10) Demon Days – Gorillaz (May 2005 – Parlaphone)
Surprisingly enough, Demon Days is the only album in the top ten to be the product of a cartoon band. The concept? that Gorillaz is a group of four animated characters who create and perform music. Of course 2D, Noodle and their cronies are not really creators, but the brainchild of one half of the Gorillaz project, artist Jamie Hewlett. Hewlett’s creative partner is former Blur front man Damon Albarn, and it is he who is responsible for the majestic sounds of Demon Days.
Throughout the record, Albarn displays his abilities as one of his generation’s greatest tunesmiths, with his folk-inspired melodies enhanced by his fifty-a-day vocals. The songs amalgamate a series of influences, from dub-reggae to hip-hop to trip-hop to be-bop, fashioning a quirky and energetic sound world. The record features a host of guest appearances including De la Soul, Ike Turner and Shaun Ryder, yet this plethora of genres and artists doesn’t detract from the album’s focus and cohesion. A nod must go to wunderkind producer Dangermouse who beautifully fractures the sonic texture with vinyl crackle and analogue hiss, helping to make this Albarn’s finest work to date.
9) Since I left You – The Avalanches (November 2000 – Modular)
The Australian band’s two members worked separately when creating Since I left You. In two identical studios, Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann used mainly Yamaha Promix 01 and Akai S2000 samplers (relatively rudimentary equipment) and ferreted through their expansive record collections looking for sample-able sound bites with little concern for copyright. Once an idea was spawned it was sent to the other half of the band to expand, and all the time the central concept was developed: ‘the international search for love from country to country’. The first master copy, made up entirely of audio snippets from other sources, had within it around 3500 samples none of which had been approved by its author. And so began the task of seeking licence, and due to legal difficulties the album was stripped back significantly before its official release. Such audio absence is unnoticeable however, and the record, which is as uplifting an album as you’ll hear, remains, sadly, the band’s only full-length release.
8) Up the Bracket – The Libertines (October 2002 – Rough Trade)
What with Pete Doherty’s increasingly boring excursions into drugs, tabloids and the law, it’s easy to dismiss his musical output as insignificant. It’s not, and this album proves it. Up the Bracket, whose title alludes to a phrase from 1950s radio comedy Hancock’s Half Hour, triggered a new era in guitar-driven indie music with its counter-culture lyrics, disorganised we-won’t-pretend-to-be-good-at-guitar performances and under-produced finish. Even if Doherty’s subsequent work doesn’t cut the mustard, his first offering is definitely worth a listen.
7) The Black Album – Jay Z (November 2003 – Roc-A-Fella Records)
With production contributions from the likes of Timbaland, The Neptunes and Kanye West, The Black Album, which at the time of creation was to be Jay Z’s last, was never going to be anything other than a hip hop classic. As one of the genre’s cardinal albums, Jay Z’s eighth is sometimes credited with the propulsion of hip-hop further into the mainstream. It was perhaps here that hip-hop ceased to be the domain of just the American hood; middle class kids in suburban bedrooms now had an equal share in the genre that a few years later would attract the masses at Glastonbury Festival. As you’d expect, Jay Z’s lyrics are sublime on this offering, one of the greatest in the hip-hop canon.
6) Arular – MIA (March 2005 – XL Records)
It has been said that ‘anything with a beat’ influenced MIA’s debut album – a dance album that failed to perform commer
cially but left critics hungry for more. Perhaps the biggest influence on the album is MIA’s father Mathangi Arulpragasam, a Tamil activist with the codename Arular. His revolutionary ideals informed the thematic basis of the record, the product of MIA’s objective to create a dance album ‘that addressed important issues.’ The opus features appearances from the likes of Diplo and Switch, helping to retain the relentless energy that emits throughout.
5) Takk – Sigur Ros (September 2005 – EMI)
The Icelandic band’s fourth album brought with it a new accessible sound; this is as close to bubble-gum pop that Sigur Ros is likely to get. Granted, this band’s ‘pop’ is always going to be more Squarepusher than Coldplay, but the band’s adoption of the visceral to counterbalance the cerebral is plain for all to hear. The album combines the macro with the micro; expansive guitar-walls juxtapose beautifully with intimate string quartet minimalism, achieving a euphoric aesthetic which is more familiar to the masses than the masses would think. Much of the music has been used by the BBC: as well as underpinning Planet Earth’s trailers, various tracks have become ubiquitous on Top Gear. Fortunately, not even the image of Clarkson, Hammond and May kicking back to a bit of Sigur Ros is enough to put us off the record, the band’s magnum opus.
