I had to lock this list before it got too out of hand, because I kept want­ing to add more and more notable things. Like I couldn’t fig­ure out where to put Midaircondo’s track “Ser­e­nade,” which sends shiv­ers up my spine, but the album isn’t bet­ter than any of my top 20…oh well. Hope you enjoy read­ing and lis­ten­ing to my list. Please check some of this stuff out if you get a chance. And please buy it, okiday?

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First off, let’s get some­thing out of the way:

2004’s CRIMINALLY OVERLOOKED MUSIC NOT HEARD TILL 2005:

01. 2tall — Shift­ing Tides (Needle­work Records)
Jim 2tall should just re-release this album every year so that he can top all the Best Of lists over and over again. If I had actu­ally heard this in 2004, it would have been a really dif­fi­cult end of year review for me, as you can tell from my list last year, 2004 was an excep­tional year for music, and I had a lot of trou­ble sort­ing out my top 3.

02. Sia — “Breathe Me” (Uni­ver­sal)
God­damn best song EVAR. Was first exposed to it through the now infa­mous “future” end seg­ment of the Six Feet Under finale. What a ter­ri­bly gor­geous and epic song. It’s sheer per­fec­tion end to end. Got to see the actual video for it at the AIGA Design con­fer­ence, and it works very well with the song, cap­tur­ing the heart­felt feel­ings of lone­li­ness and love that bleeds through this track.

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2005 TOP TWENTY:

20. 13 & God — 13 & God (Alien Tran­sis­tor)
One day The Notwist and Them­selves got together and decided to make an album. The best descrip­tion of this album is: “The Notwist meets Them­selves!” Truly. How­ever, the sum of the parts does add up to an inter­est­ing new whole, some­thing that hits a bit closer to the sound of Sub­tle (which also con­tains the mem­bers of Themselves).

19. Block­head — Down­town Sci­ence (Ninja Tune)
Blockhead’s sec­ond album was a slow-burner, not quite reach­ing the heights of his first album. On closer inspec­tion, though, it turns out to be quite a bit deeper and per­sonal. A lot of these tracks appeared on Blockhead’s amaz­ing Back To The Basics mix last year, so I was quite look­ing for­ward to them on the album. He starts things off right with “Expi­ra­tion Date,” a beau­ti­ful song with gui­tars and male vocals. Then, every­thing until the last cou­ple of songs is not as great. How­ever, “Quiet Storm” and “The First Snow­fall” are a cou­ple of very slow and gor­geous tracks, full of atmosphere.

18. Black­a­li­cious — The Craft (Anti)
I think this album is going to divide fans a lot. It’s much glossier and “pop” than the pre­vi­ous releases, and very spo­radic in the types of sounds it encom­passes. The first time I heard it, I was shak­ing my head and a bit dis­ap­pointed. Then I found myself putting it on more and more, and really lov­ing it. The cho­rus that orig­i­nally annoyed me on “World of Vibra­tions”? Now it’s one of my favorite tracks! So fun and ener­getic. “Supreme Peo­ple” is just hard and fan­tas­tic. I skipped over “Side to Side” the first cou­ple times, and now I keep rewind­ing it just to hear Pigeon John’s unbe­liev­able verses. I still can’t get into “Pow­ers” but “Lotus Flower” is the loveli­est dingy psyche-hop I’ve ever heard. The pro­duc­tion sound on this takes Xcel’s new style in a really bom­bas­tic direc­tion. Very bright, it feels like a true artis­tic achieve­ment in hip-hop production.

17. Howard Shore — Lord of the Rings: Fel­low­ship of the Ring Com­plete Record­ings (Reprise)
My extreme love and affec­tion for The Lord of the Rings is prob­a­bly best served for a sep­a­rate book-length rant, so I’ll sim­ply say this: Howard Shore has done some­thing incred­i­bly spe­cial for the world here, when he agreed to pour his heart and soul into this mon­u­men­tal scor­ing effort. He has con­structed one of the great film sound­tracks of all time. The entire 3 film score is basi­cally a long opera. Each theme has a leit­mo­tif that re-occurs and builds through­out the story. This gives the story a sense of grand­ness and his­tory. From the ini­tial “Pro­logue,” which intro­duces many themes (The Ring, Mor­dor, Elves, Men) and com­bines them, through to the clang­ing and indus­tri­ous “The Cav­erns of Isen­gard,” which accu­rately describes the mal­ice and destruc­tion inher­ent to the story’s main theme of machine vs. nature, this score is some­thing that can live sep­a­rate from the films. It was an a world class deci­sion to release the entire uncut score in this beau­ti­ful pack­age, some­thing I’ve never seen done for a sound­track before. It raises it up to the level of pure clas­si­cal work, and awards Shore the honor he deserves.

