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

Anyway, more techno (and ambient-ish techno to boot!) to make Finnish hearts soar

yeah I do know about it being Indonesian kecak music, but I bet the Indonesians never married it to THAT RIFF

JJ I can only imagine what I'd have been reduced to if I'd grown up listening to the Bungle albums as they came out.

One can only guess at the ILM word-carnage.

yeah, I have a kecak album. entertaining stuff, especially considering its strange and dubious origins.

jjjusten, secret Erotica fan

Gas is nice, but as with all dubbed-out ambient/drone/mantra-ish stuff, I can only use it as musical wallpaper to chill out with rather than something I can get truly enthused about. Even SAWII or certain Stars Of The Lid albums I've enjoyed, I couldn't really treat as albums, more "listening aides" to help me sleep or read.

wrt to Mr. Bungle:

a lot of the arguments people are making about this band, on both sides, seem to be willfully acting like a certain mr. frank zappa never existed

Erotica >>> each and every Cure album

Rather more like a certain Mr. Frank Zappa doesn't speak to me at all.

ok this thread is about to get tasty

maybe I'll chill down with some Gas

And also... no. Erotica > Wild Mood Swings and that's about it.

Sun City Girls also dabble in a spot of kecak fwiw, and I think they too belong in the class of "stuff that pushes things right over the precipice in terms of innovation, musicality etc, but on the surface appears to be a practical joke."

Rather more like a certain Mr. Frank Zappa doesn't speak to me at all.

― Marriage, that's where I'm a Viking! (HI DERE), Thursday, April 29, 2010 3:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah that's fair, i'm no big super fan myself, but he's clearly the predecessor and i feel like it's silly not to see him as the root of any band like Bungle

gotta go home but Gas AND Burger/Ink = I love you guyz <3 <3

you should probably stick around for one more album

Ha, I think I can guess what that might be...

Email me your guess! You have 3 minutes

Nuh, go right ahead...

my guess is baby one more time

i dig zappa a lot, but bungle is operating with a way way wider palatte - part of that is coming much later obv, but the big glaring difference (well other than the no metal in zappa) is that bungle throws in TONS of non-western stuff, and frank kinda kept in the jazzbo/funk/rock standard track.

xposts

and actually the only kinda vague zappa link would be bits of the first album, maybe? id say beefheart as the much weirder creepy neighbor of zappa is a closer antecedent.

57 Mouse On Mars - Autoditacker (1997)
47 points
6 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: emil.y

http://img12.nnm.ru/f/c/c/4/4/fcc44eb6036f1d6156bef8d67ffd6bab_full.jpg

Autoditacker is actually what got me into electronic music along with aphex stuff, like most people... but while i don't listen to aphex much anymore, i still put MoM in all the time. i definitely prefer their poppier stuff (auto-, niun, idiology, and now, radical connector), but sound design-wise they're fantastic no matter what they're doing. plus the lyrics are brilliant... it makes contempo philosophizing fun.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 20:39 (5 years ago)

I think the moment they decided to add singing to their music was when it went wrong. I mean, they did use vocals before Idiology, but in a processed manner, more as effects. I wouldn't mind them doing decent uplifting house music, but I tried to listen to their latest album, and the vocals were just so soulless, emotionless. Another thing which can be traced all the way to Niun Niggung is that they start using these these distorted, drill'n'bass/IDM beats, which I personally hate. In retrospect it feels like they hit their peak with Autoditacker; that's when they found that special quality, that otherwordly sound that was distinctly theirs and no one elses. Now bands like Yello, when they find their own special thing, can stick with it for decades, but I guess you can't blame MoM for wanting to move forward. It's just that, the more they've moved "forward", the less distinct they sound, and the less interested I am with them.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, 2 May 2005 05:47 (4 years ago)

Autoditacker & Radical Connector are two great examples by the way -- Autoditacker is a fantastic headphone album with dozens of quiet details bouncing around and lots of creative use of dynamic range, and Radical Connector is just a huge monster truck

― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 21:29 (2 years ago)

roughly 60% of ILM posts that mention this album by name are Tuomas posts

I hope he is HAPPY NOW

never heard of Gas. TMBG record is pretty good but I agree with Dan that it was the beginning of the end in terms of my interest (Dead, BIHYS, Road Movie to Berlin, several others are just fantastic. Yr Racist Friend um not so much). ODB is all-time classic obviously. Mr. Bungle I've never cared about but I understand the love. Mouse on Mars and Aphex = eh do not give shit and never will.

finally broke the 5 vote barrier!

