Albums of the Year:
1. PRIMAL SCREAM -- XTRMNTR. Consider this: "Shoot Speed/Kill Light" has perhaps the greatest pedigree of any song ever. The title is a copoff of the Velvets "White Light/White Heat", the song is the lovechild of WL/WH and Joy Division's "Incubation" (right down to the guitar solo by Bernard Sumner), and it's produced by Kevin Shields. What more could you POSSIBLY want in a song?
2. FLUXION -- VIBRANT FORMS II. It's "Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld" for the new breed of minimalists. Warm and hypnotizing throughout, with impossibly dense atmospherics beautifying the mix, this 130 minute opus is easily the most captivating techno released this year.
3. GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR! -- LEVEZ VOS SKINNY FISTS COMME ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN. Godspeed managed to lighten up a bit on the urban decay theme but still produced their most dramatic statement yet. Over four long, ultimately uplifting sides/symphonies, violins and white noise have never sounded so perfect together.
4. YO LA TENGO -- AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT. The greatest Velvet Underground record never made. Slow burning, creepy, heartfelt letters of love. Fifteen years and counting, YLT just get better and better.
5. V/A -- SEVERAL BANDS GALORE (The sounds of the bands of the MBV mailing list). This year's Verve release. Some of this album is merely OK-good. Much of it is spellbindingly essential. Eighteen bands find eighteen ways to show how much My Bloody Valentine have influenced them. Risk taking and new sounds abound. Someone sign these bands *now*.
6. GAS -- POP. One of the 45691 records that Wolfgang Voigt released this year, but "Pop" displayed an ambient, peaceful side that he rarely shows. Less lo-fi than previous Gas albums, but more melodic (hence, the tongue-in-cheek title). This is the fourth Gas release, and all four of them absolutely rule.
7. V/A -- CLICKS AND CUTS. Minimalism formed from, well, exactly what the title says. The disks could be labeled "conventional" and "abstract" but those are relative terms, because nothing here is the least bit conventional. "Clicks and Cuts" is rapidly becoming an adjective, a la "Basic Channel" and "Detroit".
8. SPEEDY J -- A SHOCKING HOBBY. Jochem Paap took his previous industrial/funk ideas, added some big, dirty beats and voila -- a little brother for last year's "Wireless" (by Luke Slater) was born. This is what big beat should have sounded like had it been worthy of any of the praise it was given.
9. THIRD EYE FOUNDATION -- LITTLE LOST SOUL. Matt Elliot dumped scraping and screaming for whispering and wandering. The anti-"Sound of Violence", if you will. Impossibly lonely and sad, this was the most aptly titled album of the year.
10. SOUND TRACK -- THE COOLER. After re-listening to every Basic Channel and Maurizio release, Savvas Ysatis decided he could do them one better by adding a smoother, house-y feel to those techno blueprints. An album which somehow manages to be stark and fun all at the same time.
