My top ten favorite recordings of 2004 (plus one)

'Tis the season for best of lists, and so, this is a list of records released this past year that made me take notice of them and which I kept coming back to. Again and again.

Bjork, Medulla. I must admit it took me a while to get into this album. Turning her back on instruments, Bjork fashioned this album out of vocal samples, using human beatboxers and choirs to create her seventh album. What at first sounds strange becomes ethereal, as the realization dawns that almost all the sounds are created by the human voice; you can almost feel electronic music begining to breathe.

Camera Obscura, Underachievers Please Try Harder. In the absence of Belle and Sebastian, this Scottish band picks up the slack, producing perfect twee songs (with an occasional 60's girl group twist) to bounce along to on those summer fall rides through the rolling hillsides.

De La Soul, The Grind Date. I can't help thinking of De La as the flower power band from their first album, and so I'm generally surprised when I hear their new albums. For this, they hired top notch underground producers and created their freshest album in years. It's a testament to their skills that after so many years they can still surprise me in a good way.

DJ Dangermouse, The Grey Album. I wasn't that interested in Jay-Z's Black Album until I heard DJ Dangermouse flip it into this. By taking Jay's vocal tracks and adding his own production using samples cullled exclusively from the Beatles White Album, Dangermouse produced a record industry furor. And an amazing record. Copies soon appeared on the internet, and a movement was born to offer the album for free on as many sites as possible on one Tuesday in Feburary.

Erland Oye, DJ Kicks. For his mix album, Oye tastefully chooses a broad collection of mainly German microhouse tracks, sprinkling the album with lyrics from 80s songs sung in his own wistful voice. It's almost as if the ghosts of music past has come to haunt the present. The perfect music for riding a bike around Manhattan. And I mean around Manhattan, as I kept trying to do this past summer.

Kanye West, College Dropout. West was everywhere this past year, producing tracks for everyone (and I mean everyone). On his solo platter, he keeps some of his best beats for himself, even if his rapping isn't quite as smooth as some others. Still, nowhere else can you hear as much pure distilled Kanye West, sped up soul samples and all.

Max Richter, The Blue Notebooks. On the surface, an album mixing classical pieces with a reading of Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Tilda Swinton and electronic elements might appear gruelling listening. But Richter fashions a warm melancholy piece that at once seems to bask in the warm glow of nostalgia and in the cold reality of a present longing to cling to that past.

M.I.A., Piracy Funds Terror, Volume One. M.I.A. teamed up with Diplo to create this mix tape, thereby leaking some of her own soon-to-be released first album, Arular. The album culls samples from anything with a beat, banging out hip hop and dancehall rhythms into an irrepressibly dancable album. Arular is destined to be one of my favorite albums of next year after it releases.

The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free. I was surprised I liked this as much as I did, given the fact that I wasn't as into his debut release. But this song cycle describing the trials and tribulations of a day in the life of Mike Skinner boasted amazingly beautiful production that perfectly complemented his idosyncratic rhyme technique. It's amazing how he manages to make a seemingly ordinary day extraordinary in the way in which it's recounted. England's answer to Slick Rick, and perhaps the first narrative concept album since Prince Paul's Prince of Theives?

Sufjian Stevens, Seven Swans. Singer-songwriter Sufjian Stevens fashions an acoustic album of songs weaving banjo, guitars, and other traditional instruments into my go-to-album for this type of stuff this year.

Xiu Xiu, Fabulous Muscles. For all the experimental pop-rock leanings on the album, it's the strange beauty of Jamie Stewart's voice that pulls me in, a plaintive call amidst the woods of guitars and glitchy electronic artifacts. Posted by eku at December 22, 2004 2:49 PM