ILM’s Top 77 Tracks of 2018

*in

BUT WHAT DOES SAER THINK ABOUT A DINS EL LLIT

This is really good btw.

oh this is cool. not sure why i never spent more time with the talaboman album back when it came out

exactly what i expected when i saw the artists involved--tactile, never-ending awesomeness

Oh this is great, should've been on my ballot really.

i still jam The Night Land

ooooh this should be good, I always like Talabot-connected stuff

2018 was long enough for me that I puzzled about whether I had heard any songs by Soccer Mommy, when I had in fact seen them live back in July

yeeesh

Needs to start with the organ break and intensify from there. Good but calibrated slightly too chill for my tastes

this was my #1

http://i.imgur.com/nSKHTlX.jpg

53: Mitski – “Geyser” - 188 points – 7 votes – 1 first place vote
video

Mitski

gentle start with instantly queering touches like quietening organ drone, crazy glitch. no beats to even galumph over. slowly a tambourine enters, chords are lush. drums playing sparse 3-time beat. then suddenly the keyboards lurch in and the guitars and it's not so much galumphing as CRUSHING and SOARING at the same time, it is violent and the only way some people can process this is by saying 'oo er the drums and keys are playing every beat' but actually if u listen properly it's got a swinging sea-shanty beat, there's a canon between guitars and keys, there's a lot going on obviously but u say it like she is just banging away like some teenage punk and that is bollocks, there is so much craft here. – imago

Geyser is so colossal; it has been my favorite song of the year since the day it came out. – Will M.

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25622

Maybe it’s the organ tones in the intro serving as bait, but “Geyser” reads as religious in a deep sense — not godly but ritualistic. It helps that the lyrics are less verses than chants, psalms to the very art that Mitski practices. This is the lushest that Mitski has ever sounded, all cascading horns and rolling drums, and she wears these grander things magnificently. The only shame is that the song is so short — it’s a holy experience that feels like it could be carried on for a bit longer. – Jacob Sujin Kuppermann

“Geyser” is several songs at once. It begins foreboding and mystic, almost terrifying (I hate how jarring the glitch noise is every time, although that’s the point), and suddenly transforms itself into a love song of purest passion. Beginning at a melancholic point and ending somewhere happier not even two minutes later is emotional whiplash at its finest, and it somehow makes me cry every time I hear it. – Alex Clifton

let the great votesplitting commence

i don't really "get" mitski in general (and this song in particular) but it seems to resonate with so many people whose tastes i appreciate that I kinda feel obliged to let it be.

good song imo

I went with Why Didn't You Stop Me? as my Mitski vote. This doesn't mean that Geyser isn't one of the best songs of the year, which it is.

like i just relistened to geyser for like the tenth time and i still can't get anything out of it... seems like a kate bush cover gone wrong

This is a great song, but yeah, vote splitting is real and there were so many good options on this album.

it is a good song, too short though

btw did u absolutely have to choose my post when I was incoherently arguing at Matt DC for the blurb lol

ulysses otm. this song is also very "the food is bad and such small portions"
xp

LJ: virtually nobody does longform single discussion on ILM anymore; i think your para there was the only one explicitly devoted to "geyser"... so yes, I absolutely DID have to choose your post or else it was just gonna be SJ comments and i know how much you love those.

haha it's np really :)

this is the best song on a record that ended up doing v little for me

like i was impressed by the expanded arrangements but they also walled me off from the songs

Classic yet not my favourite off the album.

maybe we should take the next hour off so everyone can listen to #52?

geyser was my mitski vote. the album didn't really stick with me (a little too fragmented?) but this was a real highlight and probably the best song she's ever done, such a rush of feeling

http://i.imgur.com/Y2nXMl0.jpg

52: Autechre – “all end” – 192 points – 5 votes

Autechre - Amber

Find it pointless to even consider ranking NTS 1-4, but "all end" is beyond compare when I need that kind of thing. - MatthewK

A track like 'all end' would be a whole record by an artsy contemporary drone artist, you can imagine how they would give interviews describing their bullshit process or whatever, how they were trying to make lots of similar sounds for installations in gallery spaces, yet it all hangs on them basically having found a compelling way of making ~one kind of noise~ for an hour. perhaps they do nothing else like that, but often they would try to build a career out of repeating it somehow, with some sidesteps and twists and variations. but for autechre now it's like a one-off afterthought, to extend the end of bladelores. a lot of it isn't even particularly marked with their signature, but just enough so that it broadens their idiom just a bit more, which you can't pull off unless you've already got a very comprehensive means of musical expression at your disposal. – j.

lol is this the longest track to ever place in one of these?

me listening to “all end”:

http://kafkaskoffee.com/junk/Abyss/Abyss_AlienWaterWall.gif

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Thursday, May 3, 2018 10:05 PM (eight months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bieber expanded or Nyan Cat surely

they're still around, eh

oh i forgot about bieber expanded lol

Way too low.

Wow at that Jon Hopkins track. By far the best of the ones that are new to me - up to that point, am still catching up (with the worst being the Andrew WK, duh)

such a rush of feeling

very otm--i wish that the song dwelled a little longer on the feel of that massive and exhilarating last minute. maybe it would've been overwhelming, but i'm fine with feeling overwhelmed every once in a while.

just started all end and woww no way i listen to this thing at work

it is very trance-y, yes.

I considered voting for all end just because I liked the sheer audacity of capping these epic sessions with an hour-long ambient piece, but there were plenty of NTS tracks that I preferred.

i think geyser is just the length it needs to be, i love that last minute but any more would have just plateaued and not had the same impact

all end isn't my favorite kind of autechre but this is probably the best thing of this kind they've done. I had some good times letting it play very loud while doing chores at home this year.

lmao the Spotify playlist is gonna be absolutely ruined

"Smoko" is basically this year's "Stoned and Starving" (#32 in 2013 poll). But I like "Stoned and Starving" better than both "Smoko" and the Parquet Courts on this year's track list. There is a kind of musical substance to it which "Smoko" lacks and where I think the real excitement of that Parquet Courts record comes from is the trick of making music that is somewhat substantial and also dumb-ass at the same time.

"stoned and starving" is the single parquet courts song i've ever liked but i think making anything substantial would be against the chats' whole ethos

http://i.imgur.com/O3JuQox.jpg

51: Róisín Murphy – “Plaything” – 192 points – 7 votes
video

RÓISÍN MURPHY

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=25949

This isn’t instant — which isn’t a bad thing, because it absolutely bears repetitive listening — but bits grab at you instantly: the Hot Chip-esque hook, the glorious disco glitter of “I know I mean nothing to you, still I can’t bring myself to hate”. Róisín sounds as gorgeously warm as ever while the song is spiky pain. – Hazel Southwell

“Plaything” is an intelligent, immaculately crafted bit of music, combining the house immediacy of Overpowered with the slowly unspooling nature of Hairless Toys with her perennial theme of the exquisite agony of being played. If I’m not as partial to it as “All My Dreams,” it’s because I prefer danger in my music to exaltation — or, to play A-side/B-side, prefer “Let Me Know” to “Sunshine.” The anticipation before a bad decision is always better than the decision itself. – Katherine St Asaph

:)))))))))))

yesss

PS I know I'm way behind but that picture of Andrew WK upthread looks like Bob from Twin Peaks and it freaks me out

Smoko reminds me of the old Beastie Boys punk shit. hard not to like on some small level. or maybe its just the video I liked, I dunno

anyway I was wondering which Ae track was gonna place, I guess this one was pretty obvious though its not really what I listen to Ae for. better than anything by William Basinski and the like though