Regionally misplaced

Ten year sound: 2000-2009

2009-12-29T04:27:26Z

2000
Arovane - Tides
Broadcast - The Noise Made By People
D'Angelo - Voodoo
Gas - Pop
Jackie-O Motherfucker - Fig. 5
Matmos - The West
Outkast - Stankonia
Smog - Dongs Of Sevotion
The Infesticons - Gun Hill Road
Weakling - Dead As Dreams

2001
Bjork - Vespertine
Bows - Cassidy
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
Fennesz - Endless Summer
Henry Threadgill's Zooid - Up Popped The Two Lips
Mouse On Mars - Idiology
Res - How I Do
The Avalanches - Since I Left You
Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You
Vladislav Delay - Anima

2002
Cornelius - Point
Derek Bailey - Ballads
DJ Shadow - The Private Press
Iran - The Moon Boys
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma
Polwechsel Fennesz - Wrapped Islands
Shalabi Effect - The Trial of St-Orange
The Books - Thought For Food
Tujiko Noriko - Hard Ni Sasete

2003
Asa-Chang & Junray - Tsu Gi Ne Pu
David Sylvian - Blemish
Dizze Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
John Fahey - Red Cross, Disciple Of Christ Today
Juana Molina - Segundo
M. Ward - Transfiguration of Vincent
Robert Wyatt - Cuckooland
So - So
The Exploding Hearts - Guitar Romantic
TV On The Radio - Young Liars

2004
Bark Psychosis - ///Codename: Dustsucker
Brian Wilson - SMiLE
Deathprod - Deathprod
Evan Parker - Evan Parker With Birds
Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld
John Butcher - 13 Friendly Numbers
Mike Ladd - Nostalgialator
P.G. Six - The Well of Memory
Pan American - Quiet City
TTC - Batards Sensibles

2005
Basil Kirchin - Particles
Boris - Archive
Buck 65 - Secret House Against The World
Edan - Beauty And The Beat
Excepter - Throne
Isolee - We Are Monster
Jamie Lidell - Multiply
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää
The Wrens - The Meadowlands

2006
Ali Farka Toure - Savane
Bruise with Derek Bailey - s/t
Ekkehard Ehlers - A Life Without Fear
Georgia Anne Muldrow - Olesi: Fragments Of An Earth
Jack Rose - s/t
KK Null, Chris Watson, z'ev - Number One
Koch-Schutz-Studer - Tales From 30 Unintentional Nights
Narita Munehiro - Ether: Solo Electric Guitar Works
Thomas Mapfumo - Rise Up
White Flight - s/t

2007
Ben Frost - Theory Of Machines
Britney Spears - Blackout
Death Ambient - Drunken Forest
Frode Haltli - Passing Images
Ice Bound Majesty - A Tomb To Erect
Martin Tetreault & Kid Koala - Phon-O-Victo
Murmer - We Share A Shadow
Ran Slavin - The Wayward Regional Transmissions
Shape Of Broad Minds - Craft Of The Lost Art
Yoga'n'ants - Bethlehem, We Are On Our Own

2008
Cath & Phil Tyler - Dumb Supper
Cluster - Berlin 07
Dans Les Arbres - s/t
Erykah Badu - New AmErykah Part One
Estelle - Shine
G-Side - Starshipz & Rocketz
Ignatz - III
Monkey - Journey To The West
Nahvalr - s/t
Spring Heel Jack - Songs & Themes

2009
Aethenor - Faking Gold & Murder
Broadcast and the Focus Group - Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
Current 93 - Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain
David Sylvian - Manafon
G-Side - Huntsville International
Moritz Von Oswald Trio - Vertical Ascent
Radu Malfatti/Klaus Filip - imaoto
Paul White - The Strange Dreams Of Paul White
Richard Youngs - Beyond The Valley of Ultrahits
The Sa-Ra Creative Partners - Nuclear Evolution: The Age Of Love

Inspired by countdemoney, who somehow managed to distill things into two per year and make this sort of endeavor seem manageable. I couldn't hold myself to that, of course. 2007 in particular had me pulling my hair out just getting things down to 10.