16. Deaf Cen­ter — Pale Ravine (Type Records)
When I first dis­cov­ered Type Records, I heard a mix by one of the Deaf Cen­ter guys that was very melan­choly, which is right up my alley. I was con­tin­u­ally hear­ing good things about this new album, but wasn’t sure what to expect. What a spec­tac­u­larly haunt­ing and beau­ti­ful thing it turned out to be, though, full of emo­tion and depth. The influ­ence here is old old hor­ror film sound­tracks, the atmos­pheric black and white variety.

15. The Joe Beats Exper­i­ment — Indie Rock Blues (Arbeid)
After his fan­tas­tic work on the Non-Prophets album, Joe Beats has been a pro­ducer to watch for me. This bril­liant self-released album show­cases his love of indie rock to great effect. Chop­ping the orig­i­nal songs into hun­dreds of pieces, he is able to rejig them into beat heavy rollers. Belle + Sebas­t­ian, M Ward, Songs:Ohia, Pin­back, Neu­tral Milk Hotel, June of 44, Deer­hoof, all get the chunky beats here. Not to be missed!
“Cox­comb Red”

14. Piano Over­lord — The Sin­gles Col­lec­tion 03–05 (Money Stud­ies)
Scott Her­ren appears on this year’s list twice, and with rea­son. Out of all the pro­duc­ers work­ing recently, he is con­tin­u­ally the most inter­est­ing to me. His Piano Over­lord project is cer­tainly the less hec­tic of his releases this year, using strictly drums and pianos, how­ever treated and manip­u­lated they are. I adore the wurl­i­tiz­ers and rhodes pianos on this album. It has such a lo-fi free jazz feel to it. The CD con­tains 3 bonus tracks, all remixes. The Blu Jems Key­board Kings remix of “No Com­mu­nity” is a par­tic­u­lar favorite of mine. The way they loop the music and add in there sam­ples is heavenly.

13. Cage — Hell’s Win­ter (Def Jux)
I bought this for the slate of pro­duc­ers (Block­head, RJD2, DJ Shadow), but didn’t real­ize I would be con­fronted with one hell of an MC in Cage. Amaz­ing album. Very inti­mate and dark lyrics painted over some of the tasti­est, hard hit­ting but haunt­ing pro­duc­tions. “Stripes” is a par­tic­u­lar favorite of mine. Open­ing with a Nixon res­ig­na­tion snip­pet and a big of the news, this Block­head joint is immac­u­lately sculpted with his cus­tom­ary chunky drums, funky melodies, and on this track, a gor­geous vocal sam­ple that dove­tails nicely with the cho­rus. DJ Shadow’s offer­ing, “Grand Ol Party Crash,” would be the most per­fect crunk banger all year, if only for lam­en­ta­ble Jello Biafra con­tri­bu­tions (an infan­tile Dubya imper­son­ation with incred­i­bly obvi­ous jokes). The beats bang hard, though, and Cage lives up to them.

12. Six Vicious — Krunk’s Not Dead 7″ (Bully Records)
2004’s #1 Six­too brings the only sin­gle to appear on my list this year, even though Bully is one of my labels of the year. This spec­tac­u­lar release fea­tures two post–Chew­ing Glass… tracks and show­case Six’s extremely cin­e­mat­i­cally influ­enced com­po­si­tions, and even fur­ther blur­ring the lines between sam­pled and live instru­ments. We can also see from these tracks his love of Kraut rock. The drums in par­tic­u­lar on these tracks are beautiful.

11. Goril­laz — Demon Dayz (Vir­gin)
Damon Albarn’s car­toon project comes back, minus an Automa­tor, and plus a Dan­ger­mouse. Dan­ger­mouse refo­cuses Goril­laz’ sound into a darker and more futur­is­tic band. Songs like “Dirty Harry” and “Feel Good, Inc.” are bril­liant rock-hip-hop hybrids, while “All Alone” is the best post-crunk song all year. One of my favorite tracks has lately been the Den­nis Hop­per track…a very sim­ple and obvi­ous story is brought to life by Hop­pers voice and the atmos­pheric music of Albarn and DM. The use of choirs and strings on the entire album bring the final oper­atic tracks into focus, form­ing an album long cohesion.

