Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1997 Part Two

Bubbling under

35007 - 35007
Absu - The Third Storm of Cythrául
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
Appendix Out - The Rye Bears a Poison
Birchville Cat Motel - Birchville Cat Motel
Cavity - Somewhere Between the Train Station and the Dumping Grounds
Circle - Fraten
Davis Redford Triad - Mystical Path of the Number Eighty Six
Death Cab for Cutie - You Can Play These Songs With Chords
Deftones - Around the Fur
Elf Power - When the Red King Comes
Entombed - To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth
F/i - Helioscopium
Fatso Jetson - Power Of Three
Flying Saucer Attack - New Lands
Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape
Fridge - Ceefax
Gravitar - Now the Road of Knives
Hash Jar Tempo - Well Oiled
Helmet - Aftertaste
HiM - Interpretive Belief System
Hurl - Not a Memory
Joan of Arc - A Portable Model Of
Karate - In Place of Real Insight
Lifter Puller - Half Dead and Dynamite
Magnog - More Weather
Mainliner - Mainliner Sonic
Mirza - Anadromous
Oxbow - Serenade in Red
Rex - 3
Royal Trux - Sweet Sixteen
Shellac - Futurist
Shiner - Lula Divinia
Slo Burn - Slo Burn
Solar Anus - On
Storm and Stress - Storm&stress
Strapping Young Lad - City
Summoning - Dol Guldur
Superchunk - Indoor Living
Teenage Fanclub - Songs From Northern Britain
The Get Up Kids - Four Minute Mile
The Paradise Motel - Left Over Life to Kill
The Sonora Pine - II
Whiskeytown - Stranger's Almanac

Mike's picks make up the most of this poll btw

1997 was the year I got tired of indie rock (apart from the ironclad faces) and I started branching out a bit. I was listening to some jazz, some funk, 60s stuff like beach boys & Scott walker. I started getting into dance music in a big way and that seemed to be the most exciting new music around. I had those Chemical Brothers & Daft Punk albums on tape and I played them constantly that year

I was at the time mostly listening to dance stuff or trying to buy American indie import CDs and loads of old stuff ike jazz, krautrock, funk, folk , classic canon albums known or obscure because I disliked most of the UK indie of the time,

*ironclad faves

Ooh I've never heard that Helmet album

it's pretty good but just, at the time anyway, seen as not as great as the previous 3.

mike you think 97 was a stepdown from 96?

Hard to say. Lots of great stuff from that year. That's a strong list there. Music press was getting very tabloidy around then so I didn't get to hear about the more underground stuff so found myself retreating into the canon and dance at the time.

ok padding these lists out some more

v/a - the conet project
the chrysanthemums - the baby's head
drexciya - the quest
duran duran - medazzaland
felix lajko - lajko felix es zenekara
v/a - linen sampler 1997 ver 1.0
gary lucas - evangeline
ground zero - plays standards
geraldine fibbers - butch
gwal - verlustmeldung
gyorgy ligeti - edition 5: mechanical music
harpy - do not eat
hedningarna - hippjokk
jimi tenor - intervision
junior kimbrough - most things haven't worked out
los fabulosos cadillacs - fabulosos calavera
michael head and the strands - magical world of the strands
orko tha sycotik alien - s/t
sensational - loaded with power
surgeon - basictonalvocabulary
that dog. - retreat from the sun
toenut - two in the pinata
ween - the mollusk
the williams fairey brass band - acid brass
x-legged sally and the smith quartet - bereft of a blissful union

didn't think the list would be so long! lot of stuff on here i really really like, too. as for my vote, easy enough - "shleep", robert wyatt's prozac album. it's a really important record to me.

oh the strands record was on the other list! ok nvm that one

Shleep is brilliant.

Quite a lot of mike's picks were on my list too and I filled the rest out.
I suspect he would like quite a lot across the 2 lists and the bubbling under

duran duran - medazzaland

A workmate was actually telling me about this and said it was this amazing amalgamation of rock & electronica. I think its release got shelved in UK/Ireland so its pretty hard to get a copy of it here. Maybe its on Spotify now.