2008, music: The Magic I.D.

2009-01-03T03:33:58Z

The Magic I.D.
Till My Breath Gives Out
Erstwhile, 2008

The Magic I.D. operates like a secret pop quartet infiltrating the timbral space of Dans Les Arbres. Here there are electronics, narcotic vocals, far more explicit flutterings and strums, but like Dans Les Arbres the sound exists in an area largely defined by the properties of the clarinet (or two of them, in this case, played in tandem by Kai Faschinski and Michael Thieke. All the better to provide dissonance with, my dear), quiet and unhurried, mellow but uneasy. Till My Breath Gives Out is dominated and defined by those same subdued tones, though the brief centerpiece "Martin Fiero" drops them entirely for something approaching a latin duet, run through a very German filter, with a very slightly swaggering guitar and software rhythm under the mild atonal vocals of Margarteth Kammerer and Christof Kurzmann. The album is actually structured with three pieces by the full quartet and three "duos" featuring each combination of the group, with the clarinets conceptually treated as a single instrument. They tend to pull in and out over Kammerer's repetitive, simple guitar work, and her vocals in particular share a held warble with them, particularly in her upper range, where she can blend right in and be ultimately absorbed.

2008, music: Dans Les Arbres

2009-01-03T01:05:58Z

Dans Les Arbres
Dans Les Arbres
ECM, 2008

Xavier Charles: clarinet, harmonica
Ivar Grydeland: acoustic guitar, banjo, sruti box
Christian Wallumrød: piano, harmonium
Ingar Zach: percussion, bass drum

Starting with the list of artists and instruments up there because this is such excellent, well-considered (and well played) group work with unusual instrumentation. This exists somewhere close to both free improv and chamber music, and the instrumentation lends itself to sustained drones and whines as well as rhythmic pulse (never pop anything, however). The quartet is there to truly play together; there are no solo efforts and no flailing spikes, as everything hangs in a close knit, eerie flow. Grydeland plays his strings plucked or scraped, blending with Wallumrød's muted prepared piano and Zach's work on cymbals, while the harmonium, sruti box and Charles' sustained breaths on clarinet and harmonica run so close together that it can be hard to divine the points at which they diverge. Zach sticks to auxiliary stuff; bells and scrapes and rattles, and his bass drum stays soft, low & open. Even that cohabitates with the low end whump of piano, providing an occasional plodding step to move beneath the wobbly tones and flickers overhead. Everything is restrained low and humming, always with a focus on interplay of sound, in a liminal space between pensive calm and menace.

2008, music: Æthenor

2008-12-24T02:22:24Z

Æthenor
Betimes Black Cloudmasses
VHF, 2008

Æthenor comprises Vincent De Roguin, Stephen O'Malley and Daniel O'Sullivan as a core trio, with additional guests. The music tends primarily toward the blackened soundscapes of O'Malley's various projects more than the more structurally formulaic works of De Roguin and O'Sullivan (Shora & Guapo, respectively), but Betimes Black Cloudmasses (a title that turns out to be a pretty apt description of the sound) still isn't what I would have expected from a trio like this. The opening bass pulse, a buoy amidst echoing drones and wobbling organlike electronics, creepy yet innocuous, leads to a false sense of familiarity with the sound. After four and a half minutes, it's suddenly halted and replaced by clear electronic sustains, and a couple brief attempts at its return are violently rejected by the sudden percussive appearance of improv drummers Nicolas Field and Alex Babel. It's these two who proceed to guide the album, dropping sudden attacks and flutters and making the sonic terrain generally unpredictable and dangerous. I frequently find otherwise enjoyable albums ruined for me by an insistence on timekeeping, particularly in the realms of metal, where the inherent camp of the metal drummer undercuts much of the possibility of overdriven guitars and blackened aesthetics. All that is rebellious or subversive about the genre is called into question through its rigorous adherence to standards, particularly from the drum throne. A freer approach facilitates surprises, while not tethering the drift of sound sliding by above.

