Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1999 poll

IMPORTANT IMAGO ADDENDUM JUST IN CASE YOU HATED THIS YEAR

SPECIAL CARDIACS SECTION
Cardiacs - Guns
Spratleys Japs - Pony
The Monsoon Bassoon - I Dig Your Voodoo
Shrubbies - Memphis In Texas
Ultrasound - Everything Picture
Dark Star - Twenty Twenty Sound
Camp Blackfoot - Critical Seed vs The Spartan Society

Coil - Musick To Play In The Dark
Mr Bungle - California
Dodheimsgard - 666 International
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
The Beta Band - The Beta Band
Add N To (X) - Avant Hard
Faust - Ravvivando
The Fall - The Marshall Suite
Hood - The Cycle Of Days And Seasons
Orbital - The Middle Of Nowhere
Anathema - Judgement

we are back to finally finish this thing with the last new year. sort of sad that it is almost all over. will start the Acclaimed Music 1990's Songs around Halloween just like in the past four years.

lol, imago was already for this.

Yeah, I rate that Anathema record quite highly!

From this list, though, Apple Venus.

Musick To Play In The Dark is probably the best album from this year, and that's saying a fucking awful lot given what Cardiacs and chums achieved

From the Acclaimed list, it's Blur still, with a big nod to XTC and a slightly smaller nod to NIN. Maaaybe tiny nods to the Chems and Beck. A little bird beside me says "That year was all about Eminem and Dr Dre for me" so they can join the party

BBB
BBB
BBB
OOO
OOO
OOO
RRR
RRR
RRR
EEE
EEE
EEE
!!!

roots, mos def, blur and bunch of wgaf

ah that sigur ros album is p cool

never heard the fiona apple

Vision Creation Newsun would for sure be my #1
Underworld - Beacoup Fish maybe #2
Apple Venus #3
BT - Movement in Still Life after that. Shut up

not voting for this but what a way to start an album, intro by Iggy Pop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDGVk8N3f-M

I CAN'T STAND IT

so what Iggy Pop was saying, for those who don't know or want to clink the link:

I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dillitante's and ah... and ah... heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it's a... it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that's rotten about rock'n'roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure... I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself . And that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control and ah... when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn't feel anything and you didn't want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I'm saying sir?

On a first pass, Jaxx or Beck or Fiona.

Or Moby! Ugh.

might prefer imago's list (for me personally subjectively & of what i know, prob 1. boredoms 2. the fall)
on poll list, for me personally subjectively, bw magnetic fields & bonnie 'prince' billy

Mos Def or XTC

Coil's Musick To Play in the Dark still sounds amazing and would be my pick.
also could vote for Jim O'Rourke's Eureka, Sonic Youth's Goodby 20th Century, Underworld's Beaucoup Fish
of these, probably 69 Love Songs or I See A Darkness

69 Love Songs, but yeesh, what a crap list.

this is not a crap list at all

Californication being the 17th best album of any year is more ridiculous than any of the howlers going on right now over in the Leonard Maltin thread.

I think Soft Bulletin is my favourite from the list. I haven't listened to it in a while.

keep it like a secret or enema of the state or when the pawn

I was certainly right the other day when I called 1999 the worst year for music in my lifetime. Mos Def's album is cool, and Midnite Vultures is the best Beck album, but 69 Love Songs would have been better as, like, 16 love songs. Everything else on this list I either don't care about anymore or have hated since it came out. (imago's "JUST IN CASE YOU HATED THIS YEAR" addendum only adds fuel to the fire of 1999 being THE. WORST. (except for maybe the Boredoms album.))

