Moka's 50 Favorite Albums of the 90's - Pick the Best One.

Gonna be boring and vote Loveless, though I like a few of these (Lali Puna being prob the most obscure).

i'll wait until whiney stops by to total up how many black ppl are on your list

Well, my 70's and 60's list are filled with black artists if that makes any difference.

no rap music for you eh

granted at least a third of this is stuff I've never even heard of

The only album that I really really love in 90's rap/hip hop is that ATCQ. Plenty of amazing singles throughout the decade but not that many albums that made a heavy impression on me. I'm also not a huge connoisseur of the genre, of course.

Nice list! These are all superimportant albums for me:

Arthur Russell - Another Thought (1994)
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (1999)
Lou Harrison - Gamelan Music (1992)
Palace Music - Viva Last Blues (1995)
Stereolab - Peng! (1992)

These albums I know nothing about but am curious:

Carlos Maria Trindade / Nuno Canavarro - Mr. Wollogallu (1991)
Chöying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts - Cho (1997)
William Parker & In Order to Survive - The Peach Orchard (1998)

Judging by both of your lists I think you'll love those seandalai.

To expand on those:

Mr. Wollogallu - Closest reference is perhaps Uakti and Phillip Glass. Acoustic loops with some unusual ambience sounds in the background.
Cho - Tibetan chants paired with some very subtle jazz instrumentation. Great recording quality too.
The Peach Orchard - This is probably the most difficult and well known album of the three. My dog loves it, btw. William Parker has the reputation of being one of the best avant jazz musicians out there and this is him at his best. As usual with avantjazz you have to be in the right mood to like it, though.

wrt The Peach Orchard I'm mostly wondering what sets this one above the 50 other 90s William Parker albums?

Cool list! Leaning towards Ground Zero.

good list moka. had to go with tortoise.

i know a mere handful of this list, and the lack of devo means i have to choose gas.

such gorgeousness on a disc.

Good call on Chö - it's sounding really nice so far.

mr. wollogallu has been a personal fave for years, it's great to see that record on the list. i also love laika, quickspace, prolapse, macha et al. i dont think i've ever listened elf bagatellen by the schlippenbach trio, but i have complete combustion and dig that one a lot. intrigued by taku sugimoto and jin hi kim, never heard 'em.

Oof, I should have known being a Moka album poll that it'd be tough, but I had no idea it'd be this tough. I mean, I should vote for the 'Scopes, them having been such an important part of my life, but... Jesus Christ this is such a good list. I'm thinking maybe Peng! will win out ultimately.

Also, I love you for including this: John Sims - Palomino (1998).

I voted ATCQ. I like a lot of other bands/artists on the list, but Moka's and my own favorite albums by them are different.

Peng! is my frontrunner at least partially because one of the things Stereolab do very well is unify the high-low-middle brows of my tastes. Maybe this one in particular is more of a straight rocky album but it still has the signifiers that they build on later in their career, and actually is one of the most *fun* records they ever did.

ok there goes the lone vote for wollogallu, i guess

ive heard three of these. voted atcq obv. the pole record is good tho

'Be Gentle With the Warm Turtle' is from the new millennium fwiw

Listening to 'Jism' from the first Tindersticks record now. Always my favourite LP by them, and this track in particular was the soundtrack to my early teens. Holds up really fucking well.

There are several albums on my list which I haven't seen discussed elsewhere on ILM

damn right, I've only heard six of those and I only know OF like 11-12. been curious about "Silver Apples of the Moon" for a while, gonna check out a bunch of these

Mouse on mars

Haha gotcha emily! Would love to see one these personal polls of your own (please make one). Peng! Is a fine choice. if I had to make a top 10 out of all of these it would definitely end up on top.

The BoC, Boredoms, Disco Inferno, MBV, Radiohead, SY and Tricky albums would all be shoo-ins if I did my own list like this. This is between Loveless and OK Computer for me but there's lots here I haven't heard/heard of and should probably check out.

Dirty

I don't know a lot of these but some great choices. Going with the Tindersticks record which is just perfect. Good call on the Broadcast compilation, it's as good as their three proper albums.

Holy shit! Touchin' On Trane? Elf Bagatellen? Those are two of my favorite 90s/all-time records!

Cool list

i am undecided between dirty, loveless and the 1st tindersticks. i think it is dirty as it was my first sonic youth album.

i know a mere handful of this list, and the lack of devo means i have to choose gas.

such gorgeousness on a disc.

