FREEFORM 1990's ALTERNATIVE ALBUM POLL - THE RECKONING (TOP TEN COUNTING DOWN NOW)

Me'Shell Ndegeocello is kinda rock

and Tuomas totally praises a Metallica song! I found him doing that while looking for quotes. It's the slow number but he still praises it!

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tuomas we have already had more rap in this poll than the whole 80s list iirc

tbf there was like 10x as much rap released in the 90s as the 80s

tuo- are you not expecting hella non-geir in the top 50? wu debuts alone will make up for like 20% of this poll on their own...

The only Wu debut that's sure to make it is Only Built 4 Cuban Links. Maybe Ghostface too. The other universally loved 90s Wu albums already placed in the original poll.

As for the other "non-Geir" stuff, like I said upthread, the fact that ILM has become more dominated by US posters will mean that there'll be less techno/house and more rock here than in the 2004 poll. I don't mean to offend anyone with this, it's merely a statistical prognosis.

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MY BEAUTIFUL POLL

the fact that ILM has become more dominated by US posters

wait waht?! this list is stuffed with entries most Americans, including me, have never even heard of! And it's because of UK indie kids afaict

I think Tical and Wu-Forever have a chance. Don't want to get into more records because i'll just start naming my ballot.

I can't really think of what canonical 'techno/house' ALBUMS there really are that didn't make the first ton? It's mostly a 12" genre, non? Well except for wanky dated warp shit.

ALL I WILL SAY is that Tuomas is a little PREMATURE with his criticisms. Now can we all reflect on what HAS passed?

This poll has now passed. RIP, best intentions.

I can bomb the thread with classic Queen Latifah youtubes until you all dance away your finnish annoyances iyw

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Sorry I'm a little late but I wanted to share this story.

A few years ago I had this antique movers gig. Three man operation with two trucks. We would go to galleries for the pick up and deliver the shit to trailers and mansions around the states.

For the second leg of the journey I got to drive a truck alone. It didn't have a cd player or tape deck so I got by on shitty radio and mp3 player + headphones. As it is with any road trip, the music I listened to cemented itself to whatever area I was going through.

We had been going west through South Dakota all day, stopped in the Badlands (Springsteen), checked out Wall Drug, and here my boss and the other guy went ahead of me in their truck. I was told to head west, then south into Wyoming.

I took a small detour to catch a glimpse of Mount Rushmore (Stooges) and had to get some gas. Despite it being such an iconic American monument and tourist trap (neat for the craftsmanship, but kind of lame) there weren't many fuel stations around and when I finally found one, it was overpriced. I thought I was smart and bought an extra pack of smokes instead of putting the whole $20 my boss gave me in the tank.

Into the Black Hills I went, listened to Julie Cruise as it was getting dark. I had about 1/3 of a tank. I was having fun spooking myself imagining I was in Twin Peaks and neglected to stop at the next cheap gas station for a little top off.

The album ended and I suddenly realized that it had gotten really, really dark. One of those moonless nights that gives you a blind man's insight. I didn't even notice that I had entered Wyoming. As I turned south onto a desolate two lane highway, I put Dopesmoker on the headphones.

I was completely alone on the road. I checked my phone- no signal. Fuel gauge- slightly more than a quarter tank. My GPS signal was spotty, It would say the next town is 16 miles away, now 50 miles away.

"Drop out of life with bong in hand
Follow the smoke to-uh the riff-filled land"

I was thrilled by my growing fear. Would I run out of gas and be stuck in this immeasurably vast and empty country with no cell phone?

Bright headlights behind me, and closing in. Tailgating without switching off the high beams. I slowed down and they passed with a honk and rude gesture. It is late, and no one else is on the road at all. Why be such an asshole?

Sleep still rocking on. I've never listened to it so attentively. I think that it's at that moment the coolest fucking shit I have ever heard. Gas is below the quarter mark.

I looked up for the moon, none there, but what I see are more stars than should exist. Zero light pollution. I'm from North Carolina, so I've seen pretty skies, but there is nothing at all like the stars in Wyoming. I stopped the truck at a strange turn-off picnic area and got out to piss and gaze, still listening to Sleep.

When I cut the lights, I was swallowed up. There was a nebulous zone between the horizon and the sky that made me incredibly disoriented. Here, alone, almost out of gas, no communication. I became truly frightened -Is someone there?- and hit the road fast.

"The caravan holds to Eastern Creed - Now smoke believer !
The Chronicle of the Sensimillian"

On and on... Time only measured by doom and a steady needle drop.

Well, at least Dopesmoker is almost done. I can't believe the whole thing is almost over. It was so awesome, dude.

Then my phone vibrates. I've got a signal, there's a voicemail,

"Get. some. gas. Please get gas!"

And then there are lights ahead...

Right as I cruise into Lusk, WY and glide to a stop at the hotel, Dopesmoker hits the last sustained doomy note.

And that's why it gets my vote. :D

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Thank you for the tale, Captain Ahab! Totally sweet.

haha awesome story
xp

BOOMING POST, more of this please :)

One of the reasons I'm doing this is to get people to talk about the records they loved from the period in depth, and Ahab there has fulfilled that desire more than adequately. GREAT sense of the record.

there are definitely a few albums on my ballot that if they manage to place i will be so full of gratitude that i may post some rambling stories or remembrances along those lines

Please do!