this is a lousy list imo. just looking at it makes me feel some type of way.
a couple of mitigating factors:
used to LOVE Sigur Ros around the time of this album. John Peel played an instrumental tune off the Ny Batteri EP and I immediately rushed out to order it especially from my local indie shop. the album is very good too although I soon grew bored of them afterwards. went back to it the other week and it's still good though.
Blur - 13. maybe one of the reasons I have mixed emotions about music from this year is it's both the year I left home to go to uni and also the year it arose my parents were going to break up and eventually separate and divorce. I was still p much a kid at heart and learning how to have adult relationships and the whole time was bewildering. 13 was bought for me as a present by my mum just before everything got out, but it later transpired that this was kind of a peace offering. it's a bit of an odd one. I'd say it's about 50% brilliant and 50% throwaway. Coffee + TV and Battles are among my favourite Blur songs but like Trailerpark and Swamp Song sound like B sides. Tender is such a drag to listen to these days, I doubt I could 'get through' an entire listen.
Big shout out for dEUS, one of my favourite bands of the 90s who deserve a lot more press than they do get. while I prefer their earlier incarnation as a Waitsian folk/jazz/rock ensemble, the Ideal Crash is an excellent alternative rock album.
plenty of decent albums in this list taken on their own terms but just looking at them presented in this list makes me feel a mix between blah and bleugh. I didn't enjoy 1999 or the music that was popular. for me, the inescapable sounds were Californication, Play, Travis and lots of bad Ibiza trance-pop, nu-metal and cheesy UK garage numbers down the student union. on the plus side, 1999 was also a big year of discovery. I was totally getting into Warp and Grand Central Records (did Aim's 'Cold Water Music' come out this year?), discovered the Beach Boys and became obsessed by a lot of older music, Pavement, dub reggae, all sorts, so it wasn't all bad at all for me.

Remedy I guess, maaaybe The Fragile. Not a particularly inspiring list for me.

Would write-in for Mr. Bungle's California if I could.

throwing my vote, in the absence of vision creation newsun, for le tigre

haha travis

Yeah 1999 wasn't a particularly great year and this list has hardly any of my personal favourites, e.g.

The Olivia Tremor Control - Black Foliage (my #1)
OOIOO - Feather Float
Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Pole - 2
Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
Robert Pollard/Doug Gillard - Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
Kelis - Kaleidoscope
Gas - Königsforst
Jim O'Rourke - Eureka
Jay-Z - Life & Times of S. Carter
Pavement - Terror Twilight
Prince Paul - A Prince Among Thieves
Saves the Day - Through Being Cool
Ghost - Snuffbox Immanence
Missy Elliott - Da Real World
Low - Secret Name

Voting Soft Bulletin but would go for Vision Creation Newsun if it was here. (I never think of it as a 1999 album - I think the release dates were '99 for Japan, '00 for the US and '01 for the UK?)

Missy Elliott - Da Real World

Yeah easily the best Missy album this.

ah 1999 was königsforst too!
excellent album

Oh shit, Black Foliage was this year? Belongs on my list too...

Emergency and I. No contest.

99 for me is all about Set and Setting, Feather Float, Veterans of Disorder, Under Glass; Ravvivando is great too. But I gotta admit, if I'm choising from this list, I'm probably going with Dr Dre

I wouldn't say 19991 was a 'bad' year - because I think that's lazy thinking - but I do think it was an odd year. I remember talk at the time about artists holding over releases until 2000 because of -what?- millennium fever, or something? Which kind of seems crazy now. Most things on this list that I liked at the time I feel like I've outgrown since.

69 or I see a darkness.

write-in for Eureka

Stars Forever was 1999, right? does anyone know what Noah Brill is doing these days?

Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture by Go Kart Mozart probably my favourite 1999 album, followed by Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night by Stereolab, good year for albums with long titles, especially with that Fiona Apple one

I don't know if this list seems better or worse than previous years, exactly, but it seems more starkly divided into things I really love and things I have no interest in at all. this is the first year where I remember some of this coming out/was listening to them at the time, idk if that is why?

I hooked back into current music in 1999 but more because of the singles. Still, this list doesn't bother me at all. At the time, I liked all of these:

2 205 Sigur Rós - Agætis Byrjun
8 644 Basement Jaxx - Remedy
9 696 The Roots - Things Fall Apart
12 798 Tom Waits - Mule Variations
13 811 Beck - Midnite Vultures
14 827 Mos Def - Black on Both Sides
16 1056 Rage Against the Machine - The Battle of Los Angeles
20 1401 The Chemical Brothers - Surrender
22 1486 Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
26 1651 Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...

Voting Remedy.

My shortlist of stuff not on the list:

800 Cherries - Piccolo
Cibo Matto - Stereo*Type A
Citrus - Splash
Destiny's Child - The Writing's On The Wall
Dressy Bessy - Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons
Essex Green - Everything is Green
Fugazi - Instrument
HiM (Doug Scharin's band, not the Finnish thing) - Sworn Eyes
Jim O'Rourke - Eureka
Lamb - Fear of Fours
Mr. Bungle - California
Olivia Tremor Control - Black Foliage
Oval - Szenariodisk
Pavement - Terror Twilight
Royal Trux - Veterans of Disorder
Sam Prekop - S/T
Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock
Solex - Pick Up
Stereolab - Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night
Takako Minekawa - Fun 9
US Maple - Talker

my 1999:

