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top ten of 2004
1. Devendra Banhart, Rejoicing In The Hands
I initially was eager to dismiss Banhart as little more than the sum of his vocal quirks, but I was won over by the staggering songwriting on this disc, which is some of the strongest I’ve heard in years. Banhart’s starting point seems to be the archetypal acoustic-blues forms archived in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, but he uses these forms to articulate his own idiosyncratic vision of the world, which is magical, chameleonic, and engagingly weird. Writing masterpieces can’t be easy, but this album spins out so many that it seems absolutely effortless. On Young God.
2. The Skaters, Dark Rye Bread
The most exciting new band I've heard this year, the Skaters pick up where the Taj Mahal Travelers or the Theatre of Eternal Music left off: utilizing amplified noise, heavy drone, and tribal fug as the most direct route to some deep abyss of ineffable beauty and terror. It's the New Electrical Sublime and the Skaters are playing forward guard. On Nature Tape Limb, but also soon to be reissued on vinyl by Humbug.
3. Philip Jeck, 7
Jeck’s dense sonic constructions have been made him a longtime favorite among fans of experimental turntablism, but this disc is the strongest work we’ve ever seen from him, surpassing even 2002’s exemplary Stoke. His work has never been more painterly: each track on this album uses great impasto smears of sound to generate visions of disintegrating memory-haunted landscapes. Fragmentary, rich, and organic, like a tapestry dug out of a bank of moist soil. On Touch.
4. Deathprod, Deathprod
These four discs provide welcome insight into the mind of Helge Sten, who, as the primary producer for Norway’s near-perfect Rune Grammofon label, has had his fingerprints on many of the most interesting albums of the last decade. Archiving solo material all the way back to 1991, this set catalogs so many different strategies of decay, corrosion, and abrasion that it’s practically an instruction manual for those who aspire to the making of menacing electroacoustic ambience. Revelatory, indispensible. On Rune Grammofon.
5. CocoRosie, La Maison De Mon Reve
Most interesting hybrid record of the year, La Maison De Mon Reve features old-time gospel and blues strained through a pair of sensibilities indelibly stained by hip-hop, trip-hop, and indie-rock. Electronic thrift-store noise, found sound, and lyrics that deal with topics like McDonald’s and Madonna—the album sounds like it was assembled out of a grab-bag of twentieth-century junk culture. Setting aside a few clumsy attempts at parody (does the world really need more ironic songs about Jesus?) this album consistently engages and charms. On Touch and Go.
6. The Skygreen Leopards, One Thousand Bird Ceremony
Fifteen tracks of laid-back music from Jewelled Antler personnel Donovan Quinn and Glenn Donaldson. Warm and beguiling, these loose, occasionally off-key songs (featuring acoustic guitars, tambourine, jew’s harp, unidentifiable drones, and field recordings of birds and sheep), sound like what stoned Middle Earth types might sing around their summertime campfires. On Soft Abuse.
7. The Ivytree, Winged Leaves
Crumble One Thousand Bird Ceremony’s feelgood summertime vibe into melancholy autumn and you have Winged Leaves, the second notable Jewelled Antler release of the year. On this disc Glenn Donaldson shows his strength as a solo performer, coaxing forth introspective acoustic songs and grey industrial drones that sound more indebted to the rainy Britain of Nick Drake or Richard Youngs than to Donaldson’s sunny California. On Catsup Plate.
8. Jack Rose, Two Originals Of...
This disc, which compiles the vinyl-only releases Red Horse, White Mule and Opium Musick, demonstrates that the vocabulary of American guitar established decades ago by John Fahey’s great Takoma label continues to possess nearly unrivaled powers of transcendence. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Rose is on the retreat here—these pieces (and those on Rose’s other 2004 release, Raag Manifestos) are not nostalgic exercises but rather potent arguments for a tradition that bears releavance for our present and for our future. Rose’s music, here as with his work in the drone combo Pelt, is endlessly mercurial, driven by a restless intelligence to work and rework itself until it becomes something shining and holy. On VHF, with the original LPs still available separately on Eclipse.
9. The Liars, They Were Wrong So We Drowned
Music is scary again. The Liars have dug up a motley assortment of raw data on witches and witch trials and used it as a loose conceptual frame around which to build songs driven by incantation, electricity, percussive energy, noise, and error. In a year where so much rock tended towards the tight, the polished, and the tidy (Interpol, the Walkmen, Franz Ferdinand) it’s nice to see that there are still a few bands that take a pleasure from tapping into Dionysian chaos. On Mute.
10. Greg Davis, Curling Pond Woods
Almost since the inception of electronic music, electronic musicians have been playing the game of trying to puzzle out the thorny dialectic between synthetic sounds and organic / acoustic sounds. This year’s most interesting move was made by Greg Davis, who goes a little bit further towards collapsing the dichotomy entirely by using his laptop to create an album of pastoral psychedelic folk. In this heterotopia, Beach Boys and Incredible String Band covers can coexist comfortably with abstract, textural drones, which is good news for us all. On Catsup Plate.
all from 2004 >>
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