2017 musics

the 2chainz album that came out earlier this year is hella flames throughout.
didnt fuck w/ the new lil b unfortunately, although Global goes crazy hard
 
loving the new brand new record, great way to round out a near perfect discography

aoty still wiley - godfather
 

Audiosurfer

I'd rather be sleeping
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stuff i've liked from this year:
  • melodrama by lorde
  • big fish theory by vince staples
  • black origami by jlin
  • arca by arca
  • thot breaker by chief keef
  • everybody works by jay som
  • out in the storm by waxahatchee
  • dirty projectors by dirty projectors
  • kelly lee owens by kelly lee owens
  • process by sampha
  • black ken by lil b
  • playboi carti by playboi carti
  • i see you by the xx
stuff i'm excited for:
  • new st. vincent (new york was quality and i trust her completely)
  • new zola jesus (never listened to her before but the singles have been excellent)
  • new yaeji (fingers crossed, she's dropped some good stuff lately)
  • new liz phair (praying for a top tier comeback)
  • new kanye (heard he was out in wyoming working so maybe we'll be blessed this year but prob not)
  • new vampire weekend (?)
  • new sky ferreira (for the love of god)
still gotta hear the new ema record and haim and some other stuff though but this is where i'm at

edit: also new bjork in november :O
 
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SketchUp

Don't let your memes be dreams
Top 10 of the year so far:
1. Richard Dawson - Peasant
2. Girls Pissing on Girls Pissing - Songs of Sodomy and the Compost of Aethyr
3. Kubikmaggi - Things
4. Lingua Ignota - Let The Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him
5. Alameda Duo - The Luminous Guitar Craft of Alameda Duo
6. Flotation Toy Warning - The Machine That Made Us
7. Jun Konagaya - Memento Mori
8. Joshua Abrams - Simultonality
9. Pere Ubu- 20 Years in a Montana Missile Solo
10. Johan Berthling / Martin Küchen / Steve Noble - Threnody, at the Gates

Heard some hip hop from this year but nothing stood out. Overall a pretty mediocre year but some great experimental folk and modern classical albums really bump up the quality. I doubt a lot of this top 10 will change in the next 3 months

Edit: I guess I was wrong about the last sentence. A lot changed because of great reccs:

1. Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra - Vula
2. Richard Dawson - Peasant
3. Tim Buckley - Venice Mating Call
4. Lingua Ignota - All Bitches Die
5. Circuit des Yeux - Reaching for Indigo
6. Girls Pissing on Girls Pissing - Songs of Sodomy and the Compost of Aethyr
7. Kubikmaggi - Things
8. Lingua Ignota - Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him
9. Alameda Duo - The Luminous Guitar Craft of Alameda Duo
10. Vein - Vein Plays Ravel
 
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ceraa

Banned deucer.
i haven't listened to much releases from this year but my AOTYSF is the new flotation toy warning album. i highly recommend you give it a listen to it if you haven't already. i also enjoyed iii by foxtails, 3 by tricot and flower boy by tyler the creator.

im also looking forward to the new bjork record which should be coming out in november.
 

SketchUp

Don't let your memes be dreams
Bradley Hathaway - Flesh Eater : folk / spoken word record. It's about a Christian man and his struggle with lust. I'm not religious myself and found things to enjoy: the honesty (it's like an album of confessions), and the intensity with which the lyrics match up with the music.
Holy shit this album is insane. Thanks a lot for this recc
 
wire released their aotys recently. from the ones i heard i gotta highly recommend: tommy, SIMULTONALITY SO MUCH and patterns of consciousness. looking forward to checking out the nonwestern albums they included
 
the new converge album is quite good, as expected, but the title track in particular is phenomenal, merging shoegaze and doom and a plethora of other stuff into a beautiful slow burner
 
This year of music went pretty well for me. Three out of four (Logic, Kung-Fu Kenny, Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd) of my favorite artists dropped albums this year. Miguel and Tyler, The Creator even ended up dropping some fire albums, so I really have nothing to complain about; 2017 was a pretty fruitful year of music. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what artists surprise me in 2018, but I'm sure expecting nothing but fire.
 
aoty list time. pretty dry year for me, couldn't pick 10 albums that i loved so here's 6:

