CorneliusNo one album from the '00s stood out for me as sounding uniformly beautiful, innovative, and worth celebrating, but so many albums came close. They each had some amazing, outstanding music, but didn't sustain it consistently.(*) Hence I share my personal "album of the decade" award between these ten (no particular order):
A third of The Unutterable by The Fall (2000)
At its best, this is just what some of us want from The Fall: straight-for-the-throat music (if in doubt, distort it) and incomparably witty and literate lyrics.
A third of Snow Borne Sorrow by Nine Horses (2005)
This album was recorded in a super-high-fidelity way that stands out oddly when played against anything else. Voices, drums and other sounds are unfeasibly real and in-your-face. How did they do it? They made odd time signatures sound gorgeous, but some of the musical ideas are drawn out too far: if Burnt Friedman were less chilled out, and if the single B-sides Get The Hell Out and Birds Sing for Their Lives had been included on the album, then this could have been Album of the Decade.
Half of Sensuous by Cornelius (2006)
Cornelius (the "Japanese Beck") has rapidly become a major personal hero of mine, and this album is a treat, but too much of it is sonically retro (eighties synths and drum machines) to be the album of the '00s. The DVD album is wonderful, and the live versions of the songs have more rock energy than the studio versions, but I can't say the album is triumphant on its own merit.
A bit more than half of Body Riddle by Clark (2006)
Clark combined electronic processing, acoustic textures and radical song structures to make something beautiful, powerful and really unexpected. This era of his work stands out strongly from the more electronic stuff before and since. The wandering structures could seem to lack focus, though, like someone who has something interesting to say but gets easily distracted.
A third of Ham by The Chap (2005)
Any one album by The Chap is too patchy to be a decade-defining album, but put the best bits and The Horse (2003) together and you'd have a guitar-led, electronic, melodic, ambient, exuberant, hard rock, depressive, noise-funk work of demented genius.
A sixth of Drukqs by Aphex Twin (2001)
Electronica fans complained that it had all been done before and that this album was a low point. It seems to me, though, that tracks such as Jynwythek Ylow and Cock/Ver10 established Richard D. James as a composer to be taken seriously. The cover versions by the London Sinfonietta and Alarm Will Sound showed that the music stood up in its own right, apart from the electronic context. The music also inspired some delicious videos by Chris Cunningham.
Half of Codename: Dustsucker by Bark Psychosis (2004)
Once again, BP threw conventional song structures away, this time mixing some abrasive electronic noises into the acoustic/electric rock. It was an inspired idea to have a female singer (Anja Buchele) for a couple of tracks. I wish she had been the singer on all BP songs, to be honest. The remixes that came out the next year (400 Winters EP) were a musical highlight of 2006 for me.
Half of Goodbye by Ulrich Schnauss (2007)
Other Ulrich fans seem to prefer his earlier stuff. Ulrich himself thought he was taking his music to a new level of complexity, with huge numbers of things going on in each track. I agree with his assessment. Some of the tracks on this album are cheesy, but the best have what I'd call a romantic power to them. He has done live shows, including these songs, but without the singer, which to me is a travesty.
One third of Aerial: A Sky of Honey by Kate Bush (2005)
I find the first disc of KB's "Aerial" unlistenably awful, but this second disc has some wonderful moments. It also reinvents the concept album, with multiple themes (bird-song, painting, a day-in-the-life) running through the whole piece. This album isn't entirely embarrassment-free (a spoken vocal by Rolf Harris???) but the final two tracks are such a payoff I'm willing to forgive all sorts of sins. So in effect, just a sixth of this double album is of decade-dominating quality. And I'm being kind.
A mix of Love Cannot Bear (2005) and At the End of Time (2006) by Robert Fripp
With soundscapes, Fripp really has pioneered a new genre of live music that fulfills the promise of the Frippertronics experiments (such as Let The Power Fall) earlier in his career. These two live albums provide some absolutely heart-rending music, but each one draws too much out of the same musical ideas (often including multiple variations on a single improvisation). A fusion of these two albums would have been a runaway for Album of the Decade.
NB: This post is about albums that I thought were good. There was plenty of music that I really enjoyed listening to (Hexstatic, Sigur Rós, Makoto, Lamb, Thomas Newman, Boards of Canada...) that didn't strike me as consistently inspired). Maybe that's unfair to Sigur Rós though: I'm still growing into them.
(*) Note: For me, the outstanding album of the '90s was Tilt by Scott Walker, for being melodic, harmonious and beautiful while experimenting with sound and structure in all sorts of ways, and dealing with harrowing issues. (I was able to tolerate the sometimes dismal lyrics.) If Walker had held onto the melody and beauty for 2006's The Drift, instead of going all out for horror and harshness, he could have easily won my Album of the Decade.