Macha - See It Another Way
5ive Style - Miniature Portraits
Prolapse - Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes
Red Monkey - Difficult Is Easy
Atman - Tradition
The Hosemobile - What Can & Can’t Go On
Smith & Mighty - Big World Small World
Innerzone Orchestra - Programmed
Super Collider - Head On
Spacek - Curvatia
Cousteau - Cousteau
Bows - Blush
Andrea Parker - Kiss My Arp
Natacha Atlas - Gedida
Fridge - Eph
Aki Tsuyuko - Ongakushitsu
Mr. Oizo - Analog Worms Attack
Dot Allison - Afterglow

plus Talker and Pole 2 from the previous lists

that list is pretty dire imo

i see a darkness is amazing though

that roots album is too

I don't recognize anything on that list cock chirea; is it electronica? I might of heard the names Super Collider and Mr. Oizo but I don't remember ever listening to them.

Cousteau were Tindersticks-esque suits and morbidity and whisky.
Bows is Luke Sutherlands ambient triphop sex duo post Long Fin Killie.
Fridge is Four Tet's teenage postrock trio.
Mr Oizo is Flat Beat acid techno minimalism.

The Bows album Cassidy was really good but that came a bit later

xxxpost That entire Iggy Pop interview mentioned upthread is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-WxFyuHsbE

No 1999 is complete without

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82ukYXj52U

First Bows album is fine too, but I prefer Cassidy (2001).

My fav 1999 hh albums not on the list:

Naughty By Nature 'Nature's Fury'
Kurupt 'Streetz is a mutha'
8Ball and MJG 'In Our Lifetime vol 1'
Kool Keith 'Black Elvis/Lost In Space'
Jay Z 'Vol 3'
Mac 'World War III'
Method Man & Redman 'Blackout'
Nas 'I Am'
Prince Paul 'A Prince Among Thieves'
Missy 'Da Real World'
Mobb Deep 'Murda Muzik'

i do wonder if the next set is actually better?

31 1921 MF Doom Operation: Doomsday Abstract Hip Hop
32 2047 Boredoms Vision Creation Newsun Experimental Rock, Psychedelic Rock
33 2133 Blumfeld Old Nobody Indie Pop, Singer/Songwriter
34 2164 Low Secret Name Slowcore
35 2174 Slipknot Slipknot Nu Metal
36 2209 Shack H.M.S. Fable Britpop
37 2232 Underworld Beaucoup Fish Progressive House, Techno
38 2297 Pavement Terror Twilight Indie Rock
39 2351 Super Furry Animals Guerrilla Neo-Psychedelia
40 2404 Jim O'Rourke Eureka Art Pop, Chamber Pop, Jazz Pop
41 2551 Smog Knock Knock Lo-Fi Indie, Singer/Songwriter
42 2552 Sleater-Kinney The Hot Rock Indie Rock
43 2793 Macy Gray On How Life Is Contemporary R&B, Neo-Soul
44 2912 Handsome Boy Modeling School So... How's Your Girl? Hip Hop
45 Supergrass Supergrass Britpop, Power Pop

Ooooo knock knock.

my Top 5 out of that:

Super Furry Animals
Pavement
Jim O'Rourke
Supergrass
Shack

haha, who's there?

j/k

This is easily Super Furry Animals. Someone said they were going to sign up for a SFA poll, really wish that would happen.

69 Love Songs was the album that, for me, represented (heralded? caused?) the end of a need for new music. At the time, I regarded that as high praise. Still my favorite album of the whole damn decade.

Apologies to Tom Waits and XTC who were also vote-worthy.

Good year, alarming list - RHCP and Travis particularly jump out as having no business being here.

Soft Bulletin, narrowly over Le Tigre.

Kleenex Girl Wonder, Ponyoak came out this year, end of story.

I would put that, Club 8 Friend I Once Had, Utopia Parkway, and the Diskothi-Q Football Albums over all these. 69LS I recognize in some sense to be objectively a well-made album but it makes me long for what came before it.

Surprised to see Dre's 2001 so low. Good year! Even the lower-tier stuff I still dig, like The Man Who. Poor Travis. Always amused how the hype for them completely disappeared after Coldplay's Parachutes was released. I'm scanning this list and really there's not a dud on this list. Even Nine Inch Nails made a good album! This is Soft Bulletin for me, but if you haven't heard it before I recommend you find the original version of the album with the Peter Mokram remixes of all the singles. The non-remixed versions are too sparse with really horrible Dave Fridmann production.

