we're dealing with different definitions of pop here. Those sales are high enough and the songs themselves poppy enough to qualify as pop in my book given how cramped the charts are and how much music (and the kinds of music) they necessarily leave out (read: marginalize).

As for trve kvlt poptimism, I don't know. I feel like it's compatible with a theory-minded, discursive outlook no less than with an 'unconscious' one depending on the context. Different definitions here as well.

xp

Btw, I agree that Ed Sheeran counts as pop music. If anything, it's your definition that strikes me as overly narrow, since it assumes that only the most commercial of the commercial should have made the top of the poll for ILM to qualify as poptimist. I think of poptimism as being more flexible than that, but correct me if I'm wrong?

Yeah, I mean Charli XCX and CRJ qualify as 'pop' relative to Rez Abbasi or Barbara Hannigan. They just don't strike me as what someone would come up with if their primary interest was in celebrating what is currently most popular or fashionable; imo someone who picks those as their favourites of last year is coming from a distinct aesthetic pov, one that is somewhat at odds with the present-day mass audience's (although less so than someone who votes for Barbara Hannigan).

celebrating

Or even critiquing for that matter

xps

It's definitely a different strand, I agree, it's just… not different enough? To each their own, I suppose.

How about someone who votes for both XCX and Hannigan?

8)

These polls are never really going to mainly cater to your or my tastes. I just make a ballot to get myself to review the year and check out a couple of new things; I think of the final results as a resource and check out the odd thing that seems like it might be interesting. There are always a couple of good things in there. xp to pomenitul

That's my general attitude as well, I'm just trying to live up to this thread's promise.

Ha, good work then.

Back on topic! Colleen record is giving me horrendous foreshudders of KAS' arrival at some point on Thursday

^^^that should sell it to a few of you

This innoccuous indie-synth record seems to bother you a lot.

oh i quite liked that KAS album

the innocuousness of it is what gets me down I think! anyway if you like muzakburbling synths that convey the sea or whatever then hey go wild

plop plop

The Kid would have been alright if it hadn't been for her voice. She should stick to instrumentals.

yeah the kas thread is full of criticisms like this ^^^ and they're all wrong

I like that record just fine fwiw, somebody I played it for thought it was The Knife

Not sure Colleen and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith have much in common...well one thing I guess.

fuck off

the records really don't have much in common

was resenting insinuations that i'm a misogynist tbh

i like muzak , what of it, punk

https://www.discogs.com/Farbror-Resande-Mac-Farbror-Resande-Mac-LP/master/1157850

both colleen and KAS lack sufficient hubris to catch LJ's ear obv

pomenitul we may have failed to win james morrison's heart but I appreciate your efforts to flesh out a substantial aesthetic theory. I considered starting a separate thread to debate context and so on but I think ilm's appetite is limited and there's a special pleasure to shitting up the shit talking thread.

I see the sort of strangeness you're talking about as a lack of familiar context (and/or the suggestion of unfamiliar contexts), which is why our sense of the strangeness of any given bit of music varies. the strangeness is relational, it doesn't make sense to me to pin it just on the object, or the observer. contexts can disrupt each other, I suppose, as your focus shifts, but you seem to be talking about something necessary rather than experiential. similarly, other than in a conceptual, logical sense separated from the experience of listening, I don't see room for a necessarily unfinished/indeterminate quality to (some? all?) music. or maybe you're just talking about how things imply their own absence/negation and thinking that any one way of hearing will necessarily be limited and finite & tinged with that lack, which I would agree with, I suppose, although it doesn't effect my enjoyment of pop one way or the other

LJ I was merely suggesting you feel prey to the common mistake of comparing two musicians who are very different perhaps bc they are women, but that doesn't mean you dislike them bc they're women, or make you misogynist. But I apologize and take it back bc now I remember you comparing Hurray for the Riff Raff to The Hold Steady and maybe your comparison game, regardless of gender, is simply mystifying to me.

I'm perpetually baffled by LJ's dislike of LAS. It sounds like music tailor-made for him.

fair, fair. sorry, didn't want to be obnoxious there :(

actually the new KAS has for maybe 3-second periods made me think 'hm' in a not entirely negative way

I would think "Rare Things Grow" from EARS would totally be your jam, although it does have repetitions.

It has some sweet sax work.

I'm a bit baffled with the KAS hyperbole. I'm prepared for it to be the fact that I haven't put the work in, but I hear the picturesque when I'm promised (given the levels of appreciation) the sublime: it's pretty enough, but there's no punctum there. That might well be the point.

all good, LJ!

ogmor, I hear you re: the 'special pleasure to shitting up the shit talking thread'.

We still don't see eye to eye when it comes to aesthetics (not that I was trying to convert you or anyone else to my idiosyncratic premises) but it seems you now have a better understanding of what I was trying to express and likewise, I think I get where you're coming from.

Lest this appear too positive, let us resume the dissing. I'm sure the album poll thread will provide plenty of fodder throughout the coming days.

do you even enjoy listening to music

i'll just get this out of the way: most of the 2017 music is bad

― brimstead, Friday, December 15, 2017 3:58 PM (one month ago)

Pomenitul is A+ on Shostakovich. xp

Can I just get the thread back on track by pointing out the latest Ulver album is a massive pile of shit.

Apart from 1969. I like that track.

you said this on the album thread too and you're still wrong

god i can't even comprehend liking "1969" and thinking the rest of the album is shit

lol idk man that song reminds me of a bit of Susumu Hirasawa, most of the rest just sounds horrible to me. I've tried several times to go back to it over the year to try and hear what I was missing but the thudding goth beats that open it make me want to fookin die

conversely thudding goth beats give me precious life

(mostly) not a case of not getting it just so much as thinking the hype got over excessive but:
melodrama - it's competent, but doing a "serious" album after your three million selling debut doesn't make an auteur out of a ponsonby-bred trust funder
american dream - again, decent enough to pass muster, but james murphy and the murphettes' "do a derivative-but-good-at-being-derivate-of-hipster-checklist-stuff-from-a-couple-decades-back-and-throw-on--a-shitload-of-ennui" shtick is at its weakest here compared to previous lcd stuff to the point where hailing it as any sorta comeback is off the mark
and of course the fucking father john misty album

tbh I've tried with post-BM Ulver a few times and it just doesn't work for me, I admitted defeat with War of the Roses and don't bother any more. Dunno why really, it seems like it's supposed to be influenced by things I like.

thudding goth beats for example

yeah but the lyrics are awful when you can understand them

will this be the first albums poll to be made up solely of sad computer music?

:D

if only

^^^

me, reacting to Ulver on shuffle - "what is this 80s shit?"

why wold a band like this WANT to ape Depeche Mode - just to sell more records, I guess?

Ha, is aping Depeche Mode a surefire way to sell records in 2017? (Not that I was excited by their going in this direction either.)

Aren't most (ex-)BMers barely closeted Depeche Mode fans? Varg Vikernes admitted to it.

come on, it seems to be a natural progression in their evolution from a black metal band to...well, something else. seems a little silly to categorize it as a cash grab

that's why it was a question! "natural progression" is fair too, I just don't see the point (more like regression imo)

will this be the first albums poll to be made up solely of sad computer music?

― Badgers (dog latin), Wednesday, January 31, 2018 8:15 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's definitely a monotony to the list so far, though I'm not sure "sad computer music" is quite right (lots of super familiar indie for one thing). I thought the Tracks list had the same problem but most everyone else was praising it for its diversity. Both lists basically confirm that 2017 was a shitty year for me.

this james holden album is surprisingly boring, lots of neat signifiers & pleasantly busy but all the elements don't add up to much, feels too basic & familiar & forgettable despite being nicely adorned

that Ulver album sounds exactly like the kind of thing European neo-goth bands like Wolfsheim have been pumping out for decades

Guyyyyys put the bitching in the album thread.

It's more fun that way!

OK, we can always send LJ over here when the KAS album comes up ;)

LCD Soundsystem will probably receive a more violent response tbf

I'm always a bit late to the party with the bitching and I end up saying bitchy things about 10 albums too late by which point it's too late

I didn't vote so I don't feel qualified to shit up that thread tbh

Maybe next year I'll actually participate and be able to cropdust wrong opinions all over the place!

you didn't vote? ffs there goes the dawson top ten

Guyyyyys put the bitching in the album thread.

