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February 02, 2005
2004 Favorites
Just as it is with employers handing out year-summarizing W-4 forms, January 31st is the de facto deadline by which WXYC djs are supposed to submit their "top releases of the year" lists. One brave DJ then undertakes the thankless task of tallying up everyone's votes, calculating the overall ranks of various releases, and coming up with a composite WXYC "best of the year" list. No one knows what this list looks like at the moment, but soon all will be revealed: the top 20 releases will be counted down tomorrow night on WXYC's Thursday Night Feature. So if you're interested, tune in to 89.3 FM (or listen online) from 9pm to 12 midnight EST for a fun 2004 retrospective...as well as a chance to win one of the top 2 vote-getting releases (whatever they may be).
Personally, I don't always find it to be an easy or enjoyable task to try and numerically sort records based on exactly how much (or let's face it, exactly when) they blew me away during the previous year...but I really enjoy getting an intriguing glimpse into the collective hive mind of the radio station. Whether or not I wind up being all that surprised by some of the "broad consensus" picks that will make up the overall WXYC Top 10, I really like reading other people's lists and seeing various records that I either never listened to or never even knew existed. The whole sharing of "best of" lists creates an instant blueprint for musical catch-up. And catchup can be extremely rewarding...if past years are any indication, I may very well discover some of my favorite 2004 releases during the next few months. Anyway, enough with the chatter, here are my 15 favorites of 2004 as submitted to WXYC a few days ago:
1. Jay-Z - special acappella edition of The Black Album
2. Scharpling & Wurster - New Hope For The Ape-Eared
3. Various Artists - Bandwidth: Celebrating 10 Years of Internet Radio
on WXYC-Chapel Hill
4. Battles - EP C; Tras; B EP
5. Girl Talk - Unstoppable
6. Diverse - One AM
7. Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in The Hands; Nino Rojo
8. DJ/Rupture - Special Gunpowder
9. Madvillain - Madvillainy
10. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike
11. Ghostface - The Pretty Toney Album
12. Tussle - Don't Stop EP; Klingklang
13. Murs/9th Wonder - Murs 3:16, the 9th Edition
14. Lali Puna - Faking The Books
15. M.I.A. - "Galang", "Sunshowers", Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mix (w/ Diplo)
While I'm at it, below are a few notes/explanations/observations...
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#1 - Maybe this is a gimmicky choice for #1 but I didn't have another clear favorite and no other 2004 release dominated my year like this one did. The underground wax versions were circulating in late 2003, sure, but the official 2004 CD release (of just the acappellas, mind you!) took it into places like Best Buy. Of course, that only happened after all the derivative works started flying around the Internet in early 2004. I will surely hit a point where I never want to hear this again (much less use it), but the whole acappella push was a genius marketing move and a 2004 musical milestone. Props to Danger Mouse and a few other folks for taking these acappellas and making great new music out of them and taking the whole thing to a new level...my #1 vote definitely factors in the genius of The Grey Album and the out-of-control-ness of what followed.
#2 - I think the only 2004 things that made me laugh harder than this album were Chappelle's Show and The Daily Show. I already wrote about this double disc back in May. The fact that it's two guys doing comedy over the radio means that I have voice-only releases as my top 2 picks of 2004. I should've bought that Bjork album with Rahzel all over it, maybe I would've liked it enough to put it as #3.
#3 - I wrote way too much about this CD over the last three months. You can still download it in its entirety for free, though! (Weird, I just now noticed while uploading the album covers above that Casey Burns designed the art for my #2 and #3 albums...a completely accidental segue!)
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#4 - Three EPs that total 66 minutes in length. Not an album you say? Well, Ian basically admitted that Battles was strategically avoiding the idea of an official debut album. Which probably disqualified them from getting as much notice as they should have. I wrote about Battles here and took pictures here.
#5 - I think this Girl Talk album is genius and I wish it would find it's way out of the plunderphonic/avant-garde ghetto and into the hands of everyone who copped the Hollertronix Never Scared mix (which was red hot in its own right, don't get me wrong). I can definitely see why some computer-based "audio art" and digital-detritus-type releases (like Wobbly, for instance) wouldn't fly with the mixtape/DJ/hip-hop crowd. But this album is an on-the-one party-rocker. And people who dig the vocal studies of Prefuse 73 would be crazy not to like "Keeping the Beat" and the way it totally chops and shreds the vocals to "Uptown Baby" by Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz while everything keeps on bouncing.
#6 - The Diverse album came out in late 2003 and I'm pretty much cheating by even putting it on here...but WXYC had it on the playlist for all of January and that's when I bought it. Definitely a solid early 2004 favorite for me, so on the list it goes.
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#7 - Within the span of a single month this summer, I saw Devendra Banhart play live on both sides of the Atlantic. Both shows were pretty incredible but in very different ways. I really like both of these 2004 albums that he released...as well as his contributions to the Vetiver disc. Rejoicing... is probably my favorite of the two, though I like Nino Rojo's "At The Hop" so much that I played it at a wedding last fall.
#8 - DJ/Rupture's Special Gunpowder = my favorite album cover of 2004. Hot album, too.
#9 - A likely contender for the composite WXYC Top 5, and with very good reason. Madvillain fans who've already acquired many of the countless other releases featuring Madlib or MF Doom may want to check out the Stones Throw 101 DVD in order to see two hot Madvillain videos ("All Caps", "Rhinestone Cowboy").
Whew, I've already rambled on for quite a bit here so I won't keep going with these notes except to acknowledge that my #15 choice was also a bit of cheating, except in a pre-2005 instead of a post-2003 direction. I made it a policy not to consider mix CDs (or reissues) for this list, but I consider the Diplo/M.I.A. mix to be more of an artist-centric release that quelled some of my pent-up demand for more M.I.A. hits in the wake of "Galang" and "Sunshowers". I think individual tracks from this CD sound a bit silly sometimes when they're played out of context on WXYC, but as a whole the mix works really well. Today I actually managed to lay my hands on a copy of the Arular advance...so I'll have that to listen to while I sit around and ponder the extent to which M.I.A. is about to blow up beyond the DJ/music critic/hipster circles that she's already won over.
At the end of 2004 I made a year-end mix CD that features songs from most of the releases mentioned above....as well as a few other songs (non-jamz) that I really liked. I'm guessing that a decent percentage of the people who regularly read this blog may have already received one by now....but who knows. I finally have a new batch of printouts of Golfing Bush from Fahrenheit 9/11. And I would love to mark 'em up and turn them into CD covers....so shoot me an email at tubacity [at] gmail.com if you would like one.
Posted by Tim at February 2, 2005 01:24 AM
Comments
The Madvillain video for "All Caps" is also on the CD. I discovered this by chance when I put it in my laptop to listen at work. The video autostarts so it was a pleasent surprise. This might very well be listed on the shrink wrap, but since I rarely pay attention to that stuff I'm probably missing out on a bunch of other free videos in my collection.
-pm
Posted by: Paul at February 3, 2005 08:54 AM
Damn, so it is! I never notice those sorts of things either...
Posted by: Tim at February 3, 2005 11:18 AM
shit, i forgot to put those battles ep's on my list. i haven't even bought the most recent one because i keep getting confused about which ones i already have. damn you, ian williams and your clever trickery!! i probably should have listed that instead of that converge album. but, when you're feeling really angsty and angry, converge is about as good as it gets.
Posted by: todd at February 3, 2005 01:45 PM
Well then it sounds like I need to get the Converge album....that's something that didn't even make it onto my radar screen at all.
Posted by: Tim at February 3, 2005 02:27 PM