Um, if they do. *runs off to check list*

People should post their rambling stories anyway. This top 100 is by no means the end of the number-crunching. All sorts of awards to follow later on.

I can't really think of what canonical 'techno/house' ALBUMS there really are that didn't make the first ton? It's mostly a 12" genre, non? Well except for wanky dated warp shit.

Off the top of my head:

Any of Carl Craig's 90s albums
Pole - 1
Ultramarine - Every Man and Woman Is a Star
Any 90s Mouse on Mars album
4 Hero - Parallel Universe & Two Pages
Plastikman - Consumed
The first three Gas albums
Goldie - Timeless
Leftfield - Leftism
X-101 - X-101
X-102 - Discover the Rings of Saturn
Yeah, and lot of the Warp stuff is pretty canonical even if it is wanky

I agree that electronic music is more 12" than album oriented, but all of the above were important and canonical specifically as albums.

LJ - Have you talked to Glenn yet about doing advanced stats when this is done? They've always been interesting in other polls.

I haven't, but with this poll system I'm not sure they'd be of much use. I've got a few other things in mind...

Tuomas, that post is bad craic. Please save your whining until the end!

i'm american and hoping for a few albums of wanky dated warp shit to come :)

cool burger/ink made it though. tuomas - curious to hear you liken it to its trance contemporaries. any examples? i don't know much of that stuff. just titles are good, this thread has done well without youtubes so far. i first heard las vegas maybe 5 or 6 years ago and associated it with ambient and dub techno.

ok tuomas will naturally genres that have potentially hundreds of albums ppl love and want to vote for are going to do better than a genre with about 15.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic

It would be neat to see the Lilys show up.

cool burger/ink made it though. tuomas - curious to hear you liken it to its trance contemporaries. any examples?

It's hard to come up with any specific examples, as Burger/Ink isn't like any trance record; my point was that it use similar sounds and production techniques as the trance of that era did (before pop trance changed the whole genre), but obviously in a slower, much more contemplative manner. However, I'd say tunes like "Sacred Cycles" by Lazonby or "Stella" by Jam & Spoon aren't that different from Las Vegas sonically, though obviously they're faster and more dancefloor dynamic.

What differentiates Las Vegas from a lot of later minimal house/techno, in my opinion, is that the sound is more "wet", with continuous drones and arpeggios - much like in early 90s trance.

Realizing now I should have campaigned for the Gummo soundtrack.

If you listen to the stuff Burger did around the same time as The Bionaut, you can probably deduce that the "wetness" of the sound is something Burger brough to the table - Mike Ink's solo stuff from that time tends to have a dryer and crisper sound. It interesting, though, that later on Ink kinda took the wet, leaky sound to its logical extreme with the Gas project.

i hear where you're comin from. that jam&spoon video is so 90s!

my exposure to that music at the time was probably limited to the mortal kombat soundtrack. maybe a few minutes of amp if i was somewhere with cable.

i mean how 90s is that

was probably hoping beavis and butthead would be on though :/

Burger/Ink is the highlight so far for me. Were they on another label I would have auditioned them over a decade ago.

Souvlaki is the only item off my ballot so far, and as it spent years in rotation on my car stereo, its difficult to be objective about it. Its a comforting warm sweater of sound to me, and the one Slowdive album where their melodic sense wasn't overwhelmed by textural obsessions. I don't know if I'd rate it above Loveless in the 'gaze canon, but I've certainly listened to it more.

Tuomas's suspicions of encroaching American aesthetic hegemony and rockism are IMO misplaced. ILM has (to my knowledge) always been Europhile and specifically Anglophile, and from these shores, that's part of the appeal. From my ballot, 16% are American, and 9% guitar rock. Sadly, no Finnish artists (Pan Sonic just missed).

Albums like "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" and also "Out Of Time" are serious road soundtracks for me. Of course when I was getting into them I was between 13 and 16, so it wasn't me driving. But "New Test Leper" will only remind me of listening through headphones in the back of a crowded car with my family, driving through France to visit relatives. The journey would take up to two days and a walkman was essential.

I can't believe I went to bed and missed the appearance of the mighty Earl Brutus. This is the first time I have ever seen them in a list like this which means this whole process has been a big success.

I hope they pick a few new fans on here, I can't recommend the album enough.

Burger/Ink is the highlight so far for me. Were they on another label I would have auditioned them over a decade ago.

They were picked up (for distro, at least) by Matador in the US. That's how I heard 'em.

anglophiles are the most disgusting savages on earth imo

Some are, some aren't. The ones who use their anglophilia to justify the Oasis oeuvre are THE MOST DISGUSTING OF SAVAGES.

I feel badly because I didn't include any hip hop in my ballot, but I started going through a personal hip-hop revival about 3 weeks after I sent in my ballot. My only hope is that someone gave 40+ points to the first Beatnuts album.

my ballot was 100% american and 0% guitar rock btw ;-)

johnny, some savages are more disgusting than others

My ballot is roughly 20% British, 10% Canadian and 70% American, all prominently featuring guitars. OH NO I'VE BORED MYSELF!

Oh wait, one of the Britishes doesn't feature guitars of any kind. REDEEMED!