Moka's 50 Favorite Albums of the 10's - Pick the Best One.

Oh crap. several albums got overlayed one another goddamit.

Not worth closing this one and correcting it. If you were gonna pick one of those just write in what album you're actually voting for.

Sorry, I'll put my donkey hat and go sit in the corner.

Damn, now this list is up my alley. Now I want to listen to Andy Stott.

Balam Acab - See Birds

Haven't listened to Wander/Wonder in years, but the last time I did it was very affecting.

Kaputt for always and forever

Need to revisit that Floating Points album too, and Under the Skin OST is a great pick.

There’s 3 EPs here (4 if we count Tierra Whack but I think it’s a proper album). The Balam Acab I very rarely listen to anymore but I was insanely obsessed with it in the early 00’s. It still sounds great when I’m in the mood for it.

Floating Points as a sound designer is mindblowing to me. He’s done great things elsewhere but this was my intro to him so it has an extra shine for me.

Under the Skin might be on of my top 3 films of the decade. Love Mica Levi and the OST is an extremely important aspect of the film for me, and it holds up particularly good as a separate piece imho.

*Early 10’s not 00’s

6 albums I love?

Figure KING, Grouper and Destroyer will get plenty of votes so went Yellow Swans.

Under the Skin

6 albums I love?

― Josh in Chicago

Which ones!

great list, wish i had the time to listen to all the ones i hadn't heard

ones on your list which are among my all-time classics:

daphne & celeste
floating points
katie gately
king
scott walker
zs

i also like what i've heard by matana roberts, melanie di biasio, and the meridian brothers, but i haven't heard the records you mention by them

Going Places

Scott, of course

Of this list, the ones I love or really like are: Tribe, Chromatics, Destroyer, Badu, Jessie Ware, Low.

Hopefully someone compiles a giant playlist of all of these, since I am sure there are a bunch of albums I'm overlooking, or that I would love if I listened to!

i also like what i've heard by matana roberts, melanie di biasio, and the meridian brothers, but i haven't heard the records you mention by them

― Kate (rushomancy)

The Melanie De Biasio is more traditionally jazz than what she did later but it’s beautifully produced, arrangements done with excellent taste and has a very smokey, dark atmosphere throughout. I definitely recommend it. It’s easier than her other work but it still has an edge to it that makes it more interesting than other vocal jazz albums.

All the Matana Roberts’ “coin coin” albums are worth it imho… some people prefer the first one. Compared to that one this is more influenced by experimental drone than freejazz.

I think the previous Meridian Brothers album (desesperanza) is the more popular one (at least going by spotify streams). It’s in a very similar vein to that one so if you like that one this is more of that.

Julia, Destroyer & ATCQ my faves from the decade. Going to go with Julia. Beautiful record

ATCQ 4sure

Incredibly, I have not heard a single one of these.

I'd only heard one — fortunately it was one I had on my own list.

Really!? I get some of these are very personal and somewhat obscure picks but going by the results of the ILM POLL 2010-2019 (https://imgur.com/gallery/s4n9Hku) 4 of these albums are in the top 10 and thus very ilmcore (sky ferreira, king, destroyer, atcq).

Maybe you’d like those? At least they seem to be the ones with the most consensus around the board.

Aw so nice to see Vegyn on your list, he's so great

I'm totally open to hearing anything, I've just somehow slept on ilmcore.

Amen Dunes - Freedom

Ooh. Care to expand?

omigod

just spotted We are KING

Games might be my favourite EP of all time. Rush after rush at least until it's over too soon.

On that note if anyone wants to poll their Top 50 EPs I'll stand by you

Amen Dunes - Freedom

Ooh. Care to expand?

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Oof this is a hard one. As evidenced by my posts throughout the years I’m not good at writing about music and of all the records on this list this might be the one with the most generic sound. If you heard other things by him, his previous albums are more unique tbh.

I did a lot of driving on highway that particular year and before each trip I usually created some quick offline playlists with two or three new releases to sample while driving and that one stayed around as a companion for months. It’s just a really good indie pop rock album… nothing truly special about it and there’s probably hundreds of albums that have a similar thing going on but this one was the one that clicked for me.

I’ve read comparisons to Velvet Underground, Springsteen, Kurt Vile, War on Drugs… and dismissively some comparing his voice to David Gray… which I can see somewhat but find offensive either way.