― emil.y, Wednesday, January 31, 2018 10:38 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's more fun that way!

― emil.y, Wednesday, January 31, 2018 10:38 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

sorry everyone I started this thread on a whim but I agree with emil.y here at least while the rollout is happening

aye, not enough vehemence against LCD Soundsystem in the results thread

LCD Soundsystem aren't that bad, there's so much music out there that is much much worse

i don't like the holden album, i find it very unpleasant and not in a fun or exciting or weird way

Want to start a club for people who hate the new Palm album

it's SO BAD my god. just inane chattering nonsense with no songwriting, it's all just bland posi-vibes bullshit. no wonder everyone's making animal collective comparisons. really just the worst sort of 'experimental pop'

i mean it's basically tune-yards, except without the possibility of a decent song breaking out

and i suppose it irritates me in the same needling arch tuneless way that KAS does so if you like her you should probably take this as a recommendation

way ahead of ya

I liked some of their previous stuff well enough, don't know if this new ones's much different.

it's fine. i'll forgive you if you like it, but you can't be in my haters club

Should we start a 2018 equivalent?

maybe, not right now though

ah hell maybe though

goddamn it 'me and michael' is nothing special at all, at this point there simply must be a moratorium on 80s synthpop pastiche

it was the same with that tornado wallace song - competent pastiche + gr8 video = ilxors' minds blown

Yeah not really. I hadn't seen the video til the tracks roll out. Just really loved listening to the song all year

yeah that's not pastiche, man, that's a well-woven tribute

^ or something and Ross otm

can we not talk about how awesome parquet courts are

Sorry no, board rules.

seriously though

feels like damned by faint praise at best

what I really like about this album is how the boring lyrics match the boring music

Beach House? Haven't heard it yet, just blindly guessing.

srsly, with every cocteau twins comparison I think of fotzepolitic or pearly dewdrops' drops or whatever and I seethe

Gotta hand it to Beach House: saw them on tour supporting their first album, maybe 30 people in the audience. Thought "no one will like this boring and terrible band, and even if they do, this sound will get old really fast." Here they still are all these years later, exactly as boring and terrible as that first time, having made a great career out of being boring and terrible. Guess they showed me.

ilm is particularly full of tepid indie bollocks atm imo. nb this is a safe space

ilm is particularly full of tepid indie bollocks atm imo. nb this is a safe space

― imago

Didn't you nominate a song from the Paul Draper album in the end of year tracks list a few months ago?

sometimes tepid indie bollocks has its day. also i didn't come close to voting for it

can we not talk about how not awesome parquet courts are

I don't really keep up with tepid indie bollocks these days but I quite like Beach House

this is the first time beach house have made an album that's not just tepid indie bollocks

mb i should have posted in here

lol no i thought it was a fun post

This hasn't been the best year for new albums afaic. Yes yes Autechre, blah blah but it's not the only thing I want to hear. New Ought is tepid indie bollocks but I really like it - a mitigating factor.

omg that mary lattimore post is heroic

i don't even think my own feelings are quite that strong on the matter

tbf my anhedonia has rendered me numb to all but the most cartoonishly saccharine opinions but that's ok, there's loads of shouting about the importance of taste still available online

it all goes in one hole and comes out the other amirite fellas

This hasn't been the best year for new albums afaic. Yes yes Autechre, blah blah but it's not the only thing I want to hear.

I dunno, it's been the best one in a while for me. Between Andrew W.K., Autechre, Datarock, Janelle Monae, They Might be Giants, and that Daphne & Celeste album, I've got 6 solid favorites already. And I haven't heard the Sea and Cake yet. Plus new albums incoming from Orbital, Koenjihyakkei, The Black Dog (two of em in fact), and some inevitable surprises (new Underworld ????)

you might like that The Armed album, give it a whirl

it's been a great year for albums

maybe i just don't care much about albums right now. I like the Rae Sremmurd and Sun El Musician albums well enough but they're not consistent.

it is a great year for albums every year

but also, a terrible one, hence this thread :)

do people actually enjoy Skee Mask? that new album is like a really bad trip-hop throwback, I was astonished by how much of a slog it was to get through given how much praise it's been getting

I like it! Some of the songs are kinda goes-in-one-ear-and-out-the-other but others (like the last two tracks and 50 Euro) are really stunning. It doesn't really remind me of trip hop? If anything the rhythms on it are more jungle/d&b

It's like jungle/dnb but without any sense of thrill or edge, I thought it was just really polite and tasteful and cold. It's not the jungle of hardcore raving, it's just really plodding breakbeats and pads playing emo chords and I dont get the "future of electronic music from a creative genius" narrative certain publications are running with on it

"Breakbeats and pads playing emo chords" is probably why people like it but it just seems so timid to me in its execution

My interest was peaked so I'm taking a listen. So far it's really good, if not super original. Definitely draws a lot from the LTJ Bukem school of jazzy dnb, but with modern production standards. The beats are the main attraction, with the chords providing a nice serene base for the rhythms to explore. Really high quality with lots of subtlety that you don't often get with dnb. Not really made to light the dance floor on fire, but it's very nice on headphones.

Might be one too many slow tracks though...

albums are inconsistent but he's good

It's like jungle/dnb but without any sense of thrill or edge, I thought it was just really polite and tasteful and cold. It's not the jungle of hardcore raving, it's just really plodding breakbeats and pads playing emo chords and I dont get the "future of electronic music from a creative genius" narrative certain publications are running with on it

― boxedjoy, Monday, June 25, 2018 6:41 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is my problem with like 90% of post-2000 drum'n'bass tbf.

I'm listening to the first track now and I quite like it so far. Nice sound design. Maybe it's a matter of hype = false expectations with these things

do people actually enjoy Skee Mask? that new album is like a really bad trip-hop throwback, I was astonished by how much of a slog it was to get through given how much praise it's been getting

Felt pretty much the same way on my first listen (and never really liked his last record which had similar levels of praise.)

After a couple more listens it clicked for me, though ... love it now!

I don't like it, don't understand the hype. I mean, it's fine, but not what I'm looking for and nothing special imo.

I'm listening to the new Martyn album and it is stunning, likewise the new Beta Librae album also makes a lot of similar moves, but neither of them are getting anything like the acclaim this is

ski mask with nardwuar made me think he's a chill dude.

i really like this, don't care what anyone thinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo9KXM60l4U

i'm more into andrea & stenny when it comes to Ilian Tape stuff

ski mask with nardwuar made me think he's a chill dude.

different dude (unless that's the joke in which case the joke is on me)

ilx has such a shit taste in indie. not sorry

ok fine let's give Rolling Search Engine Optimisation Fever another go

this opening track is 10000 minutes of the same boring riff

I don't really get it either, but I'm trying to assume something like "it's not you, it's me"...

it's definitely imago

i'm also not feeling Let's Bore G'ma

...bore huh

mood: strategising an ogmor-on-Mary-Lattimore on Parquet Courts

m8 I successfully navigate life and art without giving one second's thought to most shit du jour, try it! It's liberating!