4) The Love Below/Speakerboxxx – Outkast (September 2003 – LaFace Records)
This quirky double album from the enigmatic duo Andre 3000 and Big Boi contains a bit of something for everyone. In fact, it’s a safe(ish) bet that everyone is capable of singing a verse from the duo’s fifth studio album: it is, of course, the work that brought us pop classics ‘Hey Ya’ and ‘Roses’. There is no typical track on this album – a coalescence of Outkast’s two halves’ solo projects – as influences vary from straight jazz to geeky Aphex Twin-style electronica. Moreover, it is the diversity that such influences bring that defines the album. Not many records from the last decade juxtapose a short play starring American rapper Fonzworth Bentley, a prayer to God in which the protagonist asks for a ‘sweet bitch’, and a breakneck improvisation based on ‘My Favourite Things’. Despite the constant change of mood, both halves of the record feel like song cycles from which you could remove nothing without damaging the framework. This was the first Parental Advisory labelled album to win an album-of-the-year Grammy. After one listen, we can tell why.
3) You Forgot It in People – Broken Social Scene (October 2002 – Arts & Crafts)
‘You Forgot It in People’ isn’t the album most would expect a band of nineteen people to make. Rather than an hour-long cacophony with a bunch of guitars giving it some, the record presents us with an intricate sonic experience. The songs, which are glossed with a chaotic production, juxtapose traditional structures with adventurous instrumentation; sudden shifts in texture and boy-girl vocals add to the freshness of this work, the brilliance of which cannot be overstated. The highlight of the album is fan-favourite ‘Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl’ which encapsulates BSS’ creativity with its digitally modified vocals over-pinning layers of simple but effective instrumental lines. There is no weak track on the record – even the instrumentals that bookend the work sound relevant. Baroque-pop at its best.
2) From Here We Go Sublime – The Field (April 2007 – Kompakt)
Despite being one of the lesser-known albums in the top ten, From Here We Go Sublime is one of the most justified. A product of prestigious German label Kompakt, the record was ubiquitous on ‘best of’ lists at the end of 2007, and was noted for its reluctance to conform to the pervasive techno trends of the time.
‘The Field’ is the moniker of Swede Axel Willner, who, for this album produced music which falls somewhere between minimal techno and trance. Despite its dance aesthetic, the music is not such that would be heard in club; the record feels more natural through headphones or a bedroom hi-fi – this adding to its unique charm. With its simple structures, the pieces borrow from Reich-like minimalism: small cells of sound (samples from the likes of Lionel Richie and The Four Tops constitute the bed of the record) repeat and repeat, gradually undergoing Willner’s subtle transformations. With a sense of propulsion supplied by glitchy, softsynth beats, the music surges and retracts resulting in one of the most hypnotic aural experiences we could hope to experience.
1) Kid A – Radiohead (October 2000 – Parlaphone)
In the aftermath of the band’s previous release, Radiohead seemingly abandoned their previous influences. No longer listening to Nivarna and REM, the quintet instead devoured the electronica of Warp Records’ back catalogue, immersed itself in contemporary classical music and developed an academic interest in Jazz; these influences combined to create an ethereal sound world on Kid A. The opening track ‘Everything in its Right Place’, utilises solely synthetic instrumental forces, with Yorke’s mutated voice more another layer in the tapestry than a centre-piece. ‘Idioteque’ samples one of the earliest ever pieces of electronic music, creating a beat driven lament on modern society. The record’s standout track ‘The National Anthem’ spawns out of a short bass riff that permeates throughout, underpinning a Charles Mingus-like brass section constructed to sound ‘like a traffic jam’.
Now, the opus is unanimously seen as a classic, but at the time of release, the fans’ and critics’ reactions were luke-warm. Furthermore, at the time of recording, not even all the band members were in favour of the change of direction. The camp was split into two factions during the sessions in a wintry Copenhagen: those who wanted three minute pop songs and those who wanted anything but.
Unlike the band’s previous works, Kid A didn’t provoke a superfluity of cheap imitations. Even the most ambitious of plagiarists recognised the methods of construction used were too complex, the sphere of influence too expansive and the overarching vision too unique to warrant an attempt at emulating the sound. No other band could have made this record: the decade’s finest.