This was the first year I started buying CD's. Bought copies of Cornelius & Sleater-Kinney (based on a Rolling Stone review iirc) that year on CD

one of these

Erykah Badu - Baduizm
Sleater Kinney - Dig me out
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

velvet rope

A workmate was actually telling me about this and said it was this amazing amalgamation of rock & electronica. I think its release got shelved in UK/Ireland so its pretty hard to get a copy of it here. Maybe its on Spotify now.

― The World According To.... (Michael B)

better than i was expecting from warren cuccurullo-era duran duran, i'll say that

Bjork, Autechre or Wyatt are kinda reflexive choices, though I'm not sure I've even heard two of those in the last 5 years. I probably listened to Dots & Loops more than anything else at the time. That OP8 record was quite good too, from memory. I guess this is a long way of saying that I should shut up and relisten to stuff.

Lots of my favourites here, but Homogenic is my favourite album of the 90s so that.

i hope shleep wins this, great tunes and atmosphere.

Royal Trux - Sweet Sixteen

^^actual winner of all contests

Oh good, you included Levitate! That is my answer

Fuck the war on clichés, OK Computer is the album that has influenced my relationship with music the most over the past 20+ years.

Yo La Tengo, just happened to listen to it in the car a few days ago. Carl Craig, Cornelius, Daft Punk, Elliot Smith, and Jim O'Rourke not far behind.

Oh good, you included Levitate! That is my answer

― imago, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 10:17 (fifty minutes ago)

94-97 Fall is pretty weak imo but they started to get good again around here. Actually, I never liked "Levitate" until lately and I re-listened to it and it sounds so much better now. I love "The Marshall Suite" too.

I'm going with Chemical Brothers. I still reckon its their best.

I think 1997 was one of the best years for albums ever, for me personally. Could vote for 10 records here. Special mention for O'Rourke, Elliott Smith, Stereolab, Cornelius and Spiritualized. But in a death match between Daft Punk and Mogwai the heart ultimate favours the latter. #teamyoungteam

Voted for Daft Punk, just ahead of Erykah Badu and Mogwai. A pretty weak year imho.

Homogenic without a doubt, although I didn't get around to buying it until early in 1998. In actual 1997 I got into Orbital but also liked the Chemical Brothers, Portishead and Daft Punk albums a lot (plus Death in Vegas from the other list), also spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that Fat of the Land wasn't a disappointment. Oh and a friend lent me Wu-Tang Forever, that was my introduction to them and has held up really well.

From my corner, terrible form loading Bjork, Erykah and Janet all onto one of these polls.

I think 1997 was one of the best years for albums ever, for me personally.

Same. Partly for generational reasons, I suppose.

Absolutely. It's looking at these lists that make me realise how extremely open I was to music at the time (17 years old). Daft Punk and GYBE are just two albums that opened the door to whole genres I hadn't before that time. That sort of branching out in all directions wouldn't happen at such a level ever again. (black metal, drone, jazz and classical were still some years away from me at the time)

I was 20 at the time. Only 3 years in the difference from LBI but enough to make me a bit more cynical

Whereas I was 24/25, and consider this a weak year. It's between Blur, Pavement and Cornershop for me. Think I'll vote the latter as that's the one I feel like playing now (and I haven't felt that way about Blur or Pavement for years).

Other favourites from this year are Teenage Fanclub, Asian Dub Foundation's RAFI, Future Bible Heroes' Memories of Love, Uptown Saturday Night by Camp Lo and Vegas by The Crystal Method.

I think that Autechre album has held up really well. I know Amber and Tri Rep are generally the early Autechre picks but Chiastic is when I started to really hear the groove in their music. I still prefer their recent stuff but Chiastic is the one early album that I'd say matches up with anything.

Amusingly, the Chems album still sounds pretty great today while the Daft Punk one seems dated and flat (probably an unpopular opinion, I'm sure). I would've expected the opposite. That Squarepusher one feels really trebly and a bit hyperactive now - absolutely loved this one in college but it doesn't really sound great now. Still might be his best.