Like why are you even engaging if it's dross. I assume it's dross. So I don't check it out.

i guess 'the discourse' is an overrated thing. i shall hereby tidy the house instead

Let a billion discourses bloom

listening to the beths. not bad! it's like...decent, formulaic indie with fair-to-good hooks we've all heard before. so it puzzles me why ilxors good and true are hyping it to the skies, feels like they're almost patronising it, forcing it to be their 'album of the year' as it's a cool look or w/e. i mean sure like it and write about it but there's massive cognitive dissonance between the album you're all talking about and the album i'm hearing

tldr: listen to the trust fund album as well pls

forcing it to be their 'album of the year' as it's a cool look or w/e

lj, i hate it when you do this, please stop

like i haven't heard the beths record but what if it were my album of the year? personally i'd say fuck you!

btw listen to the new low album

and you'd be right to! but given what else has come out this year i flatly refuse to believe this would be even close to your aoty. but i've been wrong before. i just don't understand the greatness of this album. i'm listening and i can't hear it

and yeah ok haha

It's a very narcissistic look to not only think you have the best taste (that's normal enough), but to actually doubt that other people are sincere in their own enjoyment of things outside of that

fine well i wish i just understood people better then

also, the album picks up at the end at least

it's a delicate thing to get right but I am not universally against ppl casting aspersions on my proclaimed love for certain things, sometimes there's some truth to it

sure, consider the posting history of rtc

btw i feel bad about getting mad at you lj so i've decided to finally listen to this trust fund album, will report back

It's a very narcissistic look to not only think you have the best taste (that's normal enough), but to actually doubt that other people are sincere in their own enjoyment of things outside of that

― change display name (Jordan), Thursday, September 6, 2018 10:11 AM (thirty-four minutes ago)

this is all some people have. nothing worse than a music critic who thinks/speaks of their opinions as fact.

credit to imago, though, i thought this:

i mean sure like it and write about it but there's massive cognitive dissonance between the album you're all talking about and the album i'm hearing

was gonna be this:

"i mean sure like it and write about it but there's massive cognitive dissonance between the album you're all talking about and the album it actually is"

big difference there that i appreciate

fine well i wish i just understood people better then

no you dont

(sorry)

if people can't talk about records they don't get in the "talk about records you don't get" thread where the fuck can they

(I haven't heard the full album; the tracks I heard were nice but not necessarily outstanding for me)

Fair enough I guess this should be a safe space for hating and strawperson-ing

yeah ilx really needed one of those

anyway i wasn't railing against the thread idea itself just the particular way lj did it so i'm confused

this thread should be burned to the ground

People can hate on what they want, but questioning other listeners' underlying motivations is a technically very difficult power-move to execute without looking small-minded and intellectually lazy, so in most cases it's a rhetorical manoeuvre best avoided or at least saved for real "in emergency break glass" situations, which is probably not "why do people enjoy this perfectly pleasant power-pop album".

Nah.

In the anachronistic spirit of this thread, I'll try to contribute to it once my to-listen list finally hits 2018, so if all goes well, some time next year.

xp

Without questioning anyone's motivations (for anything), I'm also a little surprised at the passionate reception for the Beths (it's fine, but I thought I'd like it more, based on descriptions).

But I've felt the same way about other stuff here recently that folks have gone gaga over. I wish I could hear more stuff with the same ears, I'd rather love stuff than not love it!

But I've felt the same way about other stuff here recently that folks have gone gaga over. I wish I could hear more stuff with the same ears, I'd rather love stuff than not love it!

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Thursday, September 6, 2018 2:33 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is largely where I am with music in general right now. I love stuff but it is generally not the stuff others love, to the point where I've wondered if this is some kind of defense mechanism

Eh, you're overthinking it. As long as you're willing to give everything a fair shake, like whatever you like and stick with it. I stopped looking for a community of like-minded listeners a long time ago, and that's ok.

Tim otm. If one can't see the difference between "i don't get this thing everyone seems to love" and "i don't get this thing everyone seems to love, probably because it's a cool look" then *shrug*

more to my point, same goes for "hmm, to each his own" vs "actually no the album is bad" in response to ppl talking about something they love.

I'm never really mystified about why others like what they like, but I often make the mistake of thinking the stuff that I like is more popular or appealing than it is.

I generally try to append something like "IMO" or "to my ears" when I express a negative opinion up in here (even tho I think that should be implied), just to avoid making those kind of declarative statements. (I guess I could try not posting anything negative at all, but...)

There's a difference between a negative opinion and specifically attributing ulterior motives to people who have positive opinions

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to do that... who knows why those freakin' weirdos like the crazy shit they like, they must all be high (lol)

anyway the Beths album didn't come out in 2017 so technically it's ineligible for this thread :D

this trust fund album is badass, i've been sleeping, thanks lj

some good came of this then :D

People can hate on what they want, but questioning other listeners' underlying motivations is a technically very difficult power-move to execute without looking small-minded and intellectually lazy ...

― Tim F

this happens constantly here though

Of course

Though the upgraded version (which I am more likely to fall back on myself) is “you listen to this thing rather than that thing because you have dubious aesthetic predilections and/or you are part of hype circles and gatekeeper discourses which structurally advantage the reputation of this thing over that thing even though that thing is better.”

Which is related but not quite the same thing. It’s more of a “forgive them father, for they know what they do” brand of condescension.

I like the "you're a hypocrite b/c you like THIS but not THIS" move (which I'm sure I've fallen into myself)

i think that "upgraded version" way a lot which wld probably be better if it led me to pose questions (not prescriptions!) to people i think fall into those groups instead of privately grumbling to friends or myself like i usually do

I guess I don’t really care whether ppl like the same stuff I do (nothing I can do about it); though it is kind of a bummer when you mention liking something on here, and 3 or 4 ppl chime in, “Nah, that sucks.”

In those cases, I actually would like to know their reasons, so there’s at least basis for discussion...

for me, music is social. i like music more when people of my acquaintance also like it - i'd say this has happened with the beths and previously with king. in light of that it's probably always going to be divisive when somebody goes out of their way to dissent from that.

timely bump of the yves tumor thread - I've just listened to the album and am glad to report that it is nowt but trendy mithering, sounds like some third-rate mego producer trying to be king krule or something. next

I guess I don’t really care whether ppl like the same stuff I do (nothing I can do about it); though it is kind of a bummer when you mention liking something on here, and 3 or 4 ppl chime in, “Nah, that sucks.”

I'd much rather hear that than mentioning liking something and zero people chime in -- at least it means it's getting discussion and getting heard

exactly - I bet at least 3 ppl listened to The Beths on the strength of my opposition. perhaps those same ppl will now listen to Yves Tumor

i don't even know what a "mego producer" is. like those crappy giant '70s action figures?

i'd rather say nothing about a record that doesn't interest me than go out of my way to express my disinterest. i can't fathom why anyone would be interested in acclaimed albums i find to be only fair-to-middling.

Agreed on principle, let’s just have this as the parquet courts hate thread tho plz

I tried to turn the Parquet Courts thread into the Parquet Courts hate thread, but no one was biting :P

it's all been downhill since Light Up Gold

Right??

this never stopped being the parquet courts hate thread!

Though the upgraded version (which I am more likely to fall back on myself) is “you listen to this thing rather than that thing because you have dubious aesthetic predilections and/or you are part of hype circles and gatekeeper discourses which structurally advantage the reputation of this thing over that thing even though that thing is better.”

Which is related but not quite the same thing. It’s more of a “forgive them father, for they know what they do” brand of condescension.

― Tim F

usually in my case it's some version of "you only think W is good because you haven't really heard X Y Z"

sounds like some third-rate mego producer trying to be king krule or something

maybe i've heard too little king krule but the yves record doesn't sound like that at all to me

for one thing "honesty" is just excellent techno basically

it's got a lot of sides imo

I have no idea whats hyped unless the discogs price is suddenly very high but thats almost everything even the lads at Scope in Rhyl are in on it

and I dont really hear any of the really bad records until the end of the year when the lad Claus turns up with 77 of them but I never remember the names. The problem is I also dont remember the names of the ones I do like and my colour coding for records is in disarray and remembering the names of your records is for bureaucrats and local businessmen

hey now

Not sure how I feel about Yves Tumor yet, but it definitely doesn't sound like King Krule

usually in my case it's some version of "you only think W is good because you haven't really heard X Y Z"

― the late great

"W" is a great van der graaf generator b-side and is miles beyond anything page, squire, and white managed to fart out

i dont think the yves tumor/king krule comparison is totally off base, obviously they aren't very similar sonically but there's a similar enough atmosphere they both create that listening to the new yves tumor did make me think 'oh this is sort of like what king krule was going for except way way better'

yves record reminds me of chino amobi
had a first listen to it this morning, i like it

The atmosphere on the King Krule record is very laid back though, isn't it? A bit distant but content and slightly warm. On Yves Tumor, I find it full of emotional tension and slightly anxious. Very different IMO.