1. wiley - godfather
2. brand new - science fiction
3. aj tracey - secure the bag
4. gy!be - luciferian towers
5. sampha - process
6. mogwai - every country's sun

top 5 songs:
1. wiley - can't go wrong
2. ski mask tha slump god - catch me outside
3. vince staples - crabs in a bucket
4. preditah x jorja smith - on my mind
5. treble clef - trumpet boom
 
As usual I barely payed attention to stuff that came out, but it was a pretty disappointing year for me- the only release that I was really looking forward to that I think lived up to my expectations was In Contact by Caligula's Horse (check it out if you haven't heard it- prog metal, but recommended even for people who don't normally like metal since it's way up the lighter end of things).

Anyway, here's all the albums from this year that I bought (or merely listened to in the case of Leprous/DSO)
  1. Caligula's Horse- In Contact. The only album I was really looking forward to that lived up to my expectations. Great prog metal/rock that's fairly diverse in that they can really sound uplifting while at other times having typical metal intensity.
  2. Soen- Lykaia. Another release that straddles the line between (prog) metal and rock. Sounds a lot like Tool with a little bit of Opeth mixed in. Also I legit didn't think their singer could deal with high intensity sections, and although that doesn't happen often on this record he performs well enough
  3. Ne Obliviscaris- Urn. I posted about them in the metal thread, but NeO manage to release a good album because their core sound is good, but this doesn't come close to their previous work. One thing I miss is they had a bright, vibrant sound on their debut, but they're increasingly chasing a darker, more ominous sound and I don't think it's doing their music any good
  4. Diablo Swing Orchestra- Pacifisticuffs. Again, good album because their core sound is good, but it doesn't measure up to their previous work. I particularly dislike all the filler tracks on the album, since they disorganise things even more. DSO's sound is already incredibly diverse and incorporates heaps of different influences so the filler tracks only impair the ability for all their components to come together. Also their new vocalist isn't as good imo. Then again, I've only listened to this album once.
  5. Igorrr- Savage Sinusoid. Igorrr doing Igorrr things. I think this album is more consistent than Hallelujah, which is a good and a bad thing- it's overall better, but lacks the peaks of the previous album
  6. Persefone- Aathma. Not egregiously bad, but there's nothing particularly appealing about this album either.
  7. Leprous- Malina. Boooring. Although recognisably Leprous, this venture into prog rock is overall toothless and uninteresting- long quiet stretches with little to balance them out. The vocals are also way over done- lots of high pitch bullshit rather than something that actually sounds genuine. That said, I haven't bought it and I haven't listened to it in while as of this post
  8. Mastodon- Emperor of Sand. I initially viewed this album in a similar vein to how I currently view NeO and DSO's albums, but over time I came to really detest this album, as it's easily Mastodon's worst. All the songs build up toward sections that dial back the intensity for a sort of almost trippy sound that just fucking kills those songs. Not to mention that some of the songs showcase a clear affinity for bland unappealing poppy bullshit, kinda like some of the songs on The Hunter, which imo is the only other bad album from Mastodon. That comparison is interesting though, because The Hunter has a few moments that I really enjoy (All the Heavy Lifting), but the same cannot be said for Emperor of Sand
 

termi

bike is short for bichael
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributor
the whole damn year is over so here's a top 20 of good albums:

1. Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Soundtrack. Feels weird having an OST as my #1 for the year but this one deserves it entirely. Takes the jazzy ambiance of the OST for the first two seasons and takes it to a new level. Simultaneously, it feels darker, colder, and emptier, which perfectly represents the new season (which you should watch because it's the best thing that's ever been on TV).

2. Richard Dawson - Peasant. Richard Dawson is one of the most interesting contemporary folk artists around today and he's hit a new high with this album. Usually, an album with medieval themes would make me groan, but Dawson sidesteps dull cliches. No silly tales of knights and princesses, but a brutally real depiction of the filth and misery of medieval life and a broader tale about the hope and woes of life in a tightly knit community. Dawson's guitar style is as jagged and crude as ever, sounding proficient and amateurish at the same time. It's such a great folk album.

