Slumberlord
Yeah, I thought I was done with this. But I reserve the right to keep changing it right up until the proper end of the year.
1. Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner
2. Jay-Z – The Black Album
3. Four Tet – Rounds
4. Anamude – Urban Comfort EP
5. Yerba Buena – President Alien
6. Devon Sproule – Upstate Songs
7. Michael Mayer – Fabric 13
8. Joe Henry – Tiny Voices
9. Basement Jaxx – Kish Kash
10. Bubba Sparxxx – Deliverance
11. Rachel’s – Systems/Layers
12. TV on the Radio – Young Liars EP
13. Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher
14. Lightning Bolt – Beautiful Rainbow
15. The Pacific Ocean – So Beautiful and Cheap and Warm
16. Ricardo Villalobos – Alcachofa
17. Ludacris – Chicken -N- Beer
18. Califone – Quicksand and Cradlesnakes
19. Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground
20. The Non-Prophets – Hope
21. Outkast – Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
22. Cex – Being Ridden
23. The Libertines – Up the Bracket
24. Opeth – Damnation
25. Calexico – Feast of Wire
26. Kelis – Tasty
27. Deerhoof – Apple O
28. Matthew Shipp – Equilibrium
29. Wire – Send
30. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People
31. Ogurusu Norihide – Modern
32. Stew – Something More Than These Changes
33. The Neptunes – The Neptunes Present Clones
34. Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club – Goodbye, My 4-Track
35. Koop – Waltz For Koop: Alternative Takes
36. Atmosphere – Seven’s Travels
37. Matthew Dear – Leave Luck to Heaven
38. Midwest Product – World Series of Love
39. The Atomiks – Motordeath
40. David Bowie – Reality
41. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Shoot From the Hip
42. Menomena – I Am the Fun Blame Monster
43. OOIOO – Kila Kila Kila
44. The Mars Volta – Deloused in the Comatorium
45. The Soft Pink Truth – Do You Party?
46. Junior Senior – D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat
47. Missy Elliot – This Is Not A Test!
48. The Gunshy – Tour
49. Luomo – The Present Lover
50. Daedelus – Rethinking the Weather
Best of 2003
I'm sooo burned out on 2003. I'm rather glad it's almost over. I have so much old stuff I've been pushing aside, some old
Chic,
Dexy and
Harold Budd records.
But I can't put 2003 away without the albums list. I really wanted to write blurbs for these records, but I feel like I've said so much about them already in writing reviews, posting message boards and haranging my friends. If anyone is curious about any of these they can
email me and I'll enlighten them. So, without further ado...
20. Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground
19. The Non-Prophets – Hope
18. Ludacris – Chicken -N- Beer
17. Califone – Quicksand and Cradlesnakes
16. The Pacific Ocean – So Beautiful and Cheap and Warm
15. Ricardo Villalobos – Alcachofa
14. Lightning Bolt – Beautiful Rainbow
13. Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher
12. TV on the Radio – Young Liars EP
11. Joe Henry – Tiny Voices
10. Rachel’s – Systems/Layers
09. Bubba Sparxxx – Deliverance
08. Basement Jaxx – Kish Kash
07. Michael Mayer – Fabric 13
06. Devon Sproule – Upstate Songs
05. Yerba Buena – President Alien
04. Anamude – Urban Comfort EP
03. Jay-Z – The Black Album
02. Four Tet – Rounds
01. Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner
My brother made me a mix (Hip-Hop Hits of 2003!) and I didn't realize he was so street. It's pretty good,
Memphis Bleek,
Westside Connection,
Three Six Mafia; not the stuff I ususally listen to, but I enjoyed it more than I expected. But what I really noticed (besides that I still can't get into most of
Lil John's stuff) was just how
apocalyptic so much of 2000s gangster hip-hop sounds.
I've read detractors who (rather absurdly) align hip-hop's
lyrics with the downfall of American culture and the undoing of society, but is a track about 24 inch rims really a sign of the Apocalypse? No, what's really scary is these sonic backdrops: dark, windswept plains, dry, crackling beats, gurgling horns, coughs, murmurs, and those goddamn bells. Not bells as in jingle or church or "Pet Sounds" but a bell like the kind they have in Japanese shrines, in a U-shape, about a hundred stories tall, hanging in the middle of this desert, tolling out the strokes down to the end of the world.
Tonight I'm going to have nightmares about
Trick Daddy coming to me in a robe and trying to get me to drink ox blood or something. Cheers!
Sometimes people ask me to make mixes for them and I'm glad to do so. Usually I ask them to provide me with some guidelines, though, because I have something approaching 1,000 CDs, probably half as many LPs, and quite a few songs on my computer. So when I approach a mix without any kind of theme, time period or genre, I tend to produce something like this:
A-side
The Carsinogents - First Class
Gundam 0083 TV theme - The Winner
Billy Ocean - Lover Boy
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Happy When It Rains
Koop - Summer Sun
John Barry - Dutchman
Madonna - Ray of Light
Vaguely Star Shaped - Waiting to Forget
Everything But the Girl - Don’t Leave Me Behind (LP version)
Lamb - Heaven
Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Murder On the Dancefloor
B-side
Sagittarius - My World Fell Down (single version)
Starfighter - Beautiful Machine
Sparks - The Rhythm Thief
Les Rhythmes Digitales - Hypnotise
The Last Poets - Blessed Are Those Who Struggle
Sergey Prokofiev - Cinderella’s Waltz – Midnight
Clinic - Distortions
Pigmeat Markham - Here Comes the Judge
Bobby Womack - I’m Looking For A Love
John Cage - The Seasons (Summer)
The Replacements - Can’t Hardly Wait
Elvis Costello - Jump Up
...which is pretty random. I'm guessing my friend who asked for the mix won't like a few of those tracks, but maybe that will give me a better idea of what to give her if I make her another mix in the future.
