BEST OF THE 90'S REDUX -- SORT OF.

Pollmania started running wild on ILM after the runaway success of the Best of the 00's poll, so a 90's poll was instigated not long after. Given the immense emotional investment that I tend to put into my listmaking, this meant I was in for night after night of pained decision making. If I had children, I would be forcing myself to favour one child over another, like giving one child the fanciest toys while others were forced to play outside with mud and twigs. It took eight months to put together this list the first time -- AND I NEVER COMPOSED A SINGLES LIST! That means twice as much work is required for this poll! The agony!

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way. As with the previous poll, the lists aren't my personal favourites, they're my favourites out of the group of nominees, all of which (besides two albums and two tracks) were nominated by others.

POLL STRATEGY.
1. Do not nominate right away. By waiting, music that you feel inclined to nominate may get nominated for you, absolving you of the responsibility of nominating the likes of "In Sides" or "Loveless".
2. The effect of split votes must be taken into account. "Mars Audiac Quintet" may be my fave Stereolab album, but if four albums by the 'Lab are nominated then it's in danger of getting lost in the shuffle if nominated. Particularly if the band.s music is divisive, i.e. fans cannot decide what their best album is, then the risk of vote-splitting, leading to drastically lower placings (and/or fewer placings) across their entire canon is probable. Now, if every nominator adhered to this rule, then they would think twice about nominating that fourth Stereolab album, and those who made the first 'Lab nominations could feel secure about nominating them, since they wouldn.t fear that others would partially ruin their nomination later on. But of course, if this were true, then Stereolab may have never been nominated in the first place, since anyone adhering to Rule 2 would also adhere to Rule 1. Ha, PARADOX.
3. Strike a balance between strategic voting and picks from the heart. The necessary balance between the two is whatever makes you sleep soundly at night -- no more, no less. The main considerations with strategic voting are a) vote inflation toward items that you want to see on the final poll, and b) support for non-favourite items by favourite acts (AKA Artist Support Transfer). The complimentary considerations in the nominations field are the two forms of Artist Nomination Transfer, which are, c) nominations for non-favourite items by favourite acts, and d) nominations for items (which may or may not be favourites) by non-favourite acts. Both Rule 3c and 3d are followed in the interest of achieving the aims of Rule 3a).

Let us now consider explanations and examples of the (somewhat complicated) Rule 3 and its constituent parts.

The Spiritualized Conundrum provides a suitable model system for addressing this rule. At one point several days into the nomination process, their only nominated album was "Lazer Guided Melodies". My favourite album is "Pure Phase", but I was uncertain about nominating it since it typically is not cited as the fave of serious or casual SPZ fans -- that honour surely belongs to "Ladies and Gentlemen ...". I was quite surprised that the latter had not been nominated at this point, given the prevalence of SPZ fans on the board. So, my options were

A) Do nothing, invoke rule 3b and engage in AST toward LGM in my ballot.
B) Essentially the opposite of A). That is, if I felt that I could not give strong support to LGM in place of a superior (IMHO) SPZ album. Therefore: do nothing, essentially vacating spots that would have been occupied by SPZ on my own personal chart, and take advantage of the opening by invoking Rule 3a on other worthy albums.
C) Invoke Rule 3c by Nom. LAG (note that this could constitute a disobeying of Rule 1). In this case, it would necessitate a subsequent choice of whether or not to invoke 3b by engaging in AST toward LAG (that is, AST from PP to LAG). Obviously, this is a necessity if and only if PP was not subsequently nominated (which I suspected would be the case).
D) Nom. PP. Since this is a fave album by a fave act, no strategic voting is necessary. Nonetheless, this risks a violation of Rule 2 in the (not unlikely) event that LAG is subsequently nominated. Not to mention that the paucity of votes it would receive compared to those albums could result in a de facto violation of Rule 1, since that nomination could have been more effectively used toward music that would have a better change of making the final chart. This is the tradeoff that comes with shunning all strategic voting, i.e. nom/voting strictly with the heart and not with the head.

In this case, I decided against A, since I felt LGM was not strong enough to merit AST from either follow-up record. I deemed D to be unsuitable since it would not draw enough votes to make the nomination worthwhile. Fortunately, LAG was nominated a couple of days later, saving me the agony of deciding between B and C. At the time, I was leaning toward B, since there were many other things I wanted to nominate. Had I gone with C, Rule 3b would not have been invoked, since LAG, once nominated, would likely do fine on its own without a strong ranking on my ballot.