10. Paris Zax — Unpath’d Waters (Alpha­pup)
A sound and influ­ence that you don’t hear very often in hip-hop pro­duc­tion is the blues. This album brings that influ­ence to the fore­front and cre­ates an atmos­phere very unlike other instru­men­tal efforts this year. This is a very gritty full-length, with lots of live play­ing and that style of record­ing that brings out every detail in a warmly harsh way. I admit to being a lit­tle con­fused by the album at first, but the more you dive into it, the more it gives you. Highly rec­om­mended debut album.

09. Var­i­ous Artists — Wel­come To The Neo Golden Age (Equinox)
Spec­tac­u­lar first com­pi­la­tion from the pre­vi­ously vinyl only Equinox label. Elec­tronic instru­men­tal­ism of all types makes its home here, with an empha­sis on melody and com­plex beats. From the more hip hop ori­ented pieces by DJ Sci­en­tist to the more exper­i­men­tal Arc­Sin work, this is a tremen­dously sat­is­fy­ing com­pi­la­tion of well crafted music. Seek it out.

08. FBC Fab­ric & Rein­deer — It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Whom You Know (But­ter­cuts)
The sim­plest descrip­tion for this UK hip-hop album is: Boards of Canada + Radio­head team up to make a proper hip hop album. Cin­e­matic, urban, epic, inti­mate, and full of waves of synths and strings, this is one of the most unique hip-hop albums I’ve ever heard. It’s about half instru­men­tal, half vocal, char­ac­ter­ized by its melody and atmos­phere laden pro­duc­tion by FBC and the Thom Yorke-like sub­ject mat­ter of the intro­spec­tive Reindeer.

07. Mod­e­se­lek­tor — Hello Mom! (BPitch Con­trol)
Fan­tas­tic wide rang­ing album from this duo. They have been putting out stel­lar 12“s for the past cou­ple years. Not sure how they were going to work on an album, but they def­i­nitely tried to make a truly listenable-at-home expe­ri­ence. There is some Prefuse 73/Deadly Wiz Da Disko cut up stuff, some bru­tal 4/4 techno, proper nu-Funkstorung-ish songs, as well as mind­bend­ing elec­tronic down­tempo like stuff. Really enjoy­ing this album.

06. Mike Boo — Dun­hill Drone Com­mit­tee (Alpha­pup)
Mike Boo has cre­ated one of the best turntab­list albums in years. Every sound on this album is scratched in, an incred­i­ble feat. He cre­ates the smoothest and most melodic scratch-jazz-hop hybrids I’ve ever heard out­side of 2tall. There isn’t much to say about this album other than it is pure good. I encour­age every­one to give this man a chance and give your ears a treat at the same time.

05. P-Love — All Up In Your Mind (Bully Records)
P-Love rose to fame help­ing Kid Koala on his tours, both being Mon­treal natives. Then Marco Bully got a hold of him to do some 7“s for his Six­too affli­ated label. This is a lovely lovely album, full of warm and beau­ti­ful melodies, crisp drums, and uncom­mon for an album of this sound, all played live, mostly by P-Love him­self. Instru­men­tal hip hop with an elec­tronic influ­ence is the order of the day here. Fans of Express Ris­ing, Six­too, Block­head, etc. would do well to check it out!

04. Odd Nos­dam — Burner (Anti­con)
A good rela­tion­ship with your local record store owner can really be con­ducive to dis­cov­er­ing new music. He was going on and on one day about this album, and I was very hes­i­tate because I have an aver­sion to some of the singing on Anti­con releases, and have been burned before. But this instru­men­tal album by Nos­dam was a rev­e­la­tion. Like a melt­ing pot of noise, cut n paste, beats, found sound, and DIY ethics, it quickly became the sound­track to a book I was read­ing and ended up being played on repeat all night one night. Noth­ing else seemed so per­fect. There is so much detail and so many ideas encap­su­lated in this. Totally fascinating.

03. Prefuse 73 — Sur­rounded By Silence/Reads The Books (Warp Records)
Scott Herren’s main project is back with a vengeance on this col­lab­o­ra­tion heavy album, and it’s The Books col­lab­o­ra­tion com­pan­ion EP. I have to say that all the col­lab­o­ra­tions on his album work to such an extent I didn’t think pos­si­ble with Herren’s hec­tic and dense mix­ture. The MC tracks bang appro­pri­ately, and the guest musi­cian tracks seem to show a evo­lu­tion of the Prefuse 73 style into a much more melody dri­ven affair. Favorites include the Ghostface/El-P track, the Pedro track, the Books track, and the Nobody track. The Books EP builds on the bril­liance of “Pag­ina Dos” and shows more of a true col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two sounds. Always an artist to track, Her­ren is fast becom­ing one of this decade’s masters.