The second piece opens with Field and Babel jangling away up front, pushing gasps out of some bladderous device, before turning more violent and tripping some siren of guitar, which builds with an increase of cymbals to a release of swirling dampened chimes. Here, as in other sections throughout the album, it's nearly in the realm of free improv, and I wouldn't have been at all surprised had some extended saxophone technique suddenly cut in. Instead, there's a brief twitch of vocals (supplied by Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg), light enough to be barely noticable, that present a human element all the more effective for its subtlety. It's minimal enough that it remains environmental rather than authorial; it's well under control of the music. And this in turn slips into something more sonically familiar, looped and nearly melodic and engaging a full spectrum of sound, but nothing stays too long. Æthenor seem to be masters of the dissolve, and a few minutes later in the track you're in a totally different space, quiet doppler sweeps across the channels with airy synth up top, but again, the percussion never lets anything get comfortable.

The third track opens with some dueling squibbles between drums and high keys, but the trio's focus on atmospherics never lets it stray into the silliness that might entail in another setting, and they quickly calm things, if momentarily, to spare plucks of minor hum. It's the quietest track on the disc, as the storm of the second piece moves away, little squirts of sound emerging like birdsong and an etherial melody rising up through heavy reverb.

Given the trio, it's surprising how little metal or drone actually exists in the recording, and it's much to their credit that this is far more effective at perpetuating an atmosphere of dread and solitude than a more traditional approach could be. I'll be looking forward to their third release, hopefully late January '09, and seeing what they bring to the table while enlisting David Tibet.

2008, music: Cath & Phil Tyler

2008-12-19T08:43:04Z

Cath & Phil Tyler
Dumb Supper
No-Fi, 2008

These two transmit the essences of folk at a root level. Unhurried, unpolished, beautifully spare harmonies, full of throat and heart. Opening on "Wether's Skin" with a plucked guitar, an open rolling gate to Cath's voice, unguarded, naturally weathered and perfect for the demands of hazy old folksongs. Like the best folk music, the weight doesn't kick in immediately; here a couple songs seem to have become conjoined over the years, so against the story of the song itself, there's a constant refrain "Jennifer Jenny Rosemary/As the dew flies over the mulberry tree/As the dew flies over the green valley" that lends to an imagery and locality entirely consistent with the tone of the music. That obscures the subject matter, an old fable about (and from the view of) a farmer who marries a higher-class woman who refuses to work. Morally incapable of beating his wife, he reasons that beating a goatskin is fine, so he kills the goat and wraps her in one. Mirroring his coping process and the dual nature of the lyrics, the violence done is presented, "whickety-whack," as a schoolyard chant. So when Phil shows up for some restrained harmony, things are complicated. The gender roles are already skewed, so his presence adds further to the uncertainty; he both adds to the song and intensifies its unease.

The album continues much like that, largely tales of disquiet and despair. Cath's usually in a gravelly mode, vocally, but she's got a fantastic range of inflection, perfectly capable of sending up a more wistful performance as on "Slumber Boats (Baby Boats)," or a whimsical one, and moves perfectly from British to American folk, as on "Wild Stormy Deep." There are acapellas, there's even distortion on "Morning" that would make my parents visibly cringe, but it all seems to have been fully considered, and suits the tone.

I think, returning prodigally to folk as I have over the last few years, that my interest in it these days lies in how the emotional aspects of the songs have such potential to grow and take on their own resonance as the specifics, lyrically and musically, are passed and changed, singer to singer.

Discoveries, 2007

2007-12-27T08:03:04Z

Heavy Winged - Feel Inside [aRCHIVE], On the Marble Cliffs [Trensmat], Blacc Lust [Three Lobed]

It's the drums. Rather, it's the whole notion of timekeeper as constrained by a pop mentality, a pervasive backbeat because that's what you do when you've got guitar and bass and drums. That, more than any cookie-monster vocals or teenage lyrics or whathaveyou, is what's kept me off metal. It's always seemed like such an easy fix to me, too; you run your guitars through a dozen various pedals, you live on a Ricola diet to keep an exact timbre to your screaming, so why's your drummer still playing like you're a highschool rockband?