I have no idea what any of that is but you've just described a day out in the asda

“Lana Dull Rey”

About 66 results (0.97 seconds)

daughters record is real boring

seriously! and rym is apeshit over it. made me listen to shellac at least

there's a couple of tracks near the end that are decent to good but sheesh it's just swans worship

record consistently described as wild and all over the place = pretty much just faintly industrial noise rock the whole way through

the whole "droning/punishing yet dynamic" thing they're trying to do on this record reminds me of through silver in blood weirdly enough

i prefer neurosis

That Prime Minister Of Doom album isnt awful but for what it is it is completely overhyped. Some tracks go on far too long with no development and dont even start with interesting Villalobos-style grooves to hold any attention, and the ones that are actually any good implode just as they get going.

i didn't rly get all the love for the dj healer record so wldn't be surprised if i felt the same abt this project

traumprinz is always gonna be controversial i think but i also found the dj healer record too... empty to enjoy

and i smoke a lot of weed

great, now i've relistened to it and i like it (at least i really like "we are going nowhere")

that daughters record is fucking awful imo

ah shit i think i love the traumprinz records

the Daughters album is pretty dull but of course rym would go this hard for this sort of Swans worship yeah. very confused to find out their guitarist was in Fang Island for a while, that's not a connection i would ever have expected

that daughters thing is trash

listening to the robyn album. if this boring bollocks wins the 2018 album poll it might be time to leave this place

generally imago I find your tastes to be a good guide in reverse of what I might like, but in this case I agree with you. I liked some of her past work but this new album is boring.

*puts Robyn album top of ballot paper*

:D

ilx's manifest destiny as middlebrow critic retirement home fulfilled

it flows really well and really seamlessly into its dancier pockets and expands the scope of her songwriting. it's also very easy to listen to. it's not for you dude

ah shit i think i love the traumprinz records

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, November 13, 2018 5:21 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this bore out: i do love them, dj healer slightly more than prime minister of doom

ahhh i like imago even when he calls records which are obviously great boring shit

and likewise i am growing to tolerate all y'all's weird predilections ;) but this is the marketplace of ideas and i will not be stayed from expression, unless by the banhammer

Fwiw I think it's boring as well and I'm deeply suspicious of the critical narrative around Robyn at this stage, and there's like four songs off that 2005 album I still like.

It really drifted by me as well, but her previous work benefits from its inescapability. I'm sure I'll be crushed into submission in time

she's had a few great singles but her previous albums were so inconsistent - this one's by far her best. can understand how some could be bored by it but i'm certainly much less confused by all the acclaim than i was in 2010

this thread will live on long after my death

(old Jess quote/paraphrase)

gonna use this safe space to say that the Monae album has a few nice songs but is overrated as hell

yeah

and i still think it’s her best lol

it's her worst but I still like it

just gonna come out and say it, Autechre's latest only has like 6 hours worth of good stuff on it

lol

yeah the janelle monae album is fine, and her strongest, but not really one of the best of the year or anything. some amazing singles though

not to go full unperson - I'm sure plenty of people unreservedly love every note - but there's a case to be made that a convergence of extramusical factors helped juke the stats in its favor

but, yknow, twas ever thus

please note thread title change to reflect our eternal discontent with hyped releases of any year

Monae is definitely one of those artists who's so easy to root for that it makes you overlook the filler

Thanks for pointing it out, felt like I was getting gaslighted there for a sec.

xp

Monae is definitely one of those artists who's so easy to root for that it makes you overlook the filler

yeah I can understand this too

xp bookmarks may keep the old title for a while

I've never enjoyed a note of Janelle Monae's music but will watch her act in anything

Re-Robyn. "Obviously great" is very relative. I wish I could come up with an elaborate and constructive diss (as we're supposed to), but the truth is I gave the album 15-20 minutes and found nothing exciting (title track is alright but sounds like someone else). And I like pop in general and some electro-pop. It's everyone's right to shrug something off and move on.

I gave the album 15-20 minutes

listen to the whole thing, come on

We should also do a thread to dis imago-hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about.

briiiiing it

here's how it's done btw: The Chap - Mega Breakfast

I've never enjoyed a note of Janelle Monae's music but will watch her act in anything

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, December 6, 2018 10:30 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't have anything mean to say... it's just not for me at all!

i can forgive imago for hyping all sorts of things i don't care about just for being a fellow katie dey evangelical

what are the new traumprinz songs.... sorry i can't keep track of all the aliases but "2 the sky" is all time

the most loved traumprinz this year is dj healer - nothing 2 loose, which is great, but i think there was some other stuff too

imago is big Swirlies fan right? This would be my reason to forgive if I needed one

agreed on Monae and Robyn. The upside is nothing highly acclaimed this year really rankles me. I'm not sure if that says anything about 2018 or if I'm just aging out of caring so much

there's just nothing this year to care *deeply* about either way. and i'm *not* saying this was a bad year for music or there was no good music this year, it's just pretty clear (to me, at least) that there are no lightning rods out there

tried to start a julia holter war, to mass apathy

cmon we need more hate

listen to the whole thing, come on
― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, December 6, 2018 4:36 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

During my university years, when I was downloading albums all day, I would be very scrupulous about listening to albums from A to Z. I also used to be very respectful anytime three people agreed that an album was a great work of art, even when it left me politely clueless. I'm still lending my curious year to things that leave me clueless, but I'm way more anarchic and tyrannical: if 4 songs can't convince me, and I underline convince me, the opinion of the entire virtual planet won't make me lose my time. But apparently this forum frowns immediately if someone is not aligned (see imago, unperson etc), which is quite fun mind you, you can criticize but don't dare not like it, actually it's not just here that you get accused of lèse-majesté for not honoring the official 2018 playlist.

someone mentioned 2014 in comparison with this year, which makes a lot of sense to me although i think 2014 was the weakest year for albums in recent memory and this year has easily been the strongest. it kinda produces the same result in aggregate lists

xp with alpine static

This year the strongest? 2016!

cmon we need more hate

― imago, Thursday, December 6, 2018 9:32 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok i really disliked the time i spent with the american pleasure club album yesterday

This year the strongest? 2016!

― imago, Thursday, December 6, 2018 9:34 AM (twenty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also an incredible year but like... things that would've made my top ten in 2016 are drifting to the 20s and 30s this year. there's too much excellent stuff

For me, 2016 had more all-time great albums but there's a case that this year has had just as many (or more) really, really good albums

I love the emptiness of these statements absent a modicum of shared criteria to determine what is and isn't worthwhile. While we're at it, though, 2018 was alright, no more and no less.

I love the emptiness of these statements absent a modicum of shared criteria to determine what is and isn't worthwhile

welcome to ilx/new board description

All music is worthwhile to someone, if only to the person who made it, but it doesn't mean we can't be irreverent. I see less and less irreverence, people pretend to like everything out of general respect or optimism, safe that they be a hater or someone who does not understand.

it feels like a lot to get into but this is 2018 for me:

- new albums from established bands/artists that blew me away in ways they hadn't previously (mewithoutyou, the 1975, low, mr twin sister, meshell ndegeocello, autechre, robyn, fucked up)
- stuff that seemed extremely congruent with the chaos and noise i felt humming internally and externally all year (low again, autechre again, mewithoutyou again, julia holter, dj healer, helena hauff, yves tumor, skee mask, sheck wes)
- tons of albums that i'm still getting to the bottom of (voivod, evoken, jenny wilson)

I spent many a self-pitying night listening to Things We Lost in the Fire when it came out, but Low's latest reminded me of Neil Young's Trans: kind of cool yet too unidiomatic to be convincing.

2013 and 14 were pretty weak but these last 4 have been very very strong

what this year shares in common with 2014 is a lack of event albums that completely dominated critical discourse throughout the year and eoy lists, so what's bubbling to the top feels a little less pre-ordained
and there's more room for indie darlings like mitski. at least this year it's better stuff than the war on the drugs

the only stuff id really complain about that's getting a lot of love in lists this year is sweetener and the idles album

i love the Robyn album, after not being particularly invested in her music previously

oh god idles are so shit

i think this is one of the worst years for big singles i can remember... my favorite song of the year is like... fucking tyga or something

but for albums, dang... 1975, kacey, blood orange, charlie puth all dropped classics to me and there's a good 5 or so albums i pretty much love as well

the Kacey album dominated my summer. I really did like her first and was cool with her second, but this one felt like a breakthrough.