3. Oxbow - Thin Black Duke. Have been loving this band for a few years now so it's very exciting to see them return with a new album. I feared they might have lost their mojo after not releasing an album for so long, but luckily my fears quickly dissipated once the singles started rolling out. Once more, Oxbow's juggles with elements of noise rock, blues, and jazz, and comes out sounding entirely unique. New are the symphonic elements on a few tracks. The best rock record of the year hands down.

4. Bedwetter - Volume 1: Flick Your Tongue Against Your Teeth and Describe the Present. A side project of Travis Miller AKA Lil Ugly Mane where he dives into the deepest realms of his psychology and it's not pretty. There's only a few tracks with lyrics, but considering how heavy they are in terms of subject matter (depression, trauma, addiction etc) it's probably better in short doses with instrumental breaks in between anyway. The beats are murky, hazy, and overall very unique and they add to the album's dark themes very well.

5. Mark Kozelek with Ben Boye & Jim White - self-titled. My favorite Kozelek project of the year (and there were many). Lyrically it's what you'd come to expect of a Kozelek/Sun Kil Moon release these days: Mark speak-sings (more speaking than singing) about whatever he feels like in diary-like fashion, jumping from one subject to the next, mixing tales about his day-to-day life with political commentary and his love for cats and whatever else comes to his mind. Instrumentally, however, it's more interesting and varied than the usual folky fare of Kozelek's music. There's piano ballads, jazzy tracks, and folk rock songs, providing the right amount of variety to make the album not boring (it's 90 minutes long). Whether you like it ultimately comes down to whether you like the direction Mark's been heading in since 2012's Benji, in any case I'm a fan.

6. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked at Me. A very difficult listen and something I haven't listened to more than twice since its release (hence why it's lower on my list than it could have been). It's a very instrumentally sparse singer/songwriter album that has Phil Elvrum singing about the death of his wife and how this impacted him. He doesn't use flowery prose, he doesn't try to make it look beautiful, it's all raw honesty, so private that it feels like you're intruding in his life. It's painful but it's so good.

7. Uniform - Wake In Fright. I don't expect many people to like this album and honestly, it's rather flawed, but it tickles me in juuust the right way. Noisy industrial rock tracks with a vocalist who spit-shouts his lyrics, messy in its execution but absolutely satisfying. They also go EBM on one track and it's strangely catchy in all its ugly wrongness.

8. Death Grips - Steroids. One of their better releases imo, very very fun set of tracks that segue smoothly into one another, creating a short but satisfying shot of Death Grips.

9. Charli XCX - Pop 2. Neither Charli nor PC Music were particularly interesting to me before, but their synthesis somehow works really well. Pop music that is sweet and addictive like sugar with the interesting style of the PC Music producers but without their pretensions. No-nonsense fun, basically. There are a few tracks I could do without and some of the many features on this thing really miss the mark, but Carly Rae Jepsen, Cupcakke, and Caroline Polachek on the other hand are great on this thing.

10. Kelly Lee Owens - self-titled. Kinda like the experimental ambient pop of Jenny Hval (who features on this album) crossing over with the technopop of Laurel Halo. The result is simultaneously chill and danceable.

11. Endon - Through the Mirror. The only memorable metal record for me this year. Absolutely balls-to-the-walls amalgamation of all sorts of metal and punk rock (noisecore/powerviolence/black metal/sludge metal/you name it they got it), constantly loud and intense as fuck. Gets tiresome at points due to how relentless it is, but oh well. Music to destroy your eardrums to.

12. Denzel Curry - 13. One of the better artists in trap rap thanks to his killer flow and great beats, more aggressive and rawer than most of them. It's short, it's fun, and it's got two of his best cuts - Bloodshed and Zeltron 6 Billion. Listen to this.

13. Paul White - Everything You've Forgotten. Short and varied beat tape from Danny Brown's main producer. That's all you need to know, really.

14. Cornelius - Mellow Waves. Not a lot of real standout tracks on here, but it's just a really really pleasant experience. Dreamy pop music that seamlessly integrates electronica, rock, and folk into its sound.