THE 2003 BEST-OF SINGLES MEGA LIST
01. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Mixed Up World
02. 90 Day Men – Too Late or Too Dead
03. Kanye West – Through The Wire
04. !!! – Me and Guiliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story)
05. Basement Jaxx ft. Dizzee Rascal – Lucky Star
06. Kelis – Milkshake
07. Non-Prophets – Damage
08. Tatu – Not Gonna Get Us
09. Wayne Wonder – No Letting Go
10. R Kelly – Ignition (remix)
11. 50 Cent – In Da Club
12. Big Tymers – This Is How We Do
13. Archigram – Carnaval
14. Girls Aloud – No Good Advice
15. Xiu Xiu – Apistat Commander
16. Outkast – Hey Ya
17. Al Ferox & Vitalic – Absolut
18. Blu Cantrell ft. Sean Paul – Breathe
19. Primal Scream – Some Velvet Morning (Kevin Shields/Jagz Kooner Remix)
20. Big Gipp ft. Sleepy Jackson – Steppin’ Out
21. Cex – Earth-Shaking Event
22. Dirt McGirt ft. Pharrell – Pop Shit
23. Beyonce ft. Jay-Z – Crazy In Love
24. Four Tet – She Moves She
25. Fabolous – Now Ride
26. Kylie Minogue – Slow
27. Soul Position – The Jerry Springer Episode
28. Luomo – So You
29. Da Lata – Something
30. Bangkok Impact – Traveler
31. Junior Senior – Move Your Feet
32. Bubba Sparxxx – Deliverance
33. Herbert – Leave Me Now
34. Lumidee – Never Leave You (Uh Ooh, Uh Ooh)
35. Lacquer – Behind
36. Da Brat – Got It Poppin’
37. Brother Ali – Room With a View
38. Sugababes – Whatever Makes You Happy
39. The Tyde – Go Ask Yer Dad
40. Soft Pink Truth – Promofunk
41. Pharrell ft. Jay-Z – Frontin’
42. Cee-Lo – I’ll Be Around
43. Vitalic – La Rock
44. Sean Paul – Like Glue
45. Strokes – 12:51
46. Obie Trice – Got Some Teeth
47. Ludacris – Stand Up
48. Killer Mike – A.D.I.D.A.S.
49. Rah Digga – Party and Bullshit
50. More Fire Crew ft. Dizzee Rascal – Still the Same
I thought about doing blurbs for individual songs, but that seemed forced so I’m just going to write a few grafs instead.
In the singles world,
Sophie Ellis-Bextor was a clear winner. And not just because she’s insanely good looking. She also makes incredible music and “Mixed Up World” has more bite to it than her hit “Murder on the Dancefloor” from several years back. “Mixed Up World” takes the title as best single of the year.
The
90 Day Men really came out of nowhere with their EP this year – I remember reviewing some of their early releases, and those were intriguing but overly theoretical and obtuse math albums. Here they’ve shucked the herky-jerky for a weird forlorn boil that recalls
The For Carnation without that band’s
Slint-like listlessness.
Kanye West has certainly done “Through the Wire” production-wise before; a sped-up
Chaka Khan sample is hardly new for him. What makes this song great is the delivery and the topic and the urgency of the whole thing, combined with the great sense of humor (“drink a boost for breakfast, an intro for dissert / Somebody ordered pancakes I just sip the sizzurp”). I’ve searched in vain all year for a way to say “sizzurp” in conversation.
There’s some great songs among the rest; I’ve already written about “Lucky Star” here. “Damage,” with more brilliant couplets than any one song can reasonably contain, was a big climber through the fall for me. I ignored “In Da Club” earlier this year but have slowly been won over not just by that deliciously minimal beat (
Dre showing off, “look at all the fish I can catch with this wooden pole with a string tied to it!”) but also by that aching skeletal guitar that skitters across the last part of the track. To close I do have to admit that I included “Got It Poppin’” primarily because it mentions
Erica Kane from “All My Children.”
Sometime in the next week: The albums! Whoo-hoo!
I was listening to the
Basement Jaxx album again and was really struck by how they just bowl you over with something that is so... unoriginal, in a way, for them, that sounds so much like a
Basement Jaxx record, right down to the guests and the interludes. On "Good Luck" it's just shear power and shear skill with very few little that is radically different for them... but their rut would be a plateau for most and they are just so damn
good at it that it's hard to hold it against them.
Then of course we come to "Lucky Star" and that Indian beat-sample that is, well, almost a bit schoolmarmish by now in 2003, but still sounds hella good. And
Dizzee Rascal just sinks his teeth into it and doesn't let go, slanging and banging through the track, setting the whole song on fire and crashing through it as it crumbles and burns around him,
Simon Ratcliffe and
Felix Buxton shaking their heads and clucking disapprovingly
and damn what a good song results...
