Acclaimed Music Forums

irreduciblekoan

I was hoping that Yi Yi would crack the top 100 but I wasn't expecting A Brighter Summer Day by the same director to be just one spot away. And very pleasantly surprised, considering that that movie still doesn't have a decent home release yet, even on DVD. Eventually I hope to see both films in the...

irreduciblekoan

Haven't seen the Neneh Cherry's new album on any personal lists here or mentioned by anybody. I just listened to it and it's quite excellent. Firmly in my top 3 of the year behind Sun Kil Moon and St. Vincent. Who knew she would be such a good match with the electronic soundscapes of Four Tet? Kind ...

irreduciblekoan

Lyrics are important to me, and yet they aren't. I'm kind of a weird beast. I LOVE great writing in music. I can listen to Bob Dylan all day long and I worship him. My favorite album of 2014 so far is Sun Kil Moon's Benji because I think it has the best songwriting of a few years. I love to read and...

irreduciblekoan

I use a combo of Any Decent Music, Metacritic and AM's very own MegaCritic. I never rely on just one. Historically, I have found that I can expect to enjoy an album if it has a score of 80+ with 20+ reviews on all of those charts. Note: as of now, no album of 2014 has done that, but I expect that to...

irreduciblekoan

Huuge metalhead here. Behemoth's The Satanist is quite the excellent death metal album, but I don't see it changing many non-metal minds. Actually, the attention it has gotten (which hasn't been Deafheaven or Mastodon level but still impressive for an extreme metal band) is surprising to me. But the...

irreduciblekoan

Seems like the year finally picked up after Sun Kil Moon's excellent album. Not that January was a bad month but it was an unmemorable one, with a fair number of solid releases but nothing I would wish to make the top 25 of the EOY spreadsheet, no classics. Then we got Sun Kil Moon, Angel Olson, St ...

irreduciblekoan

Bumping this decade list now that the stream of EOY lists is over.

irreduciblekoan

Hey Henrik, I'm not sure if this is eligible or not. I know that Complex's EOY lists aren't eligible but you have mentioned that all-time and decade lists follow different criteria. Technically, Complex isn't a music magazine, but rather a "men's lifestyle" magazine. However, when they do ...

irreduciblekoan

1. Carcass - Surgical Steel 2. Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury 3. Watain - The Wild Hunt 4. Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance 5. In Solitude - Sister 6. Clutch - Earth Rocker 7. Ihsahn - Das Seelenbrechen 8. Deafheaven - Sunbather 9. Nails - Abandon All Life 10. Rotting Christ - Ka...

irreduciblekoan

I'm just glad that These New Puritans is getting so much love outside of the US, enough to garner a top 25 showing overall. It's one of my favorite albums of the year and, predictably, the attention from the US is pitiful.

irreduciblekoan

I've purposefully tried to avoid getting into discussions with Bruce. (Of course, I don't participate in this forum as much as I'd like to, overall. I have yet to partake in any poll, for example, which I feel bad about but I'm honestly not one for polls because I'm terrible at organizing what I lik...

irreduciblekoan

I really enjoy the change in sound Arcade Fire made on "The Suburbs" too. If they tried to make an album as grandiose sounding as "Funeral" or "Neon Bible" they'd have started to become a parody of themselves. Instead they created something a bit more scaled back in te...

irreduciblekoan

Well, maybe "rock" concept album (and like someone else said, Zappa had The Beatles beat by about a year). But arguably, Sinatra was doing concept albums back in the '50s.

irreduciblekoan

A quick post re: Arcade Fire. I really don't get the hindsight lukewarm opinion of The Suburbs in this forum. While quite a few of you have criticized it for being too saccharine and "safe," I first heard, and still hear, a very ambitious, detailed and, at various points, surprisingly adve...

irreduciblekoan

I've said this on another thread and I'll say it again: The College Dropout is, I think, overrated and Kanye's weakest album. It's still very good, but messy, overlong with too many skits, and relatively uncohesive compared to the unified statements that the rest of his albums are. I didn't become a...

irreduciblekoan

Interesting analysis, Nick. If your theories hold, that means Kanye still wouldn't beat Beastie Boys and Public Enemy (the only two hip-hop artists he trails) but he would be a couple of highly acclaimed albums and singles away from possibly overtaking them.

irreduciblekoan

Ah, I see. Since Steve Mizek, the founder of the site, came from Resident Advisor, I just assumed LWE was also UK-based. You could be right.