Doing a quick relisten I am hearing why people say it has a Velvet Underground thing going on. Songs like Miki Dora and Believe (two of the best tracks imho) do remind me a bit of Loaded and I love that one.

(Loaded is also great driving music)

I'm sure "Best Driving Music" would make for a good poll, if it hasn't been polled already, but at the same time, I'm sure someone would put, like, Music for Airports on there or something.

Games might be my favourite EP of all time. Rush after rush at least until it's over too soon.

― nashwan

Yes! I’m cheating by adding ep’s in here but I don’t care I like this one better than full albums.

freedom is definitely a wanderer's album, and that makes it very well-suited for the open road. wrote a blurb about it when i made my list of fav albums of 2019:

Conjuring a room-enveloping sound out of surprisingly few parts, Amen Dunes’ latest is meant for the open road. Its tracks are spacious and propulsive, slowly building into rumbling colossi, seemingly constructed out of spare parts. Throughout Freedom, Damon McMahon’s voice is a guiding light, yearning and world-weary, as he organizes his thoughts into hypnotic mantras that cut straight to the core of a wanderer’s soul. “Things were simpler baby, you hear everyone say,” sings McMahon on album highlight “Believe,” “But that don’t make it true.”

Oh wow lol!

Well you were otm with that review, I tested it myself.

Ooh Dominique Dumont, I hope they do another proper album sometime.

Yeah that one and comme ça are very charming little records.

I’ve read comparisons to Velvet Underground, Springsteen, Kurt Vile, War on Drugs… and dismissively some comparing his voice to David Gray… which I can see somewhat but find offensive either way.

Listening to this album now. I can definitely hear David Gray in his tonality and some of his mannerisms, but whatever, I love David Gray. I also hear a fair dose of My Morning Jacket.

honestly I don’t know any David Gray music apart from the “babylon” song, but the blurbs comparing his voice to David Gray were written in a dismissive way which is what I found offensive.

I like Jim James (from My Morning Jacket) as a vocalist, I can hear a bit of that now that you mention it.

I was such a fool when that Jessy Lanza album came out I remember many people raving about it and I was very dismissive about it. Listening to it again it’s probably one of the albums that has aged the best in this list. Glad I came around it.

Julia Holter over Scott Walker; her album has so many songs that are just oblique enough that it's startling when the feelings connect.

ta for the reminder re Sky Ferreira.
definitely one of those albums i bought cos of ILM.
maybe i should do a poll of such albums ..

Julia Holter had a very prolific decade! Took me a while to appreciate her whole body of work and this was the album that sort of opened it for me.

I think Scott Walker and her are in the same ballpark of musicians that can switch convincingly gears between the more abstract and the more accesible. These two are opposite sides of the spectrum in their careers: Bish Bosch is probably Scott Walker’s most difficult album, and on the other hand this is Holter’s less difficult one (or was until that point in her discography at least).

Sky Ferreira was one that clicked for me during the 2010-2019 ILM ALBUMS POLL. I had heard “everything is embarrassing” and people raving about the album at the time and I thought that song was good but not something I wanted a full album of. Was I ever wrong about that one.

So yeah same experience for me. A great album I would have overlooked if not for ILM.

Voted for De Biasio - lots of great stuff here, and plenty I haven't heard yet.

Sault's '7' instead of '5' would've made this harder...

But I have a feeling 'Double Negative' will be the defining album of the 2010s for me, long-term.

Sault is hard because 5+7 were released so close to each other and have a somewhat uniform sound palette that I think of them as a double album. Chose 5 because it was my intro to them and couldn’t stop listening to it when it came out.

Double Negative is one I’m very rarely in the mood to come back to but when I am in such mood it’s the best album ever.

Honestly they were a always a super consistent band but didn’t think Low still had such a great album in them at that point in their career.

I love Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, Low - Double Negative, and Andy Stott - Luxury Problems

In another poll I would vote for the Badu, but here I’m voting for

Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

a seriously underrated and amazing record which is totally immersive and mesmerizing, encompassing ambient music, field recordings, drone, jazz, incantation and spoken word, with many overlayed tracks - to say something about our history of slavery, in what she calls a panoramic quilt

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