The Robyn album being the Chosen Pop Statement in a year where Tove Styrke has one out too is so bewildering to me

It's like people just like stuff

TS: liking stuff vs. disliking stuff.

i think this is one of the worst years for big singles i can remember... my favorite song of the year is like... fucking tyga or something.

but for albums, dang...

i feel like it's the opposite for hip-hop this year. my singles list is gonna be overflowing with rap songs, but all the tentpole rap albums disappointed me this year.

the only stuff id really complain about that's getting a lot of love in lists this year is sweetener and the idles album

Seems to be mainly 6Music and UK Record Shops responsible for Idles doing so well in the aggregated best ofs

were a lot of decent (if not stellar) hip hop records this year: lil baby, gunna, rico nasty, megan thee stallion, quan, SOB x RBE. travis' record was decent too, surprisingly

biggest disappointment was SR3MM. too looooooooooong

best album was probably nipsey hussle's actually

Idles are ranking highly on RYM as well. I have no idea why. Maybe they're the sort of punk that the record industry likes to promote

super year for afrobeats

Years are tools of oppression designed by the measuring classes to distract and divide us, so I don't pay too much attention to them. BUT, giving in to the premise for one moment I would say that low key 2018 had some good records, I bought some of them and they are upstairs

i adore tove styrke but sway was super underwhelming as an album unfortunately, not bad but she's clearly capable of much more

Idles are what a lot of people in the UK want from a band, I guess.

The success of Idles is giving 6music license to play some truly awful bands right now, the sort of thing even they would have been too embarrassed to pay in the past. I'm perhaps a little bit more tolerant of Idles having been exposed to 'Yak' and 'Fontaines DC'.

I've never heard Idles but the only people I know who like them usually listen to landfill indie and Oasis, whereas the actual punk people I know don't seem to mention them at all

my punk friend adores them and im a bit confused by that

on one level they're really just not for me so normally i wouldn't care too much but the lyrics are so corny, i dont get it at all

i've only heard one of their songs and it basically sounded like a less endearing new model army

I know this is the thread for people who don't trust themselves to criticise a record without shitting up a thread, but the Idles thread is literally unshituppable so maybe we should do this over there.

I'M ON IT

BRING BACK GALLOWS

as threadstarter I approve of leading an angry mob from here over to the main threads when required

it's hard for me to judge 2018 in context. starting in 2016 i really started going ham on new music, and every year since then i've found more of it i like. so much of it that i can't even make sense of it or contextualize it or rank it or even recommend it, really. all i can do is listen. it wasn't until a couple days ago that i finally settled on a Favorite Record from 2018. all i can say is "well this is good and this is good and this other thing is good".

at this point i'd say 2018 is my favorite year yet for music, but that probably says more about me than it does about 2018.

patterns? i'm listening to a lot of strange electronic noises. 2018's been a really good year for that. but i haven't left any of the stuff i used to listen to behind. there's still a good smattering of prog rock records in my 2018 listening, for instance. and i still am listening to the old folks releasing records that even old people don't necessarily care about - i've mentioned it before, but i love chris connelly's new record which has gotten no buzz or play at all that i've seen.

all the rock seems to devolve down to post-punk, and i think we're getting to a point where there's such a thing as "landfill post-punk", but there's plenty of stuff i like - lithics, for instance. i'm ready to let go of rock at any time but i did find myself really liking the new fucked up record and the new uncle acid record.

if i'm not as negative as i used to be about the music i don't like, it's because first off, i don't really have room in my head to even remember it, and second off, there are so many more important things for me to hate. and the stuff i do remember and don't like, such as for instance the new low record - i mean it's not a copout to say i don't get it, it's got enough novelty in it that i'd really have to work to figure out what it is that leaves me cold.

there are also a lot of things i don't even bother to listen to. i'm bad on hip-hop and pop. i haven't heard ariana grande or robyn! i might like them. i probably wouldn't like the 1975 though.

but yeah i do want to single out a couple records from the year-end lists that i listened to and thought were overhyped

one of the year-end lists had a new recording of bartok's violin concertos, and his second violin concerto is my all around favorite classical work, and this new recording was the worst recording i've ever heard of it. it's just way too fucking legato in all the wrong ways.

another year-end list had a red/anarchist black metal album on it, and people keep making these records and they keep being goddamn terrible. goddamn i sympathize with RABM's politics way more than i sympathize with NSBM (fuck NSBM) but the only time i ever hear anything decent in RABM is when it's a crust punk band pretending to be RABM, and even then they're better off just being crust punk

fuck nazis but if you can't make a good black metal record don't, even if you are a gay space communist

kind of cool yet too unidiomatic to be convincing

what

rusho what was the offending RABM record

ahhh, you made me look it up

yovel

i guess feminazgul are ok

I like Neckbeard Deathcamp but more because they make me laugh than because they are actually a good black metal band

I do treasure my ND shirt

starting in 2016 i really started going ham on new music, and every year since then i've found more of it i like. so much of it that i can't even make sense of it or contextualize it or rank it or even recommend it, really. all i can do is listen. it wasn't until a couple days ago that i finally settled on a Favorite Record from 2018. all i can say is "well this is good and this is good and this other thing is good".

this is almost exactly the case for me too. i have a list of about 15-20 that are all "top tier" and the order changes every day

If you're not constantly maintaining a RYM account you're...uh...probably functional in other aspects of your life ;_;

I've never even BEEN to RYM.

Am I otherwise functional?

no!

I can only spend energy on one obsessive music tracking thing and that's my big annual playlist

the only thing i use rym for is to maintain a list of my favorite albums of all time, pretty worthless otherwise

it helps me keep track of all the music, what can I say

this has been a really great year for me music-wise, a lot of favorites released new stuff and a lot of it is really good, though looking at these lists only underscores how little *new* stuff I actually listen to

much like last year, I feel like I'm now much more firmly entrenched in a 'tracks' mindset over albums thanks to Spotify and the ease with which it is to make playlists. My most played albums were 'Charlie's New Cool Songs Playlist' parts A and B.

It's largely affected the genres I favour too. Much more interested in afro pop and SA house than stuff that suits albums and I don't think I've even heard much stuff that really works well as a full album in the way that it has a unifying concept and the songs flow together in a consecutively satisfying way.

That said, there are exceptions. I loved the post punk vibes laid out by both Ought and Parquet Courts this year: one ascetic, and entrenched in a particular sound harking back to very specific forebears (namely the Cure and maybe Scott Walker); the other also proudly wearing its influences on its sleeve but jumping around all over the place like a manic infant.

Been also enjoying a lot of Outernational stuff, new and reissued, on Analog Africa, Nyege Nyege Tapes and Awesome Tapes. The Dur Dur Band's lost Somalian recordings. Nihiloxoca's intense live tribal techno. The sheer onslaught of the Sounds of Sisso comp (which I've just learnt came out last year, oh well)

But I kind of miss 2012/2013, the year where big conceptual art rock albums ruled my world - The Knife, Scott Walker, These New Puritans, Swans - I'm not sure what the equivalent of that was this year?

