Journal sielwolf's Journal: Best Albums of 2004 22

The Swiss came through: timed like a watch (I can see you rolling your eyes from here, GMH). As soon as I walked in my apartment a mailwoman walked up behind me to hand my registered mail. CD in the mail from the lovely folks at Soul Seduction.

Ripping the tracks I was surrouned by the irony of already being three purchases into '05 before getting this one, Ricardo Villalobos Thé Au Harem D'Archimède in the corporeal. So why the wait on the Year in Music JE (esp. since it is one of the few of mine that garners any sort of discussion?)? Because I had the sense that this disc would be that good. That it would sneak into my Top 5 and demand recognition, fucking up my entire mojo.

And I was right... Ricardo opens right out with a square beat of overlapping hand-clapping coordination. Strategic bass. This format, this mode, he won't leave. Like the opening strings of "The End" by the doors telling you Apocolypse Now! has arrived. Out of the air the hand claps multiply, flapping and converging in a flock. The bass sings a tone deeper. The two form a duet, out of time with each other. Just as "Hireklon" starts to make some sense some acoustic guitar progessions show up. Whoa... ok... um... hmmm... I bite my tongue just waiting for the spotlight to fall on the guitarist as he takes off on his lead to the swoop of violins... but, it doesn't. The track plays against the driving rhythm. A discordant arhythmia. The guitar unravels. Is this making any sense? And then "dooommm!" the bass punctuates it. The revelation comes to us.

Thé Au Harem D'Archimède works this way. Where Alcachofa was set by a strong overt movements ("Easy Lee" is shattering), Villalobos' sophomore release is an even line from bow to stern. A panorama where we observe the slight variations in the countryside, where the Earth touches the sky. Maybe its his tech-house pedigree. Probably his profound understanding of the nature of a single and the theme of an album. Beats drop away unnoticed as we are drawn to these little growing spongeforms. A sort of Dr. Moreau beastiary and we watch as all these unique chimeras step into naked light. "Serpentin" revisits the teeth rattling hum of "Dexter" but to a whole different plateau. This one is lower, short hikes and sack lunches. The soft noise of the bass is amplified 60's SF noise but then there it goes, off into the stratosphere. It arcs in pronounced waves, moving about. These few elements all woven in wonderful multiplicity. The tracks continue each with little earmarks and signatures. The sort of tells on fraternal twins that give them away. Similar but vastly different. Once more the highlight comes on the 8th track, "Miami". With a title like that you might consider Lisa Lisa and the Cult rolling out from stage left... and you might be half right. The midrange is dominated with that stuttered rhythm of salsa. Where the quick scissor step is cut with midtempo breaths. The hips move frantic. And an overpowering hovering passage. As the lowend ups and breaks the surface casting the city in darkness. There is a woman's voice in there, far away in the distance. Here now is the frantic, personal, very close passion of the coming apocolypse. I feel... ill at ease.

This disc is Ricardo Villalobos. No more, no less. A very specific aggrevated injury of both dance and thought in collision. Some will listen to this and hear nothing, only the indecipherable noise that permiates late nights and her hand moving along my knee. But I watch her shadow cast face. I see nothing, but in that black sillouette, her eyes extend out, and pierce into my self. We watch each other along a closed circuit line.

Ricardo Villalobos Thé Au Harem D'Archimède ****1/2

With that out of the way, here's the damage. Remember the ground rules: feel free to add on (your top 5, your notions of Music 2004, whatever), all my picks are from the discs I've bought with my own cash (so don't expect anything special. If I got paid for this and a label would send them to me gratis [maybe with a bowtie on my dick] I might care about the Killers or the Shanks or the Spivs. Until then this is your boy's collection). Today it finally is a socialist daycare center.

Summary of 2004 Music Purchases
56 Albums (Up from 53 last year)
50 hours 47 minutes and 46 seconds time elapsed
3.767 Average Rating (Lower than last year's 3.826)
Estimated Expenditure: $714 (I'm actually going to keep track of this this year. I'm already up to $44.59 in '05)