Now, I say the above specifically as a continued jab at Boris' reputation, sure. But the fact is I spent ages this year looking for metal of some sort I could fully appreciate, and the only damn thing I found that seemed to consider the role of the drums musically (as opposed to purely temporally) was Meshuggah's I. Everything else, even the stuff I like on various levels (Boris, yes, and Wolves In the Throne Room, and Drudkh, and plenty more) completely forgets that drums have just as visible and important a role in the music as every other instrument.

Heavy Winged, on the other hand, like to put up a giant block of structureless sound and let Jed Bindeman have a go at it like a wildman sculptor. He's entirely able to step in and live inside one pulse for 10+ minutes (and by pulse, I mean just that; no fills, no frills, no backbeats. Just a terrorizing heartbeat, unremitting) with a stubbornness that eventually wears down everyone else till they concede and join the party. Tracks like this (see "The Frozen Darkness" below) evolve slowly, never looking for that hook that so actively proves treacherous in heavy music, gaining weight through glacial movement in addition to their striating noise.

But the Winged aren't limited to a singular approach, either. They make their music improvised live to crusty 4 tracks, and it's that improv vector that posits them in realms out beyond the memorized technical backwater of typical metal. "On the Marble Cliffs" is a very different track for them, jumping between guitar themes -ones more defined than usual- relatively quickly, at times even approaching jam territory. But Jed again keeps things restrained, accompanying the grooves and meltdowns, or keeping way back to let the riffs pull their own weight, or interjecting a sudden free drum solo to reorganize the whole thing. Everybody listens.

"The Frozen Darkness" from Feel Inside
"On the Marble Cliffs" from On the Marble Cliffs

New Discoveries from 2007

2007-12-16T20:31:48Z

I'm sort of copping autumn__sweater's year-end system here, trying to stay away from lists and make this a little more personal.

Kevin Shea, Peter Evans, with a side of Moppa Elliott:

Talibam! - Ordination of the Gobetrotting Conscripts [Azul Discografica] and like 6 other CDs, records, tapes. When I ordered stuff from them, it showed up via bicycle messenger in a scotch-taped brown paper bag. One of their CDs came packaged in a cut-up Liberace LP sleeve with their name spray painted on the front. Awesome.

The Peter Evans Quartet - s/t [Firehouse 12] Also, Taylor Ho Bynum's Middle Picture on this label is some fantastic cornet work.

Mostly Other People Do the Killing - Shamokin!!! [Hot Cup]

These are some guys collectively devoted to giving jazz the Wile E. Coyote treatment. Kevin Shea's a free jazz drummer (also with Storm & Stress, People and a whole bunch of other bands) and Peter Evans plays trumpet on all these, while Elliot leads them both in MOPDtK. Talibam!'s the wildest of a the bunch, a free jazz noise trio sort of akin to Lightning Bolt in spirit and sound, but not afraid to step off that mold either. The Evans Quartet is the closest to straight (serious) free jazz, but retains energy and fun throughout, never getting locked into anything too navel-gazing. And the MOPDtK disc is like a slice of classic jazz and bop where everyone's so exuberantly pumped to be swingin' that they begin to trip over their own feet, roll down the hill and off the cliff. All the tracks are named after towns in PA nobody in the band has ever been to, with the last one a twenty minute attack on A Night In Tunisia (I assume there's a Tunisia in PA perhaps?) kick started by several minutes of hilarious quotes from Shea on his kit (including U2, fer chrissake) before launching into the most balls out version of the standard they could muster, all M. Coyote with his rocketbelt on and the plateau fast approaching.

Talibam! - "Rambo's Passeggiata"
Peter Evans Quartet - "!!!!!"
MOPDtK - "Lover"

Heavy Pops

2007-11-24T09:19:46Z

So this is way late now, but I'd meant to collect my thoughts on a couple shows I saw over two nights in early October, writing up not only the bands, but also the venues and the startling new experience of not going deaf at the rock show.