Hello Mouse on Mars! (I was wrong btw)

xxxxps bungle are on record as saying they weren't zappa fans, that they were barely aware of him. that's not to say he wasn't an influence, but he wasn't a direct one.

Mouse on Mars = would also have gotten points from me.

i suck.

I did give you an extra week, JJ! Hey - at least a ton of your choices are turning up...

Woo! I did not expect that. My favourite MoM album, too.

xxxxxpost to jjusten

man, i dunno, hot rats and weasels and absolutely free don't sound "standard" to me in anyway, plus zappa had hella classical influences

Marriage has deprived this album of so many points. If it weren't for JJ proposin' or Southall tyin' the knot...

also, i mean in all respect to patton and all, let's give zappa some credit for doing the shit in like 66!!

curse these ILXors having deeply significant moments in their personal lives when they should have been assigning points to a Mouse on Mars album

^^^how i break it down to an extent

just out of curiosity m@tt, have you heard all 3 bungle albums? (not being some challenging dick here, just thinking that if the one yer familiar with is the first one, its way way more standard than the second and third).

also i totally agree w/the idea that zappa (particularly those albums) was operating pretty far out of the box for the time period, i just dont see him being all that directly related to bungle.

xposts

i voted for the mouse on mars! Im doing well here.

still at zero. Not too surprised.

me too but I am not worried haha

56 Sonic Youth - A Thousand Leaves
48 points
4 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributors: seandalai, nakhchivan

http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-themes/images/album-Sonic-Youth-A-Thousand-Leaves.jpg

A Thousand Leaves is heaven's doorbell. Granted, not everyone's into doorbells...

― Wesley, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (8 years ago)

A Thousand Leaves is fucking great

― gabbneb, Friday, 15 June 2007 19:36 (2 years ago)

thousand leaves has some amazing moments, but is kind of dry and hard to love as a whole, i find.

― the style and grace of a greased rhinoceros in a bed bath & beyond (stevie), Wednesday, 17 June 2009 15:02 (10 months ago)

No one's mentioned "A Thousand Leaves" so I will. Exceptionally underrated.

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 19 November 2001 01:00 (8 years ago)

It took me six years to fully get into A Thousand Leaves. It's strange how impenatrable that record can feel given that they really do nothing terribly different from the previous albums on that one.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 10:53 (6 years ago)

A Thousand Leaves shows their sprawl at its best.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 15 June 2007 18:09 (2 years ago)

in post-50s rock music, zappa seems to be the godfather of musical innovation & technical excellence masquerading as a cheap joke. and of whiplash-inducing genre pastiche. and of a sardonic approach to musical communication that denies earnest emotionalism in favor of the cynical manipulation of devices typically employed to induce or document emotion. these things are interrelated and mutually supporting, and they collectively describe a strain of late-twentieth-century rock music that descends from zappa. therefore, it's hard for me to imagine mr. bungle existing absent zappa's (perhaps indirect) influence, and it's hard for me to consider them outside his shadow.

what's surprising is that, in an age in which tribal allegiances and genre boundaries among listeners are breaking down, the same isn't generally the case within most artists' recorded output.

plus a thousand leaves is okay

My favorite '90s SY album, by far.

ok that is a HUGE surprise to me, especially it placing higher than Washing Machine, which got nearly 4 times as many votes as A Thousand Leaves in this poll: best Sonic Youth album of the '90s

now i really have no idea which of Sonic Youth's 3 other 90s albums will place and where.

I expect one of mine to be showing up in the near future and - although I should probably just bite my lip - I kinda want to say that I had NO IDEA when I turned in my ballot that dudes would be turning in like 199-vote ballots and stuff, and thus giving like 1 or 2 points per album.

this seems as good a place as any to admit i do not "get" sonic youth

Only two people did that, kkvg!

some dude's was the next-longest at 50-odd

Wait, it was just the last two dudes that turned in gigantic ballots? Chuckleheads. Anyway, we'll see.

wow what was the next longest after mine? i figured there'd be SOMEBODY else as stubborn in wanting to vote for so many albums as the 3 of us did