I guess Julia sodding Holter. But I'm increasingly suspicious of big conceptual art-rock albums, and who'd blame me eh

(Or, if you want to join the cool kids in the cool room, Machine Girl)

I only use RYM to look for interesting metal records that haven't been written up much

it's not exactly hyped but the new Charalambides 2LP is extremely disappointing to me, aimless and way way way too sparse for my tastes, just the polar opposite of the glory that was Exile.

i liked it the two times i put it on but haven't felt like going back, i think you are on to something. i haven't even played the accompanying cassette.

the tape is even worse, sadly, was hoping for something like the stupendous vinyl-bonus tracks from Exile but everything on this release is like an unadorned guitar and a voice in a room together, not my favorite mode of theirs.

jenny wilson is one possible contender

more electronic tho

If you're not constantly maintaining a RYM account you're...uh...probably functional in other aspects of your life ;_;

― imago

i'm closing out 2018 as a reasonably functional human being in spite of the amount of time i spend on rym. i don't understand it either.

i adore tove styrke but sway was super underwhelming as an album unfortunately, not bad but she's clearly capable of much more

― ufo

Totally agree with this. Her first album was great and Kiddo was very close to being a masterpiece. Sway was such a letdown and probably my biggest disappointment of the year. Compared to what she did on Kiddo, it was way too samey and dropping the Lorde cover on the end made the whole thing seem so unfinished/rushed.

oh I definitely thought it was disappointing in terms of potential too, I just mean that it isn't notably better or worse than the Robyn album which is doing a similar thing but comes with a ready-made narrative

XP Disappointed to hear that the Charalambides record is underwhelming. Been a fan for like 20 years and I got to see them live for the first time in October. I enjoyed it as a moment in time, this sparse, alien music against the backdrop of the Ohio River, but it occurred to me that I probably didn't need to own a another record of this particular mode of theirs, so I haven't checked the new one out.

ah shit i think i love the traumprinz records

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, November 13, 2018 5:21 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this bore out: i do love them, dj healer slightly more than prime minister of doom

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Thursday, December 6, 2018 9:28 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sry not to add more off-track positivity but lol i think i also love the dj healer record now. thanks brad :-/

oh for dog latin, a 2018 equivalent of those big art rock albums is absolutely Anna Von Hausswolff's Dead Magic

1.
How could Tove Styrke make a better record than Kiddo? Most people never do.
Her shows this year were super killer though. Apparently the Boston show we were at was her first sold-out concert ever (capacity: 200)... she mentioned it a few times!

2.

I guess Julia sodding Holter. But I'm increasingly suspicious of big conceptual art-rock albums, and who'd blame me eh

(Or, if you want to join the cool kids in the cool room, Machine Girl)

― imago, Friday, December 7, 2018 1:52 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Conceptual art-rock album not to be suspicious of = Polycrisis: yes! by Jessica Sligter. She's been real great for a few years, but, this is a real special one.

Listening now. If anything it's even worse than Holter. I make no apology

I mean there's no 'rock' about this. You literally cannot call ambient bollocks with pretentious anti-capitalist warbling over the top of it 'art-rock'. I'd even dispute the 'art' bit. Everyone should check out the second track though! It's singularly annoying

(btw this thread is a safe space for overly harsh criticism so don't take it personally!)

you hype, I dis

Ach, as a fan, I tried with the von Hausswolff. It made me a) want to go look at some Goya ii) want to go find old Gira, knock his cowboy hat askance and ask him if he knows what he's done? and 3) wish for my old boring office job back, so I could sit at my desk, wish for anything but this and feel all scourged and transgressive.

you could just say that it was boring bollocks, which it was

imago dislikes record that doesn't exude hyper-kineticism, news at 11.

hey

I loved last year's Lingua Ignota record and that was slow as anything

I like records with character, that's all ;)

Both the Julia Holter and Anna von Hausswolff LPs have character. Just not the right kind, apparently. Anyway, I don't think either is the masterpiece some RYMers believe them to be but they certainly stand head and shoulders above the adolescent moaning of Black Dresses, for instance, which negates their otherwise solid instrumentals. You're right to assume obnoxiousness tends to imply character but I'm not beholden enough to the latter to gush over the former.

While we're at it, Daphne & Celeste belongs in the rolling worst 2018 music thread. I can only cringe for so long.

The Beths, what are you all thinking?

given that the Jessica Sligter album is something of a paean to the EU I'd probably not describe it as anticapitalist. it's also not a rock record but her previous ones were folk-rock more or less so is perhaps being described/considered in that context for that reason

going to studiously avoid pomenitul's excellent baiting and second boxedjoy. or at least...the beths are fine, but the way some of you go on about them it's like they're more than an extremely basic indie outfit with wholly unremarkable songs

Then there’s the presence across the album of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker – excerpts from two of his speeches feature, on ‘The Dream Has Died’ and ‘The State Of The Union’. On ‘The State Of The Union’, Sligter recites his words over an unsettling synth stab, veering into singsong cadence as she asks “Do we want to let our union unravel before our eyes?” while a sample of Juncker’s original address plays underneath.

lol, just wot i need to get through these suicidal dark winter nights!

literally the most heinous shit I've heard all year

the amount of basic indie that I hear about on ILM these days makes me think the exodus of more pop-oriented posters has had a deleterious effect on our discourse. The Meshell Ndegeocello album an example of the sort of thing I come to ILM to learn about (none of my other channels of learning of new music has mentioned it), but that and the Mr Fingers album have been about it this year on here for me. and this thread is listed a bunch of the acts I tried this year after seeing ILM hype. RIP

there's something about the autechre NTS sessions i find hugely disappointing. do the compositions warrant the interrogation? does the interrogation yield anything? do the reverb settings equal gravitas? why so many "menacing" signifiers? just seems conservatively limited to autechre-sound-world to me.
that's right, i want a peppy lo-fi goofy prog-pop autechre. and i ain't getting one. dang. more fool me.
i shall code a generative listening engine, and the machine solipsism will be complete.

i heard 4 minutes of that Jessica Sligter thing and have donated a year's wages to Arron Banks

'Art-rock' is a stupid term in the first place that can include any old bollocks so there's no sense getting irate about its misuse because it's literally impossible to do so.

the beths are fine, but the way some of you go on about them it's like they're more than an extremely basic indie outfit with wholly unremarkable songs

Haven't you repped heavily for Big Thief and Speedy Ortiz over the last few years?

it's a matter of songwriting sometimes? like especially speedy ortiz are pretty inventive with structure and melody, dull recent album excepted

massaman gai has nailed my own misgivings about the autechre nts sessions as well. elseq was miles better

the mediated worsening of the world has made everyone dour

As long as we move away from reductive poptimism (the worst kind of objective wrongness, by far), all is well with the world.

I'd much rather read trying-too-hard praise for a top 40 act than for the kind of 90s indie that'd have occasioned a trip to the toilets during a 90s festival

Why not neither?

when pop music is good it's politics at its best. unpop(ular) indie delivers more subjective pleasures which end up being more common

Politics, whether at its best or at its worst, is the last thing I want to hear in a musical work. It's always a part of it, of course, even when kept at bay, but aesthetics is more exciting to me.

I was talking about reading about music, i.e. about the hyping of music, the subject of this thread : how we write about music is political, and thus so is how we stand on pop music. anti-pop snobbery is a sure sign that I have no time for a person: eventually they will have me also up against the wall.

I don't hate pop music by any stretch of the imagination, but any discourse that enshrines it above all other genres (this is what I meant by 'reductive poptimism', which is indistinguishable from rockism) is, in fact, politically violent in that it silences less populist approaches to listening and music making. The amount of music out there is more overwhelming than ever – I don't think the solution is to systematically fall back on the same melodic contours, the same simplistic rhythms, the same comfortable timbres that are tautologically popular because they are popular. I always come back to that Kafka line about how a book should be the pickaxe that shatters the icy sea within us – I want music to do the same, whether it be pop or (more often) something else entirely.

We will spare philosophy PhDs (but not critical theorists) when it is time for the cull. xp

I agree with pomenitul. The idea you touched on before euler—that the “subjective” pleasures of indie are worse politically than the pleasures of the masses—seemed really sinister to me.

Systematically favouring works that are short and earwormy (loosely speaking) is an impoverished way of looking at music imho.

xps

Like, I love that experience, but I can't imagine wanting it more than everything else music has to offer.

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.

i can’t believe y’all have “misgivings” about the nts sessions, my god remove your heads from your asses

listen to something and engage with it on its own terms imo, which i guess isn’t what this thread is for

i’ve skipped over the reductive poptimism convo bc it reeks of “this SOUNDS like a real thing that no one actually practices”

i do disagree with almost everything euler said though

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:35 AM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

tbh treeship the zing hits the mark, I can't deny

brad in my world of overeducated people I hear things like pomenitul is saying all the time, which is why I like coming here, rather than talking to those people, about music

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.