The first show, as you might have astutely guessed from the title here, was Damon & Naomi & Boris with Michio Kurihara, playing at the then-recently opened Music Hall of Williamsburg, formerly Northsix, where coincidentally I'd seen D&N and Ghost a few years back. Now the venue itself is pretty fine; it's as much a copy of the Bowery Ballroom as possible (same owners), while retaining the Northsix bleachers (now moved upstairs). It fixes a lot of the Bowery's main floor problems just by adding raised side platforms w/ railings along the sides of the room where the Bowery's "no sitting!" staircases would be, aka someplace to lean on a long night. The whole venue's substantially larger too, and actually felt a little roomy for this show (I don't think it was sold out). Despite that larger space though, the sound's fantastic, fully up to the bar the Bowery's set for the whole city, clear and loud and very well balanced.

Zaimph (Marcia Bassett, half of Double Leopards or somesuch) started out, and I've got little to say about her other than my unmitigated boredom regarding the general noise-drone scene. Lots of very loud guitar (the loudest act of the night by far, in fact), and some chanting and mumbling in there, which I guess might be intended as shamanistic. Every time I hear this type of stuff I think of the Doors' "The End," except that was better. Yippee, next.

It took me till that show to finally realize, after all these years, that Damon & Naomi are more an extension of '70s British folk than anything else. The psychedelic spiritual bits, the natural elements, it's all there. Just mentally replace their saxophone with a flute and it should all make sense. They play it straight enough to make things seem disorientingly out of date; I like them a lot but I know they're an acquired taste. They were talking up their dichotomy of "quiet" vs. Boris' "noise," which I thought was totally overstating the situation, but it was fun to see Kurihara playing under two different circumstances.

Now Boris, I don't know what to say to you. I'd heard all these phenomenal reports, I'd really dug your records and all, but that show just kind of lost me. Now perhaps we can chalk it up to venue, as the one thing the Music Hall seemed to lack was smoke. Perhaps you need that bit of physical obfuscation to add an element of mystery to your performance. Wata especially seems to need something to avoid looking about as engaging as a dead trout, and the venue that night failed to provide. But even the band as a whole seemed to be locked into greatest hits mode, staying clearly the driving pop side of things and away from any interesting texturally driven work (my favorite recordings from them remain the Early Shows and Drumless Shows discs of the aRCHIVE set, which transmit a much more vital group than the one I saw in Brooklyn), but not really rocking until the encore. Even there, you can probably get the same story from most people who saw a show on this tour; at some point toward the end, Atsuo posed on top of his drum kit, devil horns in the air, and dove into the crowd. Boris the band have been together over a decade now, and appear to suffer from a severe lack of spontaneity.

I actually was doubting my own experience till I talked to a friend about it the next day. He said "Oh Boris, I saw them five years ago. They're really old now, right?" Exactly.

Now the winner of the night's show? My new earplugs. Etymotic Research developed these to retain sound quality while lowering the overall volume, and they truly work. I could hold conversations with my fiancee back at the apartment at normal levels, and they left me totally comfortable at the show when Zaimph had the metalheads clutching their ears. The sound came through nearly perfectly, with a tiny reduction in the sibilant edge (I tried removing one a couple times through the show to test this). And they were comfortable enough to wear for 4 straight hours; I may end up selling my wildly uncomfortable Shure E2Cs for a pair of Etys in the near future.

Show #2:
I went the next night with my fiancee (she didn't accompany me to Boris, by the way) to the Brandi Carlile show at Irving Plaza. I'll get that latter part covered first: several years ago, after a string of awful shows there, I vowed never to return to Irving Plaza. The sound was terrible, muddy and distorted with a total lack of high end and punch. Things haven't changed a bit, except I guess the place is now called "The Fillmore at Irving Plaza." Stay far, far away.

