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top ten of 2001
1. The Boredoms, Vision Creation New Sun
With this release, the Boredoms use the noise and the energy of their spastic punk past as raw material: from it they build a structure as high as the heavens and as intense as the stars. A tower that God would not wish to knock down. Pure transcedence. Domestically released on Birdman Records
2. The Microphones, The Glow, Part Two
Just when you thought that there might never again be a great concept album, along come the Microphones with this lo-fi masterpiece, a song cycle about mortality and the physical self, about what it means to be a mind in a living body. A tender, awkward album, it pushes the boundaries of rock music, in the name of giving rock a wider emotional and spriritual palette. A cousin to the Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. On K Records.
3. Makoto Kawabata & Richard Youngs, s/t
On this release, the versatile Youngs plays acoustic guitar in the British folk tradition, and Kawabata, the front man of Japanese psychedelic ensemble Acid Mothers Temple, coaxes abstract soundshapes from his electric guitar. The flowers this hybrid generates may seem bizarre, but only because the delicate beauty they possess has not been previously seen on this planet. On VHF Records.
4. OOIOO, Feather Float
The members of OOIOO, a Japanese girl band, possess all the liveliness and charm of popstars, but are set apart from the pack by a stunning range and inventiveness. Each track here veers off into its own particular sonic orbit, but the album hangs together, unified by a feelgood quality which is rarely compromised. Soundtrack for a strange but happy summer. On Birdman Records.
5. Stars of the Lid, The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
A Jupiter of an album: solemn, turbulent, and vast. The symphonic suites found here may at times evoke interplanetary space, yet they retain a warmth and humanity that elude many of the other drone/ambient works out there. This double CD (3 LPs) raises the bar for atmospheric music and represents this duo's bid for greatness. On Kranky Records.
6. Henry Flynt, Graduation and Other New Country and Blues Music
Call it Hillbilly Minimalism. In the mid-1970s, Flynt gathered up strategies from "new music" composition, and applied them to America's traditional musics: folk, country and blues. The result is an absolutely unique music, both cerebral and populist, that still sounds ahead of its time. On Ampersand.
7. Fennesz, Endless Summer
Will laptop music ever develop the ability to make us feel? The verdict is still out, but with this album, Fennesz may confound the naysayers. Built from tattered remants of California pop, these eight tracks evoke a sunny, utopian past left to fade and go to ruin. Haunting. On Mego.
8. John Cale, New York in the 1960's Vol. 3: Stainless Gamelan
The third of three albums of recently unearthed homemade recordings by John Cale and his cadre of friends. The minimalism and tape experiments here are on par with those of Terry Riley and Steve Reich from the same era, and the drones and squalls rival those that Cale supplied for the Velvet Underground. Taken together, the three discs confirm Cale's repuatation as one of the musical masterminds of the century; this disc is perhaps the most versatile, ranging from hypnotic patterns to shaggy psychedelia to proto-Merzbowian noise. On Table of the Elements.
9. Andrew Coleman, Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt
Many albums attempt to balance the disparate worlds of the digital and the acoustic, but Coleman actually succeeds in keeping all the plates in the air. An album of electronic music that relies heavily on acoustic piano, Everything Was Beautiful contains songs which are technically innovative, but which never lose their identity as songs, and songs characterized by beauty and emotional warmth at that. On Thrill Jockey.
10. Anticon, The Anticon Giga Single
Uneven and occasionally sophomoric, but in their utter failure to "keep it real," the Anticon collective manages to sidestep the macho posturing that mars so much contemporary hip-hop. Instead they reward the listener with linguistic inventiveness, bizarre production, and sheer geekiness. The dozen or so artists compiled here offer up new ideas at a rate of about one per minute (and often abandon them just as fast). Not all of the ideas are good ones, but with this many available to choose from, I'm not complaining. Self-released.
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