A third of The Unutterable by The Fall (2000)
At its best, this is just what some of us want from The Fall: straight-for-the-throat music (if in doubt, distort it) and incomparably witty and literate lyrics.
A third of Snow Borne Sorrow by Nine Horses (2005)
This album was recorded in a super-high-fidelity way that stands out oddly when played against anything else. Voices, drums and other sounds are unfeasibly real and in-your-face. How did they do it? They made odd time signatures sound gorgeous, but some of the musical ideas are drawn out too far: if Burnt Friedman were less chilled out, and if the single B-sides Get The Hell Out and Birds Sing for Their Lives had been included on the album, then this could have been Album of the Decade.
Half of Sensuous by Cornelius (2006)
Cornelius (the "Japanese Beck") has rapidly become a major personal hero of mine, and this album is a treat, but too much of it is sonically retro (eighties synths and drum machines) to be the album of the '00s. The DVD album is wonderful, and the live versions of the songs have more rock energy than the studio versions, but I can't say the album is triumphant on its own merit.
A bit more than half of Body Riddle by Clark (2006)
Clark combined electronic processing, acoustic textures and radical song structures to make something beautiful, powerful and really unexpected. This era of his work stands out strongly from the more electronic stuff before and since. The wandering structures could seem to lack focus, though, like someone who has something interesting to say but gets easily distracted.
A third of Ham by The Chap (2005)
Any one album by The Chap is too patchy to be a decade-defining album, but put the best bits and The Horse (2003) together and you'd have a guitar-led, electronic, melodic, ambient, exuberant, hard rock, depressive, noise-funk work of demented genius.
A sixth of Drukqs by Aphex Twin (2001)
Electronica fans complained that it had all been done before and that this album was a low point. It seems to me, though, that tracks such as Jynwythek Ylow and Cock/Ver10 established Richard D. James as a composer to be taken seriously. The cover versions by the London Sinfonietta and Alarm Will Sound showed that the music stood up in its own right, apart from the electronic context. The music also inspired some delicious videos by Chris Cunningham.
Half of Codename: Dustsucker by Bark Psychosis (2004)
Once again, BP threw conventional song structures away, this time mixing some abrasive electronic noises into the acoustic/electric rock. It was an inspired idea to have a female singer (Anja Buchele) for a couple of tracks. I wish she had been the singer on all BP songs, to be honest. The remixes that came out the next year (400 Winters EP) were a musical highlight of 2006 for me.
Half of Goodbye by Ulrich Schnauss (2007)
Other Ulrich fans seem to prefer his earlier stuff. Ulrich himself thought he was taking his music to a new level of complexity, with huge numbers of things going on in each track. I agree with his assessment. Some of the tracks on this album are cheesy, but the best have what I'd call a romantic power to them. He has done live shows, including these songs, but without the singer, which to me is a travesty.
One third of Aerial: A Sky of Honey by Kate Bush (2005)
I find the first disc of KB's "Aerial" unlistenably awful, but this second disc has some wonderful moments. It also reinvents the concept album, with multiple themes (bird-song, painting, a day-in-the-life) running through the whole piece. This album isn't entirely embarrassment-free (a spoken vocal by Rolf Harris???) but the final two tracks are such a payoff I'm willing to forgive all sorts of sins. So in effect, just a sixth of this double album is of decade-dominating quality. And I'm being kind.
A mix of Love Cannot Bear (2005) and At the End of Time (2006) by Robert Fripp
With soundscapes, Fripp really has pioneered a new genre of live music that fulfills the promise of the Frippertronics experiments (such as Let The Power Fall) earlier in his career. These two live albums provide some absolutely heart-rending music, but each one draws too much out of the same musical ideas (often including multiple variations on a single improvisation). A fusion of these two albums would have been a runaway for Album of the Decade.
NB: This post is about albums that I thought were good. There was plenty of music that I really enjoyed listening to (Hexstatic, Sigur Rós, Makoto, Lamb, Thomas Newman, Boards of Canada...) that didn't strike me as consistently inspired). Maybe that's unfair to Sigur Rós though: I'm still growing into them.
(*) Note: For me, the outstanding album of the '90s was Tilt by Scott Walker, for being melodic, harmonious and beautiful while experimenting with sound and structure in all sorts of ways, and dealing with harrowing issues. (I was able to tolerate the sometimes dismal lyrics.) If Walker had held onto the melody and beauty for 2006's The Drift, instead of going all out for horror and harshness, he could have easily won my Album of the Decade.