Brandi Carlile's one of the few folks from the mainstream femme singer/songwriter stable I can tolerate, due solely to her voice and intonation. Here. Samples. Her music and lyrics are nothing inspiring, but the girl can belt and snake her way around besides. Plus she's a Washingtonian, so I have to root for the home team.

(Quick note on Brandi: both times I've seen her, she's been accompanied by the most atrocious openers. Last time was Cary Brothers, worst musician I've ever sat through and a prime example of what goes wrong in LA. This time was some tall pretty Tori Amos wannabe who thanked the head of her label for being there and dedicated a song to him. How sweet. The lesbians in the audience liked her very much.)

There was something refreshing, after the previous night's show, about somebody with the guts to unplug and sing to a packed house without mics, or to throw a dobro into things that nobody knew how to play, just cause it had sentimental value, or just let rip with a vocal felt down the spines of everyone in the room.

The loser though (aside from the venue and opener) was me, neglecting to bring those earplugs along. How loud could a singer/songwriter be, after a night with Boris? Another rock show, another bludgeoned eardrum.

Pop Rocks Booty Bass

2007-05-08T03:27:21Z

You've heard those tales, a few years ago now, about how maybe, just maybe, there is actual sex going down on the Brazilian dancefloors. You've thought about it. You've decried the puritanical state of North American dancefloors in comparison. You've done double takes at the covers of those Baile Funk compilations, perhaps you even bought one hoping for more explicit goods inside.

Now, remember how you ate Pop Rocks when you were a kid, not so much for the taste or the fizzing (though that did put them a step ahead of Nerds, at least), but cause you heard the urban legend about how some kid had died after eating a bunch and drinking soda? And that essence of vague danger gave you a rush of power; here you were, eight years old and already staring death in the eye, maybe chasing down a handful with a swig of Dr. Pepper if you were particularly daring?

Much as you thought of that kid writhing away his final moments in stomach-ruptured agony, here's Tigarah, handing you a little package of fizzy sex and daring with her EP from last year. The beat drops in and you think "oh yeah, actual sex!" You can almost feel that dancefloor orgy in the kick drum alone. She starts talking (I couldn't honestly call it singing or rapping), that particular commanding tone of the genre even enhanced by the syllabic structure of her Japanese. She's ordering this shit around like a hypersexual square dance caller, flaunting the hell out of some serious cross-cultural exoticisms. You can almost believe it!

There's a point in you life where you realize the great Pop Rocks danger is a myth but, having spent so long within that nebulous intrigue, you tuck the experience of it away in a sweet nostalgic place. You stop eating Pop Rocks, cause they don't taste all that great and their fizz doesn't kick like it used to. A similar thing begins halfway through the first song on the Tigarah EP, when she breaks into a little strummed acoustic guitar in place of the ass shaking. Thirty seconds later she's doing the little "list the hip cosmopolitan international cities" bit and you realize this girl is straight Shibuya-Kei in a Baile Funk hat. It's an assumption quickly confirmed by her total lack of vocal skills or charisma in general. By the second track she's throwing in a little vocoded jpop, ala Utada Hikaru or whomever. And you realize she's got all the burgeoning sexuality of a briefcase full of money on the way to the bank. By the end of the EP, if you last that long, you wonder how you ever fell for it, and you're more than a little amused by the whole endeavor. By next week, you'll have forgotten her entirely.

the first 3 tracks are plenty.

There goes house and home

2006-12-24T02:20:48Z

Here's a good one: I take a trip to Portland, new location of half my family and city of my heart of hearts, and just around the corner from my sister's house is another one for sale. It's a small perfection, with enough function to call it a home and enough oddity to make it special, and my girlfriend and I are both in love with it. It's no financial impossibility, but then her emotions dictate the situation more than money ever can, and so today it's back to tied down old new york, and the spell of that moment snaps entirely as she sets foot to pavement here. Goodbye, little balcony and yard with the potential for a small vegetable garden round the side. I nearly could have touched that.