I get what you're saying, and that's why I'll never disengage from pop music completely, but its triumphant prevalence can and does often preclude aesthetic diversity from seeping through. Basically, pop seeks to maintain the status quo, i.e. the fact that, genre-wise, the top 1% dominates 99% of the musical market. Sure, the analogy is flawed, in that it's not just about concentration of capital but also about concentration of collective affect, yet insofar as ears don't come with lids, we are so used to having certain sounds thrust upon us in public spaces that I can't help but feel like we've been 'groomed' to dislike anything that diverges from the Earworm God. If anything, there's a political point to be made (not that it hasn't been, but I feel like it's less audible in our current century) that exposure to un-pop music attunes us to other ways of listening, which is a potentially ethical act.

By the way, I have also gotten into such arguments with stuffy (mostly French) academic types who in reality care very little for music, and I tend to adopt a stance similar to yours, Euler, but I'm no less wary of overcorrection, which I encounter far more often in the English-speaking world.

yeah I get that; ILM has never seemed to me to be a home for pop-as-status-quo, so these discussion are different than when I'm talking with someone sneering at anything written during the twentieth century, which is more like the people I spend my life with

I feel you, those are the absolute worst. They usually care more for the prestige that ostensibly comes with such an opinion than the music itself, which they don't even listen to anyway.

The Beths, what are you all thinking?

― boxedjoy

tunes are good

you guys really need to read more late 20th century rock crit if you don’t get why poptimism became a thing in the first place. raging against the 1/99 split of pop and everything else while denigrating an ideology that came up *because* of a similar elitism (from the ruling class within media) is... ironic? utterly white dude?

market poptimism, which is uncritical and rooted in the hope that an artist retweets praise and lifts the social media profiles of the writer/publication, is closer to the straw man against whom you’re railing

I'm not exactly defending rockism here. If anything, it's a tired debate – there are so many genres that get little to no attention at all.

Incidentally, my (French) wife has far, far less patience for poptimism than I do. The whole 'lol white dude' thing is so clichéd and American-centric.

and yet it isn’t untrue if you actually go back and read old music writing and look at the bylines

sorry to annoy your lady with facts

I don't really get what you're arguing tbh. That the diversity I'm clamouring for is wrong because pop deserves its continued revenge on rockism?

I mean theres no such thing as apolitical music - every choice and every sound is the result of a political positioning, whether it's avant-garde experimental sounds or heteronormative pop love songs. Your relation to a piece of music is informed by the interplay between your own beliefs and how they integrate with the aesthetic choices made

I mean theres no such thing as apolitical music - every choice and every sound is the result of a political positioning, whether it's avant-garde experimental sounds or heteronormative pop love songs. Your relation to a piece of music is informed by the interplay between your own beliefs and how they integrate with the aesthetic choices made

Also, generally I find that people who claim they have no time/interest for politics are people who have the privilege to switch off from it and not constantly be engaged - lucky you if that's the case but as a gay man in a world still populated by huge numbers of people who literally dont want me to exist I can't afford that luxury. That permeates everything I do even if its on the tiniest level and to pretend it doesn't is disingenuous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZYHP6IBoac

I mean the finer points of poptimism are there for debate if you like but I really get my back up when people think it's easy to seperate aesthetics from politics and wilfully disengage with their own positions of power and privilege as a listener and consumer

My position is that music is ever political but that it doesn't boil down to politics.

As for poptimism, of course the history of the term matters, but if anything, it didn't go far enough. So many sounds are still excluded.

progtimism

The Beths, what are you all thinking?

going to studiously avoid pomenitul's excellent baiting and second boxedjoy. or at least...the beths are fine, but the way some of you go on about them it's like they're more than an extremely basic indie outfit with wholly unremarkable songs

I know right, how could anyone enjoy these intricate, joyous, technically proficient pop songs?!

I usually give most albums a full play to decide if I like them or not but I couldn't finish The Beths one. I like a lot of retro-leaning jangly indie but it sounded so flat and lifeless and the exact moment I gave up was when some harmonies crept in and nobody in the studio sounded remotely like they were doing anything beyond fulfilling an obligation

if you have recent power-pop you'd like to recommend in its place I'd love to hear it

^^Have you heard the Courtneys? (They don’t have a release as “recent” as the Beths, granted)

Bring back Vivian Girls etc

Poptimism refers to like a really specific opposition to a boring and homogenous canon that rock critics had built up in the US and UK. And I am for it—there was no small amount of misogyny and homophobia underneath the “disco sucks” attitude of the 70s and how that filtered down to critical consensus in the 90s. I’m proud of ILM to the extent that ILM helped undermine this specific kind of aesthetic bigotry.

However, as a general attitude, “poptimism” is a disaster because popular taste more often than not props up popular prejudices. Is anyone here a poptimist of sitcoms? Of cable news? Of course not. Even like, with pop music, it’s idiotic to say the highest charting stuff is the best out of democratic solidarity is dumb. All this music might tell you is what the common denominators are among a vast swath of listeners. It doesn’t tell you much about what really drives any one of these listeners, because “the masses,” to quote another poster, is just an abstraction. Championing “the masses” seems at odds with being interested in people, even.

I like the Courtneys but they're a cut below the Beths on a craft/songwriting level imho

I love a few Vivian Girls songs but if you're gonna dis someone for rote songwriting... xps

I know its not the same thing really but when I listen to the grace of the new Belly album or the cathartic new Hop Along, the Beths just felt so anaemic and scrappy

Obvz the correct answer is Charly Bliss

You're right, none of those bands are doing even remotely the same thing.

matt dc's post on the beths' thread sums it up for me:

This is like the least challenging album ever recorded but it's really addictive. I dunno, sometimes, more occasionally than is claimed, when you've got the tunes that's really all that matters.

Interesting to hear they've got a jazz background though, it does SOUND much tighter and more muscular than records like this usually do. Like usually you listen to a straightforward indie rock record and it feels like aesthetic decisions had been made because the band weren't capable of doing much more, or couldn't think of anything else to do. Here, it feels like they've arranged things this way because that's what the song NEEDS.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 11 October 2018 12:28 (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I only mention the Courtneys, b/c when I read a Beths review they were mentioned as a comparison (and I love the Courtneys) — so I checked out the Beths and was like, uhh this ain’t at all on the same level for me.

(The Beths seem fine, I wouldn’t “complain” about them; just not my thing, I guess)

I mean if they weren't getting so this buzz - i wouldn't notice or bother. But I'm genuinely curious - a lot of posters whose taste I normally look to for recommendations and feel alignment with are really into it and I dont hear what there is to hear in it, which makes me wonder what I'm missing

I'm glad this thread reminded me to listen to the Beths again, anyway.

Agree with everything Pomeniful said, and some others as well. Sorry to continue that conversation / tired debate (indeed) but:
Have people come up with a term for the belief that all things hip hop (pop rap, trap etc) are the rightful cultural compass and center of all musical dynamism ? Because I hear that a lot, while Poptimism seems to have reduced to a narrow obsession over a few exaggerated / delirious / ecstatic pop qualities (that can only be found on records that explicitly go for them and which seem forced to me).

@boxedjoy, I think you might be listening too hard.

I usually give most albums a full play to decide if I like them or not but I couldn't finish The Beths one. I like a lot of retro-leaning jangly indie but it sounded so flat and lifeless and the exact moment I gave up was when some harmonies crept in and nobody in the studio sounded remotely like they were doing anything beyond fulfilling an obligation

― boxedjoy

If you gave up half way through the album Boxedjoy, you missed some of the very best songs. I really can't see where you're coming from with it sounding flat and lifeless, that's exactly the opposite of how it comes across to me. And the harmonies are like the best part. Really shocked you dislike them so much.