15. UUUU - self-titled. I literally listened to this a couple of hours ago for the first time, it probably would be higher on this list if I gave it a couple more listens, but as of right now this is a solid place for this album. UUUU sees (ex-)members of seminal post-punk band Wire come together with Thighpaulsandra of Coil and a relatively unknown Italian musician for an exciting album of semi-improvised experimental rock. It's good.

16. Lil B - Black Ken. Too much filler, but at its best this is some of Lil B's finest work. I love listening to the stretch of tracks that starts with Pretty Boy Skit and ends with Zam Bose (In San Jose), unfortunately the stuff that comes afterwards is hit-or-miss, but when this tape gets good it gets great. Stupid fun.

17. Oiseaux-Tempête - AL-'AN ! الآن (And Your Night Is Your Shadow - A Fairy-Tale Piece of Land to Make Our Dreams). Another record I haven't been able to give as much time to as I would like. This is the first new post-rock release in forever to actually interest me. Electronica and Arabic folk influences make this album interesting and it's more concerned with creating a brooding atmosphere than with crescendos and whatnot. Better than whatever Godspeed's doing these days.

18. Zeitkratzer, Svetlana Spajic, Dragana Tomic & Obrad Milic - Serbian War Songs. Yet another very recent find. A bunch of experimental musicians come together to create unique covers of slavic folk songs. Their take on these tunes is industrial, brooding, and outright oppressive. Harrowing and difficult, but a jewel in the rough for people who are into the experimental and avant-garde side of things.

19. Avey Tare - Eucalyptus. I'm mostly just glad that the Animal Collective guys are still capable of making good music despite the band's descent into mediocrity. This album evokes AnCo's earlier, folkier period, which happens to be one of their better periods. A bit lowkey, but a very nice and calm album.

20. Brockhampton - SATURATION III. I'm not fully on board with the hype just yet, mostly because I only started listening to these guys when this album dropped. I'll give them time to grow on me more. For the time being, BOOGIE and SISTER/NATION are some of the best tracks of this year and the rest's solid as well, which is enough to earn it a place on my top 20.

 
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before i get to my 2017 mentions, jeff rosenstock snuck out a surprise lp on new year's and it's pretty interesting. idt he get's the love he deserves, kinda pop punk for the smart mark, worth a shot if that sounds interesting at all. he always links his shit for free, though i believe some of the proceeds off this one are going to charity, so it'd be kinda dope to support good causes and artists you appreciate in one if you got disposable income.

back to year-end, i had a weird year, didn't keep up w/things as well as i'd have liked and ultimately was disappointed by loads of guys i've enjoyed in the past. still, after reviewing and catching up i ended up sorting out a bunch of music i really, really enjoyed, so this will be something of a firing from the hip type "list". a couple i had trouble placing, but shouts open mike eagle, king gizzard, quelle chris, g herbo, mount eerie, oh sees, fleet foxes, brockhampton (i'm riding this hype train).