100 Records, nostalgically

2006-10-17T23:26:27Z

This is a weird judgement, see, mixing the technical merits of each with the ways in which they've impacted me and how much I actually enjoy them and the amount of time I've even spent with them. So if this was a movie list you'd probably Irreversible and The Princess Bride keeping close company, which is odd to think of. It also leans a little heavily on what I was listening to a few years ago; I just haven't spent much time focusing on any one thing recently. But then there's stuff like Whitman's Lisbon, which just cut through so cleanly that it's 3rd on my list after listening to it twice, and I'm pretty well scared to play it a third time for fear that I got something about it entirely wrong.

But all factors considered, I think I managed to do a pretty decent ordering of the first 30 or so, after which I gave up entirely. It all seems a little silly when I'm sitting here, with a 3 day foobar playlist of stuff I haven't listened to yet, knowing any or all of it could just blow me away and alter this whole thing.

David Sylvian - Blemish
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
Shining - In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster
Dar Williams - Mortal City
Super Furry Animals - Guerilla
Bark Psychosis - Hex
Tujiko Noriko - Shojo Toshi
M. Ward - Transfiguration of Vincent
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs

Smog - Knock Knock
Robert Wyatt - Shleep
White Flight - White Flight
TV On the Radio - Young Liars
P.G. Six - Well of Memory
Talking Heads - Remain In Light
Basil Kirchin - Abstractions of the Industrial North
Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank the Cradle
John Fahey - Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today
Mouse on Mars - Idiology

Sage Francis - Sick of Waging War
The Dismemberment Plan - Change
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See a Darkness
The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Sole - Selling Live Water
Shalabi Effect - The Trial of St-Orange
Tujiko Noriko - Make Me Hard
Bjork - Homogenic
Smog - Dongs of Sevotion
Beck - Midnight Vultures

Caetano Veloso - Livro
The Books - Thought for Food
Richard Youngs - The Naive Shaman
Matmos - The West
Cat Stevens - Gold
Tyondai Braxton - History That Has No Effect
Sanso-Xtro - Sentimentalist
Roots Manuva - Awfully Deep
Asa-Chang & Junray - Jun Ray Song Chan
Brian Wilson - Smile

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You
Broadcast - Haha Sound
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Christian Marclay - djTRIO
Circulatory System - Circulatory System
cLOUDDEAD - Ten
Dizzee Rascal - The Boy In the Corner
DJ Shadow - The Private Press

Edan - Beauty and the Beat
Current 93 - Black Ships Ate the Sky
Excepter - Throne
Fennesz - Venice
Led Zeppelin - II
Jamie Lidell - Multiply
Herbie Hancock - Thrust
Gastr Del Sol - Camofleur
Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld
Jackie-O Motherfucker - Liberation
Jackson C. Frank - Jackson C. Frank

Buck 65 - Secret House Against the World
David Sylvian - The Good Son vs. the Only Daughter
Jim O'Rourke - I'm Happy and I'm Singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4
Fog - Ether Teeth
Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
Hum - Downward Is Heavenward
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
Kid Dakota - So Pretty
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
Kraftwerk - Minimum/Maximum
Led Zeppelin - III

Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Manitoba - Up In Flames
OOIOO - Feather Float
Patrick Wolf - Wind In the Wires
Soft Machine - Third
Susanna and the Magical Orchestra - Lists of Lights and Buoys
Quruli - Zukan
The Kinks - The Village Grean Preservation Society
The Wrens - The Meadowlands
Bjork - Vespertine

TTC - Batards Sensibles
The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I
Boris - Pink
Super Furry Animals - Phantom Power
Cornelius - Fantasma
Spring Heel Jack - The Sweetness of the Water
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Boredoms - Super ae
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolf
Juana Molina - Son

Pelt - Empty Bell Ringing In the Sky
Parts & Labor/Tyondai Braxton - Rise, Rise, Rise
Aceyalone - A Book of Human Language
Tricky - Nearly God
J-Live - All of the Above
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Pan American - For Waiting, for Chasing
Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives
Windy & Carl - Antarctica
Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle