Top 100 Albums of 2000-2009: #40 - #36
---#40---
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
(electronic, downtempo, ambient)
2002
Geogaddi remains the pinnacle of Boards of Canada's work, taking the skittish beats and dreamy atmosphere of Music Has the Right to Children and fleshing it out to its most organic, seamless state. Paradoxically, the music here feels both timeless and anchored, in that it powerfully evokes thoughts that seem tied to a certain place and time, such as childhood adventure and uncertainty (an evocation rendered even more prominent by the assorted samples of children's speech and laughter scattered across many of the album's tracks), but it never becomes distinct enough to determine just whose childhood we're revisiting, leading to a sense of constant displacement that's central to the album's impact. The mixture of short and long tracks draws an interesting line between "songs" and "snippets", infusing Geogaddi with an almost chaptered feel, with the snippets acting as palette cleansers and enabling each of the "proper" songs to have an even greater individual impact on the listener. Each of my personal favourite tracks - "Music is Math", "Julie and Candy", "1969", "Sunshine Recorder", "The Beach at Redpoint", "Dawn Chorus" and "You Could Feel the Sky" - are made so much more powerful by the way that they arise seemingly out of nowhere, rather than trailing immediately after other full-length tracks. Music Has the Right to Children positioned Boards of Canada as one of the late-90s most exciting electronic acts. Geogaddi not only surpasses it, but also holds a place as one of the very best electronic albums of the 2000s.
---#39---
The Ex - Turn
(post-punk, noise-rock)
2004
Turn was my second experience with long-running Dutch anarchopunk group The Ex, after hearing their awesome work with Gétatchèw Mèkurya on Moa Anbessa, and I was delighted to find that I liked it even more than that excellent record. I was initially a little worried about the longer track lengths (average track time is about six minutes, with nothing under four) and the fact that it's a double album, as too often that sort of thing just leads to an overstuffed package of songs that repeatedly outstay their welcomes. In this case, however, it's just a case of getting that much extra Ex goodness for your buck, as Turn is so pleasingly consistent that the listener need never labour through a relative lull. The band approach their distinctly global brand of punk music with a loose playstyle, all murky guitars and thumpy percussion, that enables the music to really tumble along with a great deal of scrappy energy, and it's all very well complemented by lead singer G.W Sok's aggressively sardonic, near-belligerent vocals (Mark E. Smith fans, take note). Big personal favourites include "Dog Tree", "The Pie" and "Theme From Konono", the latter of which perfectly captures the excitement of Konono No. 1 (whose Congotronics we've already seen on this list) in an entirely new way, borrowing that group's most recognisable thumb piano melodies and then redirecting them through a furious, post-punk prism.
---#38---
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
(hip-hop)
2001
The lyrical prowess displayed by Can Ox's two emcees Vast Aire and Vordul Mega is outstanding, painting a dark picture of modern NYC life with imagery that's highly creative and very confrontational. Their flow is equally incredible, a spoken-word style that plays out like a slow-down of Ghostface Killah's confident vocal blasts, with Vast Aire's deep, quiver 'n' lurch delivery in particular being uniquely compelling (the first time I heard it, his entry midway through "Iron Galaxy", the album's opening track, felt like a revelation). Whether it's social commentary or battle-raps, Aire and Mega are never less than great, and hearing Vast spit creative and witty lines like "You got beef but there's worms in your Wellington / I'll put a hole in your skull and extract your gelatin" is something of which I just never tire. El-P's production presents yet another reason to praise this release, with his slow, staggered beats and futuristic sampling surpassing all previous efforts for a career highpoint that very nearly steals the show. Mirroring the album's subject matter, his contributions mostly have a dark and grimy mood to them, but there's brilliant surprises at every turn, be it the blazing electric guitar overlay of "Ox Out the Cage", the synth-orchestra-in-outer-space of "Real Earth" or the loungey, Amon Tobin-esque vibes of "Painkillers". It's a long, arduous listen, and undoubtedly a slow grower, but The Cold Vein is remarkably rewarding listening - one of the decade's finest, most lyrically dense releases.