Rule 3a was applied to significant effect. It is too soon to know if "69 Love Songs" is truly one of my favourite albums ever, but for right now, little would please me more than a top ten placing in the final standings. [My latest "69 Love Songs" learned moment of clarity: The ending of "Meaningless", with its repeated refrains of "Effervescently meaningless, YES YES YES it was beautifully meaningless, YES YES YES, it was profoundly meaningless ... etc." is one of the saddest things I have ever heard in song. The weighty feeling of utter defeat and humiliation in his voice as those lines are uttered is what gets me every time. Furthermore, the entire lyric can be construed as the braggadocio of an uncaring dumper of the painful lament of a distraught dumpee. Of course, the previous sentence already revealed which interpretation I prefer].

Other invocations of 3a include: the top five ranking for "Woob 1194" (entirely necessary since I nominated it), the inclusion of "Lapsed" (my other album nomination -- it's not yet a slam-dunk inclusion on my personal 90's Album Redux list -- but its placing was fueled by the temptation to stoke the flames of the small but devoted ILM Bardo Pond contingent, i.e. a situation for the usage of Rule 3d if there ever was one), the high ranking for "Ex:El", the inclusion of "Spice", and the inclusion and high rankings for a significant amount of ambient, house, and techno.

Rule 3b was rarely invoked, in large part because many of my actual favourites were nominated on both the albums and singles charts. Most notable is the case of "Basic Channel", in which large quantities of AST from Vainqueur's "Elevations" are required to explain its high ranking. More accurately, "Elevations" might have been nominated but was not due to Rule 2, and the high ranking resulted from application of Rules 3b and to a lesser extent, 3a as well. Autechre's "Amber" is ranked comparable to "Chiastic Slide" in my original list, and the application of Rule 3b is the dominant cause for this.

So there you have it, an updated, semi-accurate list of the best of the last decade of the last century of the last millennium. The first one required eight agonizing months of thought, whereas these two lists came together in only three sittings. It never could have come together so quickly had it been my own personal list. It's far easier to toss a chart together without having to micromanage the decisions that go into choosing each and every spot. Since the list isn't my personal one, I don't have the same burden of having to maximize the list's "correctness". And many decisions can be explained away by claiming strategic voting, which in itself is something of an antithesis to listmaking accuracy.

On the other hand, seventeen of my former top thirty were on the nominations list. These seventeen, as you'd expect, formed the backbone of the new list (all of them are in the top 21), with the extra spots filled in by several albums which scraped the outskirts of the list in 1999, and have continued to do so ever since. And the singles list contains nearly all of my legitimate favourites from the decade. With that sort of selection, perhaps these musings on strategic voting are nothing but a veil for my lack of acceptance of the fact that this list had the potential to be more accurate than I would care to admit. If so, please pardon me while my head explodes.

TOP ALBUMS

1. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
2. Orbital - In Sides
3. Pulp - His'n'Hers
4. Woob - Woob 11:94
5. Orbital - Snivilization
6. The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
7. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
8. Basic Channel - Basic Channel
9. Orbital - Brown Album
10. Pulp - Different Class
11. Depeche Mode - Violator
12. Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet
13. 808 State - Ex: El
14. Jeff Mills - mix-up vol. 2 (aka live at the liquid room)
15. Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
16. Autechre - Amber
17. Bardo Pond - Lapsed
18. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
19. Super Furry Animals - Guerilla
20. Blur - Parklife
21. Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
22. Slowdive - Souvlaki
23. Spice Girls - Spice
24. Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
25. Saint Etienne - Tiger Bay
26. Curve - Pubic Fruit
27. Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
28. Th'Faith Healers - Lido
29. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II
30. Motorbass - Pansoul

TOP TRACKS

1. Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence"
2. Saint Etienne - "He's on the Phone"
3. James - "Laid"
4. Mogwai - "Mogwai Fear Satan"
5. Orbital - "Belfast"
6. My Bloody Valentine - "When You Sleep"
7. Adorable - "Sunshine Smile"
8. Underworld - "Cowgirl"
9. Yo La Tengo - "Nowhere Near.
10. Eddie Amador - "House Music"
11. Pulp - "Common People"
12. New Order - "Regret"
13. Saint Etienne - "Like a Motorway"
14. Slowdive - "Avalyn"
15. Pulp - "Disco 2000"
16. My Bloody Valentine - "To Here Knows When"
17. Monaco - "What Do You Want From Me?"
18. Massive Attack - "Karmacoma"
19. Pulp - "Something Changed"
20. Sinead O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U"
21. Slowdive - "Allison"
22. The Breeders - "Cannonball"
23. Cornershop - "Brimful of Asha"
24. Madonna - "Ray of Light"
25. Dubstar - "Stars"
26. The Future Sound of London - "Papua New Guinea"
27. Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"
28. Placebo - "Pure Morning"
29. Britney Spears - "Baby One More Time"
30. Jeru the Damaja - "Come Clean"