Top 10 Albums of 2015

[PanduArya]

So let's open this opinion thread. Post your top 10 2015 albums here and you can add your commentary for each album if you want, so we can discussed each other's chart.


I know this is useless since you've made your 2015 chart on My Charts page but I created this thread so we can discussed each other's chart more specific.

Feel free to start!!

[PanduArya]

Here's mine:

[Norman Bates]

http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=3936

[Hayden]

[Norman Bates]

[Hayden]

[Precedent]

1. Lights & Motion - Chronicle
2. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
3. FKA Twigs - M3LL155X
4. Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.
5. Riverside - Love, Fear And The Time Machine
6. Travi$ Scott - Rodeo
7. A$AP Rocky - At.Long.Last.A$AP
8. The Weeknd - Beauty Behind The Madness
9. Future - DS2
10. Iron Maiden - The Book Of Souls

[meccalecca]

1. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear: Considering how much this album continues to grow on me, I'm not sure anything could overtake the #1 slot.
2. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly: Such a vital record for our times. This might be my favorite hip hop record ever, certainly my favorite of the last decade.
3. Howth - Trashy Milky Nothing Town: Howth is the first band to ever release a record on Mecca Lecca. Their third album, TMNT is the one they most slaved over. By the time the recordings were complete, the tension levels rose too high for them to go on. Having too close of a relationship with the members, I couldn't step in the middle of them to release the album. Main dude Carl Creighton self-released it. Oh, and it's an emotionally potent concept album about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or moreso alienation in the big city).
4. Colleen - Captain of None: Others will tell you Colleen has had better records, but this is the one that really sold me as a fan. Art pop folktronica at its finest.
5. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell: Once again falling in line with the masses. An emotionally moving record by a phenomenal songwriter and composer
6. Mbongwana Star - From Kinshasa: A totally unique experience. This sounds like classic afrofunk/highlife being taken into the present day and then shooting right into the future.
7. Jenny Hval - Apocalypse, Girl: Dark, sexual, art pop. What TPAB does for the issue of race, this one does for Feminism.
8. Shilpa Ray - Last Year's Savage: Gritty, lyrically potent 70s New York punk with a powerful bluesy female singer, and woozy harmonium
9. Twerps - Range Anxiety: Perfect jangle pop evoking classic Go-Betweens.
10. Family Dynamics - Service: Undefinable post-rock in a similar fashion to the way Talk Talk was post-rock (nothing like Explosions in the Sky)

Honorable Mentions:
Christopher Paul Stelling - Labor Against Waste
The Great Void - Shift Age
Jesse R Berlin - Glitter Lung
and everything else on my 2015 chart: http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=23222
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http://jonnyleather.com

[benpaco]

I was gonna do this like Hayden then realized the only albums with more than 20 votes are TPAB and Tetsuo on my top 10. Regardless, here it is like he did:

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Pale Horses by mewithoutyou

mewithoutYou really usually does nothing for me, but the new album sounds more like Interpol than their normal stuff. Lyrically, it's a religious discussion about uncertainty and apocalypse. A very poetic, cool album.

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Run by Awolnation

Awolnation is the best thing in pop radio. Their weird synthrock mix is great, and this fixes some of the problems that Megalithic Symphony had.

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Dying by Spectres

Noise noise noise sound loud. A nice, big, dark album.

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Time? Astonishing! by L'Orange & Kool Keith

L'Orange had most of the control over this it sounds like, but Keith still gets some interesting Keith-ness in there. Some good features and a lot of fun and cool samples.

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Hyperview by Title Fight

Title Fight abandoned their melodic hardcore roots to make an album that's like The Smiths tried to make a shoegaze record. The result is wonderful.

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Peripheral Vision by Turnover

I don't know how he did it, but Will Yip made like 5 bands change their usual genre and it worked for every single one. Here Turnover went from a semi-Pop Punk sound to some chill dream pop/indie rock stuff and again, it's a great result.

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The Night Took Us In Like Family by L'O...remiah Jae

I really like L'Orange's production, that's the main lesson from this year. Well that and Will Yip's production. Whatever. My first Jeremiah Jae other than Rawhyde, and he definitely is really good too consistently. A slightly darker, or at least less silly, album than Time?, but still a great listen.

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Abnocto by Monarchy

Monarchy's last EP sucked, but they really can do full LPs well. A couple throwaway tracks but overall the slightly dark 80's style synthpop is just so lovely.

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Heirs by And So I Watch You From Afar

Some nice, guitar heavy math rock without really being that intense at all. I like lighthearted math rock a lot and there's just not enough of it that's good. This is really good.

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Run Wild, Young Beauty by Hotel Books

A local poet became a band and he makes semi-La Dispute, mewithoutYou, etc. style music. It's just much calmer atmospheres than the usual sort of yelled/screamed word band and it works so well.

So that's 2 L'Orange albums and 3 Will Yip albums. Hmm ...

EDIT: Eh I'll add little sentence long reviews. Maybe someone will check out some of the ones I'm one of like 2 votes on.
_________________

. . . 2016 . . . 2015 . . .

Things I Make

[Tap]

still lots of good things coming so this will probably change, but here is where I'm at right now

1. Joshua Abrams - Magnetoception
just listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KETy2ArUsUg

2. Rie Nakajima - Four Forms
lots of clicks and scrapes, made by weird looking objects with batteries attached. absolutely love the live performance feel to it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwsQ8wWC7Rk

3. John Wiese - Deviate From Balance
A wonderfully structured album that starts relatively pretty and then finds it's way to more extreme noise by the end. here's how it opens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_vDyRueRY8

4. M.C. Schmidt - Batu Malablab
Starts out with prepared piano sounding like gamelan, and builds up to include duck calls and electronics and tons of fun stuff. this excerpt covers a fair amount of it https://soundcloud.com/forcedexposurepu...rom-batu-m alablab

5. Zaïmph - Two Aspects Divided
This one isn't available digitally at all sorry. It fucks with my head so much tho. You can check this excerpt but it's totally a tease cause it just sorta stops and on the album there's like another 10 min of it https://soundcloud.com/za-mph/new-exclu...ge-excerpt

6. Pole - Wald
Been listening to this one a whole bunch. Still don't know quite how to put in words why I like it so much, but every track is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGlPCAE3_uM

7. M.E.S.H. - Piteous Gate
This is probably more of a fresh take than what Pole is doing. My preference may shift there later, but this is still some crazy excellent beat fuckery without all the clutter that would come with such a description last decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3xpyAfdxDI

8. Fraufraulein - Extinguishment
So I think some of you all were into Anne Guthrie's release last year (I never got around to charting it, really should), but here is her collaborating with Billy Gomberg, lots of drones and bass and things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsdODMz93Rg

9. Metasplice - Metasplice
Weirdly minimal electronic music, some of it almost seeming like it could function as dance music if people moved really slow maybe. But even then, nah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfV6oJRc58 although this is one of the calmest tracks on the album some others get a lil busy with it

10. Nick Forté - Primordial Forms
Hand drawn wave forms go on a wild journey. https://soundcloud.com/amishrecords/nic...fect-birth