― mark e

Does this mean you rate highly the 'smooth noodles' album?

love a list where I don't know quite a few. I'll have to check out some of them.

my favorites:

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory (1991)
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children (1998)
Charles Gayle, William Parker & Rashied Ali - Touchin' on Trane (1993)
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)
Palace Music - Viva Last Blues (1995)
Stereolab - Peng! (1992)
Sonic Youth - Dirty (1992)

Does this mean you rate highly the 'smooth noodles' album?

ahh, you have found the the hole in my drunken statement.

though to be fair, i've never heard that one ..

don't bother!! I mean "Post Post Modern Man" is damn catchy but it doesn't sound like Devo. unfortunately, the rest does (and by that I mean the devolved plastic Shout/Total-era Devo)

yeah, i knew it was part of the bands dead zone era.

this is so clearly ATCQ

I like Smooth Noodle Maps quite a lot, though I wouldn't try to argue it's better than all of the albums on this list.

audioditacker

I thought the comeback album they did in 2010 sounded more like Smooth Noodle Maps than any of its predecessors, I thought it was odd the comeback album got pretty good reviews when Smooth Noodle Maps always seems to be panned.

I'm relieved, mark. For a moment there I thought you were one of their most devo-ted fans. There's Devo on my 70s list, of course. If I ever get to poll that one. The Noodle Maps album is actually good (not great) compared to its predecessors. It holds nothing against prime Devo, though.

I could vote Arthur Russell just about now. It feels like the album I must listen to every day of this month.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

A nice surprisen seeing that ground zero album up there!

YLT & ATCQ beat MBV on ILM; WTF.

The times they are a changin

"I've seen everything" is a spectacular album.

dope list, tbh. would shuffle.

Lately I've made it my mission to find all of these albums on vinyl and it's so hard! I only have 6 out of 50 in this list... some of these were probably never printed as vinyls in the first place... The albums in my 60's, 70's, 80's and 00's lists are relatively easy to find... I have 30 out of 50 of those 70's and 00's albums but 90s for vinyl is a no go and I seriously doubt some of these are big enough to warrant a reissue... hell the Loveless reissue has been on hold for like 20 years.

The albums I do have in vinyl are:

Peng!
Souvlaki
Mezzanine
Maxinquaye
Low End Theory
I can hear the heart beating as one
Another Thought

If there's anyone who has any of the list and wants to sell I'm interested

Pretty sure I have the Tortoise and Broadcast ones, but I'm going to keep hording them.

Hehe those two are actually for sale on amazon and are on my wishlist. Might order them next week.

The listed Boards of Canada, Slowdive and Broadcast albums have all been reissued quite recently and should not be that hard to get. My local record shop had a very nicely priced copy of Dante's Disneyland Inferno, must be the 2010 reissue.

Yes, I bought the Slowdive one a month ago, pretty good reissue! BOC and Broadcast will probably be the ones I buy next.

Amazon has third party sellers for Dante starting at $70 :(

There's also two copies left of Iva Bittova at $37. So expensive but I love that album seriously considering it.

Would love the Pole, Lali Puna and Gas albums. Amazon and Discogs both sell used copies starting at $80 more or less.

Might as well buy that new Gas boxset that costs $160 but has 14 vinyl records.

Lots of good stuff on this list but I'll never get Yo La Tengo.

OKC, Tortoise, Mouse on Mars: stuff like that is readily available for a decent price.

Sadly, you will not ever get 50 out of 50 on vinyl, because Vision Creation Newsun was cd-only iirc :-/

yeah some of these are even hard to find in cd form. Haven't checked all of them but these were never issued on vinyl afaik:

Ground Zero
Boredoms
Taku Sugimoto
Kinski
Schlippenbach Trio
Choying Drolma
Macha
Iancu Dumitrescu
William Parker
Jin Hi Kim
Supersilent
Luigi Nono
Lou Harrison

So that's 13 albums not on vinyl and most of them are not popular so its unlikely to ever be issued on vinyl.
That's also without counting those that did get a vinyl version but they haven't been reissued so only expensive copies run on discogs. Oddly enough the John S and Kramer record was issued on vinyl, go figure.

I'll be lucky if I can get to 20 out of 50.

My 80's vinyl collection is worse I only own 5 out of the 50 albums in there... hopefully they'll be easy to find.

any love for AMM Newfoundland? seems like an album that might fit on that list..

Yes it would and yes I love it!