  • (20) Milo - Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! : while i would call myself a milo fan, his music to me is somewhat difficult to digest and thereafter put some ranking on. perhaps it deserves higher, perhaps lower, but the experience of his music is unique to the point of desiring to include it here. very heady and verbose, philosophically charged raps delivered in a faintly jazzy, stream-of-conscious fashion, spruced up w/some interesting vocal edits and strong features from the underground scene.
  • (19) Forest Swords - Compassion : my fave ambient release of the year, loaded with character and tension building grooves. the use of middle eastern melodies, sparse tribal drums, and tasteful vocal sampling all falls together in a really expressive manner, cool stuff.
  • (18) Sutekh Hexen / Hissing - Split: not only one of my favourite releases from sutekh hexen in recent memory, but a lovely introduction to hissing, whose bile and more immediate blackened death passage provides nice juxtaposition to what i might liken to a blackgaze experience from sh (though ofc they are not technically metal). on a technical level i'm not sure if hissing are quite up to snuff yet, being a fairly fresh face, but the progressive songwriting in their 15+ minute cut shows lots of promise, and sustains them just fine for that amount of time.
  • (17) Elder - Reflections of a Floating World: a lot of my mid-year stuff found itself overthrown by what was to me a pretty back-loaded 2017, but i do still feel this is one of elder's best records to date, and a very enjoyable and dynamic stoner metal lp for whoever might be interested in such things
  • (16) Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun: while not quite the epic blend of her earliest dark folk and newer industrial metal tendencies, i still found myself thoroughly enjoying the material chelsea put out on this project. a very nice blend of doom and gothic rock for all ages
  • (15) Prurient - Rainbow Mirror: frankly I wanted to like this a lot more, given just how head-over-heels i was for frozen niagra falls and having in that time come to appreciate much of his late 2000's output, but for a project as massive as this (even by prurient standards), the vast majority is haunting and well worth your time. a massive, quad-disc collection of cavernous, evil dark ambient and harsh noise work, really nifty stuff
  • (14) Bradley Hathaway - Flesh Eater : s.o Danilo man. i've kinda come to accept that we have pretty different tastes, but i always give a fair shake to something he'll recommend here and it's cuz of selections like this. the story being told through the lyrics here, of which i won't spoil b.c you should do yourself a kindness and listen yourself, is trvly captivating, and that forlorn and tired timbre everywhere from the vocals to the guitars is stunning. a real diamond in the rough when it comes to stripped down folk music, absolutely deserves more eyes on it
  • (13) Converge - The Dusk in Us: i was ready to pass this off as just another good record from a band that doesn't drop bad records, but after really getting a feel for this release in the context of converge's career i had to give more props. while not as experimental as their 2012, i find bannon's push to improve his singing on this record admirable, and it pushes the impact of some of the more melodic segments in a way their previous efforts (which generally found them enlisting vocal guests) did not quite reach. slightly more than just more good converge ig would be the tl;dr
  • (12) Perfume Genius - No Shape: other than being a sucker for interesting instrumental timbre, this one lands on here for being fucking beautiful, and probably my preferred maximalist take from hadreas. the very cinematic and lush take on love and loss here is one to me that manages to sneak right in and still feel like a very intimate exchange, and ofc the mixing / mastering is outstanding for the instrumentation present
  • (11) Wiki - No Mountains in Manhattan: I was bummed that this ending up with almost no buzz, with most fans pushing it off as a less punchy "Lil Me". the effort wiki takes to parse his early-career verbiage into easily digestible bites allows for some of his most immediate and directly relatable tales. while his hook game hasn't improved for the most part, this record is fantastic at relaying the burgeoning new york revivalism in a catchy, almost conversational manner
  • (10) The National - Sleep Well Beast: coincidentally, i invested time this year familiarizing and forming my opinion on the national just in time to be up to speed as this record dropped, and i can say confidently that i have only liked Boxer front to back to this point. every other release will dredge up highlights (even several in the case of alligator), but they end up brought way down by dull mixing, loads of misfired ballads and slow burners, and an inability to play to berninger's strengths as a frontman. in contrast, the mix here is great, the majority of slow burners turn out strong, and the incorporations of indietronic elements go over fantastically. my second favourite release from them by a long shot, very impressive
  • (9) Big K.R.I.T - 4eva is a Mighty Long Time: fantastic return to form from krit and maybe one of the best double albums in rap, for what little that's saying. this break from def jam seems to have gotten him the best of both worlds, capitalizing on his mid-career experience to sharpen formulas that he executes with such vigor and quality here. the bangers are sticky as fuck, the jams are sticky as fuck, everything maintains this high benchmark of enjoyability w/o sacrificing anything in turn
  • (8) Iglooghost - Neo Wax Bloom: spiderman of the rings, 10 years later, laptop > glockenspiel, on the corner era davis + flylo > snes era video games. some of the most energetic, vibrant, and dense electronic music that lands at this unique crossroads of influences. i think most people will gravitate to the bangers in the middle of the album, but i feel the mid-paced cuts stand as a vast improvement from iglooghost as a producer, which is pretty dope coming from someone that followed his progression to this point.
  • (7) Jay Z - 4:44 : given his track record (releasing two records that i could personally call great), i would hardly call myself a jay fan. however, this lp kinda stands out to me as the ideal 3rd act rap album, with jay reflecting on his trajectory candidly in a way that feels deeply emotional and, at times, philanthropic. the stark contrast between this tightly constructed product and his overblown, commercial concessions of past inadvertently makes this album feel all the more like a shift in priorities for jay, and i hope that if and when he follows this up it maintains this purposeful trajectory.
  • (6) Mountain Goats - Goths: one of my early year highlights that absolutely held up with time. probably my fave late-career mountain goats record, loaded with some of the best story-telling in recent memory, and the compositions that accompany them are beautiful to boot. digging into the deluxe version, whose bonus tracks are without lyrics, gives me all the more appreciation for the detail the group put into their pieces. A must-listen for fans of that singer-songwriter breed.
  • (5) Kirin J Callinan - Bravado: my other standout from midyear that's continued to have that return value for me. i actually managed to play this on repeat enough to wear myself out of it, hold back on it for a few months, then return and fall back in love with it again. fantastic art pop album that manages to lampoon a myriad of topics, most prominently masculinity. Some of the best musical meme'ing of the year too.
  • (4) Richard Dawson - Peasant: an album that took me a hot minute to really dig into, but surely one of my favourite folk releases in recent memory. dawson manages to conjure an almost anachronistic sound with this release, much in the vein of an early fleet foxes, but the freak folk tendencies push it so far into a lane all its own. constantly mesmerizing and layered, an album that rewards multiple listens for sure
  • (3) Oxbow - Thin Black Duke: way more vast than i would have expected, and even more surprising for how well it went over for me. oxbow continues to entrance as someone who admittedly was not THAT much of a fan to this point, but the sleek and dark grooves and wild vocal performances wowed me in a very unique way here, really great release through and through
  • (2) Tyler the Creator - Scum Fuck Flower Boy: never thought i'd see the day, but tyler finally cut the bullshit. this project is an improvement on all fronts: the lyrics and flows are sharp as hell, the hooks are sticky, and his talents as a composer have never shined brighter. every track has this immediate warmth and familiarity, to the point where you want to sing / rap along by the first listen before realizing you wouldn't know what was gonna be said yet. somehow the best rap and r&b album of the year simultaneously, amazing project
  • (1) Nazoranai - Beginning to Fall in Line Before Me, So Decorously, the Nature of All That Must Be Transformed: i'll admit to be a burgeoning keiji haino mark, but none of his recent material struck me quite like this. being his third outing with this particular outfit (which consistent of himself, oren ambarchi, and stephen o'malley, both similarly prolific performers), they have honed their interplay to the point where, despite being a live improvisation, every dip in intensity feels entirely conscious or even pre-meditated. through these dissonant and drony lurches into more beautiful interludes, this recording operates on such a high level of intrigue and mystique, brought up a level by haino's cryptic, existential shouts over the second half. while nowhere near as traditionally enjoyable as a lot on this list, it's by far my favourite listen of the year and perhaps one of the most engaging experimental noise rocks experiences for me in recent memory
 