Edit: After doing some research, yes, you are right.

irreduciblekoan

Top 10 Albums: http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/chart/lwes-top-10-albums-of-2013/#.UrzyR7SK98s 10. Jonsson/Alter, 2 9. Huerco S., Colonial Patterns 8. Oneohtrix Point Never, R Plus Seven 7. Function, Incubation 6. DJ Koze, Amygdala 5. Lawrence, Films & Windows 4. Marcel Fengler, Fokus 3. Donato...

irreduciblekoan

Top 25 Tracks: http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/chart/lwes-top-25-tracks-of-2013-21-25/#.Urzv57SK98s 25. R-Zone, "Romijn Ravine" 24. Axel Boman, "Hello" 23. Pépé Bradock, “Lifting Weights” 22. Bookworms & Steve Summers, “Unknown Number” 21. DJ Sotofett feat. Madteo, “There’s...

irreduciblekoan

Seems to be a single author. From the list page: "Each year the team behind Rip It Up puts together a list of their favourite albums for the year in order from 1 - 10. After a diverse range of picks, we've tallied the votes and now have our final Top 10 Albums of 2013, where curly-haired chant...

irreduciblekoan

If Yeezus stays at #1 or #2 of 2013, and with the all-time success that MBDTF has been getting, plus the EOY success of "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves," what would be the chances of Kanye becoming the most acclaimed hip-hop act in the next update? He is 59th all-time, as of now...

irreduciblekoan

Great post, HRS. I will also defend great lyricists. Although I pay more attention to music than lyrics, I disagree with Illiniq about the unimportance of lyrics. Even metal and classical, whose lyrics I don't understand, usually have very good lyrics when you sit down to analyze them. Sometimes it'...

irreduciblekoan

A list from a guitar-based source and no Impossible Truth by William Tyler??

irreduciblekoan

Funny enough, I also am very fond of the written word. I'm a very avid reader and an aspiring writer. So my friends are always surprised that I listen to so much instrumental music or pay more attention to music than to words. It's strange. My favorite genres have always been metal and classical, ev...

irreduciblekoan

I do concede that Kanye's production and conceptual skills are far more prominent than his songwriting skills. Even speaking as a fan, many of his lyrics make me cringe. But I think he is sufficiently brilliant in his production and overall sound to garner my love. I keep returning to his albums des...

irreduciblekoan

Perhaps I did go on my own little rant and lost your point. For that I apologize. But as I said before, it's a dangerous road to travel when we always try to reward "first and superiors" because even by that standard, we can almost always find someone better. Again, what Death Grips have b...

irreduciblekoan

As I alluded to earlier, however, we shouldn't go overboard with the "Kanye isn't as adventurous as Death Grips so Yeezuz isn't good" argument because there are plenty of artists that are more adventurous than Death Grips too. Like I said, Death Grips aren't doing anything that Public Enem...

irreduciblekoan

So so glad to see Julia Holter rising. Hope she stays in the top 25!

irreduciblekoan

To be fair, after listening to Yeezus a few times, I listened to early Public Enemy. Kanye's abrasiveness isn't even close to Public Enemy's. Death Grips come closer, but even they don't really outdo Public Enemy in sonic adventurousness. So it's sort of funny how the music of the 21st century can't...

irreduciblekoan

I don't think I was ever expecting Kanye to be number 1 this year. Agreed, I felt, in U2 parlance, this was Kanye's POP moment, the moment he noticeably started chasing trends (ie...Death Grips Industrial Rap), rather than establishing them...still has some great moments, and he's too gifted a prod...

irreduciblekoan

AM does include FNAC's all-time 1000 albums. Or are the rules different for all-time sources?

irreduciblekoan

A lot of people still praise The College Dropout as one of Kanye's two or three best, but it's actually my least favorite album by him. It's bloated, there are too many skits, it's messy (it's the Kanye album that is most like a collection of songs, whereas his later albums seemed more created AS AL...

irreduciblekoan

Spin and RS (and other physical mags) are always early. Technically, their "December" issues are out in November or early December, so they are kinda forced to make their lists earlier than web-only sources such as Pitchfork and No Ripcord.

irreduciblekoan

Haim may drop a little, but I think (hope) it will stay very high, like top 20. Personally, I loved it right away and had a feeling it would do well on EOY lists.

