Are You Ready To Go Now?
Honorable mentions:
Sigur Ros - Takk.
Boredoms - Seadrum/House of Sun
Nautical Almanac - Cover the Earth
Maja Ratkje and Lasse Marhaug - Music for Faking
Top Ten Albums:
10: The Locust - Safety Second, Body Last
9: Nurse With Wound - Shipwreck Radio Volume II: Eight Enigmatic Episodes from Utvaer
8: The Hafler Trio - Exactly As I Do
7: Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno - IAO Chant from the Cosmic Inferno
6: Tom Waits - Real Gone
5: Black Dice - Broken Ear Record
4: Orthrelm - OV
3: Autechre - Untilted
2: Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering
1: Coil - The Ape of Naples
Reasons Why This List May Not Be Complete (what I’m missing):
Animal Collective - Feels
Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
Fourtet - Everything Ecstatic
Mouse on Mars - Radical Connector
Meat Beat Manifesto - At The Center
Angels of Light - Sing Other People
Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
Best Single Artist Collection:
Melt Banana - 13 Hedgehogs (MxBx Single 1994-99)
Revelations of the Year (CDs not made this year but just discovered and deserve mention)
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
I just discovered this. So THAT’s where indie rock comes from...
So - (s/t)
An unlikely collaboration between a Japanese singer/guitarist girl named Eriko and glitch artist Markus Popp of Oval. The result sounds like Mum being stuck between dimensions. Purely amazing, could have been album of the year for me if it wasn’t released in 2003.
(tie) John Coltrane - The Olatunji Concert and me raiding the UNF Library.
This Coltrane concert was the last one he ever played before dying of cancer, and proves that the man gave nothing to his illnes and, if anything, pushed even further because of it. Probably some of the best jazz I’ve ever heard. This CD was one among the stacks of CDs I checked out before graduating - at the time it looked like the only way I would not be getting my diploma was if I forgot to return a pile of them. Among those I ripped for safe keeping were Coltrane, Miles Davis, the Sugarcubes, loads of Sun Ra, Merzbow, Chick Corea, Kronos Quartet, Gorecki, John Zorn, Schoenberg, Terry Riley, Frank Zappa, Xenakis, Steve Reich, along with be pining to take home stacks of UNESCO vinyls of world music from everywhere and Earth’s armpits.
Concerts of the Year - Honorable Mentions:
Daedelus
Des Ark
Top Ten:
10: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
9: Prefuse 73
8: Picarince/The Guva
7: Castanets
6: Acid Mothers Temple
5: Nautical Almanac
4: Man Man
3: Wolf Eyes/Prurient/Team Aesthetic/Thousand Faced Moon
2: Melt Banana
1: Kronos Quartet plays Terry Riley’s “Sun Rings”
Disappointments of the Year
Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
Foetus - Love