Still gonna go for Cornelius - one of those rare albums that essentially puts an end to an entire genre. I still smile every time I hear it.

Yeah, Fantasma is wonderful

I only listened to the Cornelius album for the first time last year! Was familiar with the name, but never checked it out. What a great album indeed, bought it immediately

Yeah it's great.

I bought it then because Toby Amies regularly played 'Star Fruit Surf Rider' on Alternative Nation iirc.

120 minutes was better

Don't know if 120m was better, I sure watched it a lot more than AN. Oh heck, 120 minutes gave me Thin White Rope, it wás better!

Ha! I adored AN at the time, taped every episode etc. Still have fond memories, particularly of the bands playing live in the studio (David Thomas, JSBX, Evil Superstars iirc?). But 120M was great too!

I love that Req album!

toss up between erykah, verve, and the wu

bad timing

Pavement or Robert Wyatt. This was the beginning of a few years where I didn’t listen to new releases very much but went to lots of jazz and avant-garde shows.

This year was the peak of Mogwai seeming interesting.

I think Bad Timing for me too

went for Spiritualized which was my fave album of 97 at the time

did anyone else get into older music at this time like a few people have said already on the thread?

I was just getting started. It's my year 1.

97 actually is one of my favourite years but there's a lot of overlap between my faves and the pollrunners' (but that won't stop me ^_^)

Strange Warmings
Levitate
Spaceage
OOIOO s/t
Now the Road of Knives
Dissolve - Third Album from the Sun
Lapsed
Acid Mothers s/t
Helium - The Magic City
The Fawn
Porter Ricks s/t
The Velvet Rope
The Mystical Path of the Number Eighty-Six
Ground-Zero - Consume Red
Hovercraft - Akathisia
Sweet Sixteen
Around the Fur
OK Computer

spacerock george

I did spend a lot of this year investigating krautrock it's true. It was revitalising to get steeped in the radical spirit for a while. Drum & bass was beginning to lose its way after that long period of exciting development you could hear from week to week.

I love Da Trux but "sweet sixteen" is probably their weakest effort tbh

I had to vote for New Forms as it barely left my walkman all year. My runners up = Radiohead, Daft Punk and Chems albums, honorable mention to the nowadays completely forgotten 'David Holmes – Lets Get Killed'

xp How could you love Da Trux and hold this opinion?!! It is their tour de force, peak of their career!

That would be "cats & dogs"

That's the early "snap into the focus"; the beginning of their "can do no wrong" stretch...

'David Holmes – Lets Get Killed'

should have been on the bubbling under list.

that's a great record, as is This Films Crap Lets Slash the Seats and Bow Down to the Exit Sign, and his Essential Mix is fantastic and all

i must admit he's not somebody i have thought of in at least 15 years.

lj picking the fall over mansun? controversial

always knew lj was frontin'

I would assume LJ would pick The Fall over pretty much anything else, no?

Levitate has been time travel classic for decades now

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i sense 90s weariness

spacerock george

You know what my list is missing? The Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle

15 votes? that's a lot

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

You know what my list is missing? The Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle

― the cretin hits the cast (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, August 20, 2019 2:35 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agreed!!

ILM sure loves The Bjork

Also loves relegating Radiohead to the second tier.

yeah that Space Needle album is sick

Man there's no way I didn't vote for Levitate

👀

0 votes for Hard Normal Daddy is a surprise but I guess it doesn't sound like the future of jazz anymore

0 votes for Cornershop is also surprising but I guess its very much of its time too

I would have voted for Hard Normal Daddy if Bjork, Radiohead, and the Chems weren't options

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1998 Part One

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1998 Part Two

0 votes for Cornershop is also surprising but I guess its very much of its time too

Loved the Cornershop LP at the time. Apart from the tune with the Hazlewood / Sinatra vibe, I've not heard the thing in about a decade.

Particularly because I voted for it. This poll is bogus!

Noticed this on previous polls and one album I had voted for got zero votes so maybe a glitch in the system?

Good results.