100% Ginuwine

nice to see that macha album get some love

from this list would guess le tigre is the one i've heard most w/ 69 love songs right behind it. i'd have them third and fourth now, voted jaxx over mos def.

Le Tigre

Mule Variations from the list. Knock Knock or Eureka from the year

Salad days huh

Think I have that XTC alb on a cassette somewhere. Love I'd like that from it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Acclaimed Music 31-45 (+ 10 imago random picks) Albums from 1999 poll

Kleenex Girl Wonder, Ponyoak came out this year, end of story.

Aw, you just reminded me that I missed Graham Smith Is The Coolest Person Alive in '98. Great album.

throwing my vote, in the absence of vision creation newsun, for le tigre
― nxd

ditto

69 Love Songs was the album that, for me, represented (heralded? caused?) the end of a need for new music

wtf does this even mean? Nonsense.

you're telling someone that their own subjective experiences are nonsense, sicko?

I read it as "the world doens't need new music after this album" but actually perhaps it's just "I don't need new music after this album". The first is ridiculous nonsense; the second is still a pretty bloody silly idea, like that loon Ned found a few months ago who claimed to have 'finished' his record collection and was now going to sell it because it was perfect, or some such ridiculous horseshit. Life is a process; art is a process; music is a process; change is good, newness is good; if you don't need new art/music/experience/life anymore you're dead.

huh. I read it as 'a craving for new music had been satiated for a while' but I guess it's ambiguously worded.

I liked a lot of these at the time but go back to precisely none of them.

after much deliberation i'm voting for The Soft Bulletin.

Voted D Plan by default.

I voted for Dismemberment Plan in this poll and Boredoms in the 31-45 poll. here are my special snowflake picks (since everyone else is doing it):

Zeena Parkins - Pan-Acousticon
Windy & Carl - A Dream of Blue
My Favorite - Love at Absolute Zero
Mark Lanegan - I'll Take Care of You
Plone - For Beginner Piano
Child's View - Funfair
Bob Drake - Medallion Animal Carpet
Angel'in Heavy Syrup - IV
Anja Garbarek - Balloon Mood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioCiyCl-oBA

Windy & Carl - A Dream of Blue

(nvm, this was from 1997)

Never heard any of their albums, but I've always liked that particular My Favorite track.

really have no idea what is going to win. never at home when i get the results, holiday's are nice.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

was not expecting that to win. i have had a few girlfriends who have loved that album but never did get to hear it. maybe its time.

It's a boring album

You might like it

shouts out to the keep it like a secret voters, you remembered the '90s correctly

It's time for me to come to terms with the fact that the ILM I came to is no longer the ILM that is.

*acclaims music*

6 406 Eminem - The Slim Shady LP 0

This makes me ridiculously happy. Like, people are finally getting what shit he was even then.

I just listened to 4 and 1/2 magnetic fields songs. I had totally forgot what they sounded like. Calling this album boring was just a knee-jerk reaction because I had dismissed it over a decade ago.

It appears to be indie folk-rock/psych music that requires the listener to empathize with that voice in order to like this album. So basically I have nothing against it but it doesn't resonate with me.

indie folk-psych is precisely what the magnetic fields were

I finally backed a winner!

It's time for me to come to terms with the fact that the ILM I came to is no longer the ILM that is.

― Norse Jung (Eric H.), Tuesday, September 8, 2015 3:11 AM (10 hours ago)

Magnetic Fields is what would have won in the Sinisterite era, which was p. much the first era of ILM, so this is like the most old-school result ever.

I voted for it, btw.

It is the best album on this list though I did not vote for it.

It is the best album on this list so I voted for it.

there's a lot of really horrible music on it, but a few truly great A+ songs.

Sorry, had been off the board for a few days.

I read it as "the world doens't need new music after this album" but actually perhaps it's just "I don't need new music after this album".

It was the latter. The world always needs new music. At the time, I didn't.

Life is a process; art is a process; music is a process; change is good, newness is good; if you don't need new art/music/experience/life anymore you're dead.

...to a point. Newness is good; tradition is also good.

Music is a process; it is also a fixed entity (especially recorded music).

And sometimes, when life is handing you a whole bunch of new experiences at the same time (as it did for me ca. 2000), the newness in your life does not need to be new music.

Bob Drake - Medallion Animal Carpet

Ooooohhhh this is an interesting album, ty for reminding me