termi

bike is short for bichael
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributor
well, this somehow escaped me until today:

this probably is my #5 or #4 for the year after only two listens. the rage and lust for vengeance this record oozes is second to none. death industrial alternated with bitter longform gothic piano balladry? sign me the fuck up. really unique shit.
 

Da Letter El

Officially internet famous
is a Community Leader Alumnus
well, this somehow escaped me until today:

this probably is my #5 or #4 for the year after only two listens. the rage and lust for vengeance this record oozes is second to none. death industrial alternated with bitter longform gothic piano balladry? sign me the fuck up. really unique shit.
Jesus Christ this thing holds no punches from the get go
 

RODAN

Banned deucer.
going through a lot of the 2017 music that I missed and decided this would be a good time for my aoty list. the thing is though i actually havent listened to that much, so Lol! I'm not gonna rank them because its hard but my AOTY is probably SZA - CTRL or Seiko Oomori - KITIXXXGAIA

things i liked:
algiers - the underside of power
jay-z - 4:44
sun kil moon - common as light
BROCKHAMPTON - Saturation II (I and III are good too but II is my favourite)
MINAKEKKE - tingles
gutevolk - hello tiny people! i will catch you!
perfume genius - no shape
lil pump - gucci gang


things i hated:
eminems stupid bullshit
gorillaz - humanz
whatever the fuck that taylor swift monstrosity was
katy perry - witness
 

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