laurel halo albums/eps poll

DJ Kicks it is, one of the most awesome mixtapes of last year. Out of her "proper" records, In Situ or Raw Silk are the best. The ones with vocals are pretty awful.

"one of the most awesome mixtapes of last few years"

Hour Logic with the title track still one of my decade favourites

now that two options have oneiroi on this is trickier

quarantine

Chance of Rain, with Raw Silk Uncut Wood a close second.

voted chance of rain because the title track is just amazingly tense and beautiful and epic and soothing and damn it's good.

Raw Silk Uncut Wood

Chance of rain

dust, dj kicks, chance of rain are the ones i like. i find most of the rest of her catalogue bad to barely listenable. voted dj kicks but prob should've voted dust tbh

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h-NpWE5leKQ

I don’t know if mobile YouTube links embed but I love this track from the borden/ferraro/halo/lopatin/some other person RVNG thing

it’s not techno though, be careful

I deeply love In Situ, but have struggled to find a way in to the other records on the list. Do please feel free to point me in the right direction if you have any tips based on this.

Chance of Rain is my soul

I deeply love In Situ, but have struggled to find a way in to the other records on the list. Do please feel free to point me in the right direction if you have any tips based on this.

I vaguely remember an AllMusic Review of Quarantine that described it as a "science-fiction horror film," which imo is a good way to make sense of the record. you also just have to accept that it takes a few listens before the unpleasantness of it all becomes appealing

quarantine some of the worst music ever, to me. it's cool that she can make some of the best music ever and also the worst tho

I'm taken with the idea of Quarantine and not much else.

voting Aquifer

words are just words
words are just words that you soon forgetttt

i'll never convince anyone who hates her singing of quarantine's greatness which tbh is a relief

but on its own i think "thaw" is just gorgeous, singing on down

"light + space" too, they take the parts of the album that are scraping against each other and make them relatively beautiful. i just think the scraping is beautiful too, it's like the sounds you'd hear just before you got sucked out of an airlock into space—mechanisms shifting, sirens screaming, air loudly decompressing, disembodied voices in your ears singing piercing antiharmonies. "science-fiction horror film" otm

also, i only just figured this out bc i finally put my lists together but: a top five record of the decade for me

and honestly i was unconvinced when i first heard it! there's probably evidence in the other thread. i kinda wanted things from her that i could more readily identify as songs if they weren't going to be lush house jams a la hour logic. the power and originality of the work eventually convinced me. i have no way of explaining this further but it is the only record i've ever heard that reflects my experience of being in a body

As I said on the last thread - "Quarantine. I'm still really amused how angry some people here got about that record."

It's got just a little bit of an idea of some avant garde vocal style and so many people threw their toys out the pram. Pph.

good posts, Brad and kraudive

Quarantine vocals are fine compared to some of the shit people rep for on this board! Nyah Nyah Nyah!

Quarantine for sure. I remember before it was released the label streamed it as a single track on Soundcloud, and listening to that felt like being sucked through a portal 1000 years into the future for 40 minutes. It still holds up.

I'm almost tempted to vote for Dust on the strength of Moontalk alone tho. That song throws like 10 of the zaniest, most incongruous ideas together and is an absolute blast.

Sunlight On the Faded is a lovely single that doesn't fit into this poll

i know i've only been talking about quarantine but in situ is genuinely incredible

Raw Silk Uncut Wood because it's the only one that reminds me of Get Up With It

may i direct your attention to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZL_a8jdk4I

Oh hell yeah that's one of her best tracks. Would love a whole album of Rhodes techno from her

it’s been an amazing decade of recordings for her

Quarantine is my favorite but I also really love Chance of Rain and In Situ

Quarantine is an outlier in her recorded work but feels like it has defined her musical aesthetic

Focus I is jazzy, but doesn't have the same brooding intensity of the Raw Silk tracks.

Raw Silk Uncut Wood is great!

I also really like the anxious inscrutable quality of In Situ

Quarantine, no hesitation. still have to digest Dust, tho

i have no way of explaining this further but it is the only record i've ever heard that reflects my experience of being in a body

Any further thoughts on this, Brad? Is it an ontological thing? I've had potentially something similar listening to There's A Riot Goin' On late at night - specifically the bass in Thank You For Talkin' To Me, Africa, which has a sense of something being brought into being. Ontic music?

Anyway, I've not really found a way in with Halo before, but Thaw just nearly took the top of my head off.

Not my favourite artist. I find her sound a bit wispy and gaseous at best, but I remember being quite taken by Quarantine at the time. Vacuum-sealed space-horror is a perfect way to desribe it.

Feel like I'm really missing something with Chance Of Rain and In Situ...I guess it's indicative in Quarantine as an overall piece of work but she's probably the artist with the wildest swing between instant love and unlistenable tedium for me.

(Actress up there too but then he doesn't sing...)

Any further thoughts on this, Brad? Is it an ontological thing?

not really! and idk! sourceless voices and vibrations colliding in a vacuum? that's how it feels

Raw Silk Uncut Wood because it's the only one that reminds me of Get Up With It

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Wednesday, September 25, 2019 8:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I feel this. The jazzier parts of it also give off strong vintage ECM vibes--think Terje Rypdal's Descendre

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

You contrary mother effers ("of who h I am one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsx_p8sNhBA

i love this track so much

i changed my mind, chance of rain is her best

and sort of sneakily became one of my favorite albums of all time

yeh chance of rain is all time

So so rad, one of my favs of the decade.
finally got a copy of Raw Silk Uncut wood a few months back and ahhhhhh what an album to lose yourself in

It’s taken some time - years actually! - but Chance of Rain is starting to sound like a brilliant masterwork to me. It’s creepy, it’s weird as hell, and it bangs like a motherfucker.

Has is really been almost five years since her last release? (Four years if we’re including the DJ Kicks mix)

decided today that chance of rain is my favorite album of all time

<3 - glad to see people ITT gravitate toward it, definitely one of my absolute favorite records of all time

I haven't spent much time with that record, ty