Oh and Imago, every time you go on about your crusade against boring indie music or whatever it is, I always smile to myself about how you liked some of that Paul Draper album from last year even nominating a song from it for the end of year poll. I heard that album, it was as dull as music can possibly be.

man, sonned

I like this Beths thing. Nice vocals and as Matt DC, it's easy to listen to while still having plenty of oomph

what i will say for the beths album is that it ends strong

However, as a general attitude, “poptimism” is a disaster because popular taste more often than not props up popular prejudices. Is anyone here a poptimist of sitcoms? Of cable news? Of course not. Even like, with pop music, it’s idiotic to say the highest charting stuff is the best out of democratic solidarity is dumb. All this music might tell you is what the common denominators are among a vast swath of listeners. It doesn’t tell you much about what really drives any one of these listeners, because “the masses,” to quote another poster, is just an abstraction. Championing “the masses” seems at odds with being interested in people, even.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 5:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gonna ignore all the silly strawmanning upthread but the reference to TV here is interesting because TV is probably more like music than at any time in the past owing to the sheer explosion of content on streaming networks, meaning that rockism/poptimism ideas possibly "map" onto TV better now than they used to. I mean, they always did to some extent, but I think that the increase in choice between cultural products has meant that the dynamics of stratification, popularity and critical consensus are more similar now.

And you do see "poptimism of sitcoms" - see e.g. this piece on The Good Place: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/04/magazine/good-place-michael-schur-philosophy.html. "Poptimism of sitcoms" is not saying "this sitcom is the most popular and therefore is the best" or "sitcoms are popular therefore we should talk about them and not Scandanavian crime dramas", it's saying "this sitcom is doing things that are worth paying attention to, and part of that is about the rules and functions of the sitcom format and how the show utilises them in new and interesting ways."

Good sitcoms have always been worth taking/writing about, same with pop music, what’s different now?

I agree, the only difference is that industry-wide comparisons between popular music and popular television are probably easier to make without necessitating so many wildly misleading conflations and analogies.

"this sitcom is the most popular and therefore is the best" or "sitcoms are popular therefore we should talk about them and not Scandanavian crime dramas"

i feel like we've been slacking and now the idiot strawman poptimism is the definition of poptimism to a new generation

disappointed in Treeship for falling for it

he’s definitely not the only one

i mean i also said this

Poptimism refers to like a really specific opposition to a boring and homogenous canon that rock critics had built up in the US and UK. And I am for it—there was no small amount of misogyny and homophobia underneath the “disco sucks” attitude of the 70s and how that filtered down to critical consensus in the 90s. I’m proud of ILM to the extent that ILM helped undermine this specific kind of aesthetic bigotry.

if poptimism means keepings an open mind and not falling for facile "high/art low art" or "serious/trivial" binaries, then i definitely support it. but i think most people support this view. that is, unless you're someone who is all in for the avant garde, but then again, this kind of person wouldn't be a "rockist" in the first place. if i understand it correctly, the rockists were incurious chauvinists who had a very banal understanding of what "greatness" was.

in the field of sitcoms you don't need a poptimism because there is no dominant rockism of sitcom criticism. the critical consensus in the world of sitcoms is that "the good place" is good. in this field, if you were to talk about "poptimism" it just sounds like populism--championing the viewers over the critics.

poptimism needs a corresponding rockism to make sense as a concept, imo.

poptimism means keepings an open mind and not falling for facile "high/art low art" or "serious/trivial" binaries

imo this is p much it

poptimism needs a corresponding rockism to make sense as a concept, imo.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:38 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why? just define poptimism as above, then define rockism as the opposite of that

bc what is the "pop" in poptimism if it doesn't mean affirming popular taste over the critics? in the instance of early 2000s music criticism, this was the progressive attitude. it's not always.

it's not progressive and probably never was (and that was never the point anyway), it's just correct

There is no dominant rockism of "sitcom" criticism because there isn't really a discourse of sitcom criticism as a standalone thing, but there certainly is / has been a dominant rockism of tv criticism, and the "poptimism" of tv criticism would be e.g. critics who point out that we shouldn't automatically assume that the "prestige" television shows are more important or more worthy of consideration than, say, a trashy sitcom or drama.

A more on-point example (though not relating to sitcoms) would be this Nussbaum piece on why she prefers (preferred?) 'Scandal' to 'House of Cards': https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/25/shark-week

that's a fair point

the "poptimism" of tv criticism would be e.g. critics who point out that we shouldn't automatically assume that the "prestige" television shows are more important or more worthy of consideration than, say, a trashy sitcom or drama.

Any critic who would think or practice the *opposite* POV is a v poor TV critic... just sayin’.

rockism of sitcoms is like, knee-jerkedly asserting that the british version is better or something

i guess so. that doesn't seem like a privileged position though, just an ignorant one. i don't feel like it's oppressive in any way.

whereas as a high school student i definitely felt like there was some kind of hazy consensus that pink floyd was important in a way madonna wasn't, or whatever. so that kind of attitude was worth challenging.

I listen to a podcast where the guys are sort of sitcom “rockists”; they make fun of The Golden Girls (of all things) and think that Married With Children was “dumb, lowbrow” humor, or something.

To return the topic: in high school, I read the NY Times Arts & Leisure section religiously; and I feel like Pareles and that crew treated the big new pop releases just as “seriously” as they did rock releases. Maybe it’s a newspaper thing in general (as opposed to the “music press”), but they definitely didn’t “privilege” rock, from what I can remember.

bc what is the "pop" in poptimism if it doesn't mean affirming popular taste over the critics? in the instance of early 2000s music criticism, this was the progressive attitude. it's not always.

FFS this was never what poptimism was about.

Please read the following articles from the Poptimist column before condescending to explain to everyone what the term means:

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/6608-poptimist-4/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/6772-poptimist-11/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7189-poptimist-18/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7549-poptimist-19/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7681-poptimist-23/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7760-poptimist-25/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7836-poptimist-31/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7848-poptimist-32/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/8724-take-me-to-the-river/

Read all of them actually (and as much of 'Popular' as you can) but these are the ones that provide the broadest sense of what I would consider a 'poptimist' approach to music taste from the critic who arguably best exemplified the approach.

Tom's column was really the best thing ever wasn't it

i guess so. that doesn't seem like a privileged position though, just an ignorant one. i don't feel like it's oppressive in any way.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not about "oppressive" though. i feel like ur anachronistically trying to re-write history where poptimism is a direct precedent to late '10s online woketivism, when it really wasn't about that and there's no direct line to be drawn between the two

feels inconceivable that something at the level of quality of Tom and Nabisco's columns a decade ago could exist on the internet today, when they were for largely taken for granted at the time

I wish Tom Ewing had never stopped writing those.

Does he write any variation of that column nowadays? I think he retired from music criticism a long time ago but I’m not sure.

it's not about "oppressive" though. i feel like ur anachronistically trying to re-write history where poptimism is a direct precedent to late '10s online woketivism, when it really wasn't about that and there's no direct line to be drawn between the two

― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:21 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not saying that, but definitely for its advocates poptimism was a more cosmopolitan attitude and it was supposed to shake off the scleroticism of how people had been thinking about music and culture. so it targeted a certain set of critical prejudices.

it just seems like it's a concept that makes sense within a particular dialectic and outside of that things get messy

i'll read some of those tom ewing columns. i have enjoyed his writing in the past but it's been a while since i read his work.

I agree with flopson.

The other important thing to note about woketivism is that in a lot of poptimism vs rockism debates it's arguably more on the side of rockism than poptimism.

Although of course there's also non-woke current music writing which is basically just celebrity gossip or stanning.

But the important thing about all three trends is that, for the most part, they signify at least in part a focus on the "real" personality of the pop star, whereas a certain throughline of poptimist criticism was that, to the extent personality mattered, it was largely imagined personality as signified by records and music videos.

Like, if you wanted to find the very opposite of current trends (and which also sheds some interesting light on what's changed in the last 18 years) it would be this earlier and quite-difficult-to-track-down Ewing piece on Jessica Simpson:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010411132451/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk:80/~tewing/jessica.html

The other important thing to note about woketivism is that in a lot of poptimism vs rockism debates it's arguably more on the side of rockism than poptimism.

i think that's what this thread by Whiney was about thread to track Poptimism 2.0

that whiney thread is the only time i've seen someone seriously argue in favour of the strawman poptimism of "poptimism should mean liking things because they're popular" everyone was complaining about earlier

xpost yep totally.

Also I would like to point out that I was OTM in that thread.

Another "founding text" for me:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010419013349/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk:80/~tewing/realfake.html