---#37---
Rokia Traoré - Bowmboï
(Malian, singer/songwriter, African folk)
2003
Malian Rokia Traoré's self-produced third album, the lovely Bowmboï, is a collection of African folk songs delivered via classical acoustic guitar, traditional African instrumentation and Traoré's remarkable voice. Singing in her native Bamana language, she delivers a ten track set that is calm, relaxing and beautiful in its simplicity. The music is fleshed out through some earthy percussion and fine string augmentation (courtesy on two tracks of The Kronos Quartet) which gives the album a bustling, sprightly sound, which feels quite active and vibrant, but never steps over the line into any degree of tense urgency. The percussion in particular is highly impressive - dynamic, multi-layered and very nimbly performed, it is nonetheless carefully tempered such that it never overshadows any other element of the music. Most importantly, it doesn't overshadow Traoré's incredibly beguiling vocal, one of the most gorgeous and transfixing I've heard all decade. There's something undeniably transportative about the music, such that I find myself swept up and totally immersed in Traoré's world every time I press play. As far as highlights go, the album is bookended remarkably well. The opening four tracks provide a feast of brilliant material, with "M'Bifo", "Sara" and "Köte Don" completely engaging the listener and the exquisite "Mariama" featuring a lovely guest vocal from Malian legend Ousmane Sacko, while the title-track closes the album with exceptional grace.
---#36---
Coachwhips - Bangers vs. Fuckers
(garage-punk, noise-rock)
2003
Meet the loudest band in existence. Before he fronted Thee Oh Sees and started trading in psychedelic rock, John Dwyer led three piece garage-punk outfit Coachwhips through three albums of blistering, noisy, tear-the-walls-down rock 'n' roll. Bangers vs Fuckers, their final release, is so loud and rocks so impossibly hard that you actually need to exercise a little caution when putting it on - the album was mastered at such a ridiculously high volume, that if you play it through headphones on your "default" volume setting you run the risk of pulverising your skull. While Thee Oh Sees are often drifty and contemplative in their retro-recreation, Coachwhips immediately get to the point, and then proceed to jackhammer it directly into your pleasure centres with nasty glee. By all accounts, Dwyer seems like a bit of an a-hole on this album, slurring his way through his near-incomprehensible filtered vocals while virtually swallowing the microphone, and playing his guitar with the furious pace and sloppy distortion you'd expect from someone on the tail end of a 48-hour cocaine binge, but there's a roguish charisma to his madness that easily stops you from ever really being bothered. "You Gonna Get It" and "I Knew Her, She Knew Me" rate as my personal favourites, but the album races by so quickly (the whole thing is over in just over twenty minutes!) that it honestly feels like a bit of a blur. The first time I listened to this, I penned a very brief review which simply read "Holy shit. I think my head just exploded." That should tell you everything you need to know.
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
(electronic, downtempo, ambient)
2002
Geogaddi remains the pinnacle of Boards of Canada's work, taking the skittish beats and dreamy atmosphere of Music Has the Right to Children and fleshing it out to its most organic, seamless state. Paradoxically, the music here feels both timeless and anchored, in that it powerfully evokes thoughts that seem tied to a certain place and time, such as childhood adventure and uncertainty (an evocation rendered even more prominent by the assorted samples of children's speech and laughter scattered across many of the album's tracks), but it never becomes distinct enough to determine just whose childhood we're revisiting, leading to a sense of constant displacement that's central to the album's impact. The mixture of short and long tracks draws an interesting line between "songs" and "snippets", infusing Geogaddi with an almost chaptered feel, with the snippets acting as palette cleansers and enabling each of the "proper" songs to have an even greater individual impact on the listener. Each of my personal favourite tracks - "Music is Math", "Julie and Candy", "1969", "Sunshine Recorder", "The Beach at Redpoint", "Dawn Chorus" and "You Could Feel the Sky" - are made so much more powerful by the way that they arise seemingly out of nowhere, rather than trailing immediately after other full-length tracks. Music Has the Right to Children positioned Boards of Canada as one of the late-90s most exciting electronic acts. Geogaddi not only surpasses it, but also holds a place as one of the very best electronic albums of the 2000s.
Click to view---#39---
The Ex - Turn
(post-punk, noise-rock)
2004
Turn was my second experience with long-running Dutch anarchopunk group The Ex, after hearing their awesome work with Gétatchèw Mèkurya on Moa Anbessa, and I was delighted to find that I liked it even more than that excellent record. I was initially a little worried about the longer track lengths (average track time is about six minutes, with nothing under four) and the fact that it's a double album, as too often that sort of thing just leads to an overstuffed package of songs that repeatedly outstay their welcomes. In this case, however, it's just a case of getting that much extra Ex goodness for your buck, as Turn is so pleasingly consistent that the listener need never labour through a relative lull. The band approach their distinctly global brand of punk music with a loose playstyle, all murky guitars and thumpy percussion, that enables the music to really tumble along with a great deal of scrappy energy, and it's all very well complemented by lead singer G.W Sok's aggressively sardonic, near-belligerent vocals (Mark E. Smith fans, take note). Big personal favourites include "Dog Tree", "The Pie" and "Theme From Konono", the latter of which perfectly captures the excitement of Konono No. 1 (whose Congotronics we've already seen on this list) in an entirely new way, borrowing that group's most recognisable thumb piano melodies and then redirecting them through a furious, post-punk prism.