02. Sage Fran­cis — A Healthy Dis­trust (Epi­taph)
Ter­ri­bly ter­ri­bly under­rated and under­ex­posed this year, Sage’s lat­est offer­ing is one of the most per­fect hip-hop albums I heard all year. From the first “SAGE” mil­i­tary sam­ples to the sparse Johnny Cash trib­ute at the end, this albums is a soul poured out in sound. You are seri­ously dam­aged inside if you don’t get chills lis­ten­ing to the Alias pro­duced col­lab­o­ra­tion with Will Old­ham, “Sea Lion.” Utterly bril­liant folk-rock/hip-hop hybrid. My sec­ond favorite track is eas­ily the dark Con­troller 7 pro­duced “Agony In Her Body,” which unfurls as an epic tale of love and hurt. Six­too turns in a cou­ple of tracks, as well, the best being “Ground Con­trol,” a bru­tal banger. The theme of this album is dis­trust, cer­tainly, but dis­trust of not just what you would expect, but also love, emo­tion, feel­ing. Sage bares his soul here and in so doing presents a pow­er­ful state­ment of ideals.

01. ElekTro4 — Key­stroke One (Bully Records)
I played the shit out of this album for a month when it came out, and I wasn’t even a big fan of his first 7″ for Bully. Not sure what it was, but this album really amazed me. Being a fairly well-mined genre latey, instru­men­tal hip-hop is hard to make impres­sive at this point, but Elektro4 cer­tains brings some of the most inter­est­ing con­coc­tions on this one. The fairly upbeat first half of the album rolls along with all the grace of the most clas­sic hip-hop of the 90s, while the sec­ond half gets a lit­tle more seri­ous and com­pli­cated. “The Explain Nation” is one track that has amazed me all year. The drums on this in par­tic­u­lar are incred­i­ble. The other thing I enjoyed about this album is that it tries to musi­cally describe an expe­ri­ence, liv­ing in the city of New York, and the emo­tions uniquely tied to that city. Noth­ing I can say can do this album justice.

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2005 LABELS OF THE YEAR:

Bully Records
3 releases on my best of list were Bully records, so it’s only fit­ting that they get a note as label of the year, as well. What can I say? Marco is the man! Aside from these releases, 2005 also saw the reis­sue of Sixtoo’s Dura­tion album, spec­tac­u­lar sin­gles by Matt Kelly, DJ Moves, Con­troller 7, and 3 sep­a­rate Six­too sin­gles, two of them being dou­ble 7s! As long as Marco keeps hand fold­ing those 7s, I’ll keep buying.

Type Records
I came late to the table with John Xela’s won­der­ful Type Records label, but once I dis­cov­ered the joys of this label last month, I’ve been on a con­stant hunt to buy pretty much every release they have put out to date. But the point at which I truly fell in love was when I really inves­ti­gated their Type Radio sec­tion. Filled to the brim with beau­ti­ful mp3 mixes by a vari­ety of artists, you can really see the love of music that this label has, and gain insights into their influ­ences, see­ing where clas­si­cal meets elec­tronic. From their cin­e­matic releases by Ryan Teague and Deaf Cen­ter to the more exper­i­men­tal Midair­condo and Sanso-Xtro, this is fast becom­ing one of my favorite labels.

Alpha­pup Records
Being impressed with Paris Zax’s work on the Bus­driver album, I was first exposed to Alpha­pup when I bought his solo album. A cou­ple months later, I found myself pick­ing up the crit­i­cally loved Mike Boo and Ricci Rucker albums. All three of these albums show­case the labels love of instru­men­tal hip hop explo­rations, a pen­chant I obvi­ously share. Big up to this label, I encour­age every­one to check them out.

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2006: EYE TO THE FUTURE

The Year of the Nee­dle
Wax­fac­tor — Sci Fu (Needle­work Records)
Rhythm Incur­sions presents Up The Anti (Needle­work Records)
Dday One — Loop Exten­sions (Needle­work Records)
2tall — sec­ond album (Needle­work Records
If the plan­ets align, 2006 will long be remem­bered as the year that Needle­work Records comes to dom­i­nance. The Wax­fac­tor alone is going to blow minds. But with the long antic­i­pated release of the Rhythm Incur­sions mix, every­one will be look­ing at this label. Up The Anti is set to become mix of the year, from it’s advance praise. They will also be re-releasing the Dday One album on CD, with extra tracks. One of my favorite tracks right now is “Mix­ing Paint”. Then later on in 2006, there is a new 2tall album on the books, which as you can tell from the begin­ning of my list is going to be antic­i­pated hugely by me.

Other
Prefuse 73 — Secu­rity Screen­ings (Warp)
DJ Shadow — new album