Thank you, as every year, Harold!

irreduciblekoan

Thank you, Nassim!

irreduciblekoan

http://www.noripcord.com/features/top-100-albums-2000-2009-part-three-100-81 I was VERY surprised to see that there was never a thread topic about this, and neither is it on the recent update. Henrik, was this already on your to-add list for the future? No Ripcord published it last year. I don't ha...

irreduciblekoan

Bumping this because I have the same question. A while ago, Henrik said Decibel magazine's "Hall of Fame" was eligible (it wasn't included in the recent update, but hopefully in the next one), so things like this, I assume, are fine for AM. Treble is one of my favorite music sources. Their...

irreduciblekoan

Well you're right, they aren't, but who is? That's like saying Paul Thomas Anderson or Wong Kar-Wai aren't up there with Kubrick and Welles. Of course not, but that says more about the second group than the first. And no need to apologize, I actually find it fascinating to meet and discuss with peop...

irreduciblekoan

I am a fan of Crichton, Grisham and to a lesser extent, Clancy and Brown, but I was just speaking from a purely technical point-of-view. Their prose is a lot more stilted than, say, King, Tolkien, le Carre and Arthur C. Clarke. I believe those in the latter group are very fine writers as well as ent...

irreduciblekoan

I actually really like both The Observer's and Modern Library's Top 100, because they include some unorthodox but deserving choices. And I agree with you that TopTenBooks, if I take the entire meta-list into account, is awesome, perhaps second to greatestbooks as far as literary meta-lists. And don'...

irreduciblekoan

His site actually does include the Norwegian Book Club list already, which I thought was nice. And to the creator: if you don't feel like adding in every single list on TopTenBooks, perhaps you can include at least more if not all of their master list ( http://www.toptenbooks.net/list-books ). As fo...

irreduciblekoan

So as not to bug the guy, I actually just sent him an e-mail today with a link to this thread, so another e-mail from you may not be necessary.

irreduciblekoan

The more I browse that site (and after asking the founder a few questions) the more I have a problem with it and can't wait to have the site updated and the mathematical algorithm polished up. For instance, all Pulitzer winners are weighted equally, but since there are so many of them, you can have ...

irreduciblekoan

On the Road is actually #18. What may have confused you is that it's under "fiction" on that site.

irreduciblekoan

I am not discouraging people from using or liking the site, I was just arguing that it does not reach as far as TSPDT or AM does in its respective topic. I believe that a site like this can be extremely useful. Personally, there are just a couple of things I would advise the site host to consider w...

irreduciblekoan

There are pros and cons to using popular polls in a meta-list such as AM and greatestbooks.org, but I don't think there is a clear-cut right or wrong answer. Public opinion is arguably just as important or only slightly less so than critical opinion when we come down to it, right? Because what the p...

irreduciblekoan

Yeah that's a wonderful feature. I asked Henrik once about possibly including their Hall of Fame on AM, and he said possibly. I wonder if he is still planning to.

irreduciblekoan

All the same, greatestbooks.org weights critics' and writers' lists higher than popular lists, so I have no problem with them including popular lists such as BBC's Big Read (which is actually a decent list, perhaps because British readers have good taste). Also, Lord of the Rings has made it onto a ...

irreduciblekoan

Savages are doing astonishingly well so far.

irreduciblekoan

A quality list as always from my favorite metal guide. Colored Sands is my personal #1 and I'm surprised to see Obscure Verses so high up considering it just came out at the end of October and didn't, in my opinion, bring much new to the table for the band. I would sub in Sunbather in place of it to...

Search found 293 matches