---#38---
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
(hip-hop)
2001
The lyrical prowess displayed by Can Ox's two emcees Vast Aire and Vordul Mega is outstanding, painting a dark picture of modern NYC life with imagery that's highly creative and very confrontational. Their flow is equally incredible, a spoken-word style that plays out like a slow-down of Ghostface Killah's confident vocal blasts, with Vast Aire's deep, quiver 'n' lurch delivery in particular being uniquely compelling (the first time I heard it, his entry midway through "Iron Galaxy", the album's opening track, felt like a revelation). Whether it's social commentary or battle-raps, Aire and Mega are never less than great, and hearing Vast spit creative and witty lines like "You got beef but there's worms in your Wellington / I'll put a hole in your skull and extract your gelatin" is something of which I just never tire. El-P's production presents yet another reason to praise this release, with his slow, staggered beats and futuristic sampling surpassing all previous efforts for a career highpoint that very nearly steals the show. Mirroring the album's subject matter, his contributions mostly have a dark and grimy mood to them, but there's brilliant surprises at every turn, be it the blazing electric guitar overlay of "Ox Out the Cage", the synth-orchestra-in-outer-space of "Real Earth" or the loungey, Amon Tobin-esque vibes of "Painkillers". It's a long, arduous listen, and undoubtedly a slow grower, but The Cold Vein is remarkably rewarding listening - one of the decade's finest, most lyrically dense releases.
---#37---
Rokia Traoré - Bowmboï
(Malian, singer/songwriter, African folk)
2003
Malian Rokia Traoré's self-produced third album, the lovely Bowmboï, is a collection of African folk songs delivered via classical acoustic guitar, traditional African instrumentation and Traoré's remarkable voice. Singing in her native Bamana language, she delivers a ten track set that is calm, relaxing and beautiful in its simplicity. The music is fleshed out through some earthy percussion and fine string augmentation (courtesy on two tracks of The Kronos Quartet) which gives the album a bustling, sprightly sound, which feels quite active and vibrant, but never steps over the line into any degree of tense urgency. The percussion in particular is highly impressive - dynamic, multi-layered and very nimbly performed, it is nonetheless carefully tempered such that it never overshadows any other element of the music. Most importantly, it doesn't overshadow Traoré's incredibly beguiling vocal, one of the most gorgeous and transfixing I've heard all decade. There's something undeniably transportative about the music, such that I find myself swept up and totally immersed in Traoré's world every time I press play. As far as highlights go, the album is bookended remarkably well. The opening four tracks provide a feast of brilliant material, with "M'Bifo", "Sara" and "Köte Don" completely engaging the listener and the exquisite "Mariama" featuring a lovely guest vocal from Malian legend Ousmane Sacko, while the title-track closes the album with exceptional grace.
---#36---
Coachwhips - Bangers vs. Fuckers
(garage-punk, noise-rock)
2003
Meet the loudest band in existence. Before he fronted Thee Oh Sees and started trading in psychedelic rock, John Dwyer led three piece garage-punk outfit Coachwhips through three albums of blistering, noisy, tear-the-walls-down rock 'n' roll. Bangers vs Fuckers, their final release, is so loud and rocks so impossibly hard that you actually need to exercise a little caution when putting it on - the album was mastered at such a ridiculously high volume, that if you play it through headphones on your "default" volume setting you run the risk of pulverising your skull. While Thee Oh Sees are often drifty and contemplative in their retro-recreation, Coachwhips immediately get to the point, and then proceed to jackhammer it directly into your pleasure centres with nasty glee. By all accounts, Dwyer seems like a bit of an a-hole on this album, slurring his way through his near-incomprehensible filtered vocals while virtually swallowing the microphone, and playing his guitar with the furious pace and sloppy distortion you'd expect from someone on the tail end of a 48-hour cocaine binge, but there's a roguish charisma to his madness that easily stops you from ever really being bothered. "You Gonna Get It" and "I Knew Her, She Knew Me" rate as my personal favourites, but the album races by so quickly (the whole thing is over in just over twenty minutes!) that it honestly feels like a bit of a blur. The first time I listened to this, I penned a very brief review which simply read "Holy shit. I think my head just exploded." That should tell you everything you need to know.