• Top 5 Albums of 2004 (no particular order in classical Hornby style):
  • The Black Keys Rubber Factory - I'm neither a blues purist nor a hipster dilettante who's favorite blues musicians all happen to be whiteys. The Keys sidestep this by insisting on being called a "Rock" band, kicking ass and letting all the corpses sort it out who's the illest. A great album that has all gradients of solid rockmanship and proving the adage thattwo guys, a kit, and an amp can make hella noise.
  • Masta Killa No Said Date - This one was hurt by its incredibly long release time (note that 2004 was the 10 year anniversary of Enter the 36... going street. It took a damn decade for Noodles here to polish off an LP) and that the mixtape circuit had their hands on some of the best tracks. But it cultivates a classic Wu sound: RZA/Trackmaster/Mathematics antimeter beat grime, complex lyrical flow that borders on the poetic. And finally interesting for an album recognizing hip-hop at middle age without embarassment or delution. Sadly ODB passed away, Method Man continues to reach lower circles of irrelevance and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II is vaporware... Wu-tang where are you?
  • Air Talkie Walkie - Some might mock its simple brilliance while furrowing brows on the seriousness of the next NME Strokes offering but this album, from front to back, kills. Naive the way a Tamigachi would be and unfettered by notion without making you all embarassed like a Japanese offering. Maybe not the chillhouse cool of Moon Safari but we still have here a disc that approaches pana-aural equivilence of Pixar fare: for all ages and types.
  • Ricardo Villalobos Thé Au Harem D'Archimède - A million motherfuckers on the planet Earth all working with the same 4/4 at 80 and only this seems to grab my attention? And why are the hairs on my arms standing up? You walk backwards onto the blade of a dagger and it goes into your spine. Different, the same. At times both abstract, impenetrable yet absolute, simple and distinct. It sweeps with elegant open motions.
  • Interpol Antics - If you were paying attention, you might notice that the above were the only +4 albums from 2004. That forced me to go back and look at the gads of "good, not great" offerings... only to stop and think "is there anything in my car?" And there it was: Antics. Swept over again by a disc I dismissed earlier as average fare. Fucker injected me with the venom and fed on my innards. Once more tracks I habitually skipped soon became favorites, the sort that I hesitate over and finally succumb to. A girl living next door, you knew your entire life, you only noticed now. From the maelstrom, much like in 2002, Interpol will emerge as the few relevant acts of our time.
• Honorable Mention:
  • The Bug featuring Warrior Queen Aktion Pak - Fuck, this could've been another killer album... but was only three original tracks deep but saved us with the dub plate versions. I was goddamn sure K.Mart's Razor X comp was going to come out this year but no.
  • Tamion 12 Inch Let's Suffer - My sorta gal. But it oddly loses its way before ending on a real high note. Odd how that middle section completely threw off my vibe. I debated this one quite a bit. If Interpol hadn't dropped this might have made the Top 5.
  • Der Zyklus Biometry - I think I might need to stop on my Dataphysix purchases. These guys are just beginning to get to me. Like the monotonous chants of cultists combined with starvation, dehydration, and the fear of exclusion. The fact they could serve up such a reaction makes me worried... not much. 'Cause your boy don't worry 'bout shit.
  • MF Doom MM.. Food - Goddamn it! Stop releasing four albums a year, drop one and it'll be classic. Like issueance on birth. Now I gotta go make a super-mix and cut out all the filler and daudling. If I wanted b-sides and outtakes I'd've asked for it.
• Dishonorable Mention:
  • All self-proclaimed insta-hip-hop classics. College Dropout had one good song on it. Sure, it was hot but fuck please. That it was the only backpacker shit to get any play on MTV don't mean anything. And Madvillainy was like listening to the album samplers on Amazon.com: enough to whet your appetite, too inconsequential due to brevity. Fuck, unless your are mashing out 200 beats a minute, don't give me a track less than two minutes long. The Grind Date etc etc etc. More just adequate albums that are hyped up beyond belief because there's a goddamn quota of classic albums I guess we need every year. Sorry, but in two years no one's going to have kept these in the top draw of their CD changer. Sorry, please deposit 25 cents and try again.
  • Helmet - Do. Not. Do. This. Ever. Again.
  • Northern State - Way to go wood! The sellby date on your debut EP went by so fast that All City fell like a brick. I wonder? If a turd hits on a toilet bowl, and no one's there to hear it, does it make a plop? I just wonder if they're going to have to pay back their advance with shoeshines and rimmies? I hear something the Capitol Records offices... it is the sound of assholes in the need of licking.
  • The Streets - Please please please, why won't these guys go away? Like I don't mean we gotta find Mike Skinner in a dumpster somewhere, but their albums continuously get namedropped, cited for awards and absolutely make my dick tip due south within 2 seconds. We have the semi-tolerable nerdboy rap (Aesop) that has a modicum of ability tainted by the self-righteous posterior polishing dorkery of farting around on Casios with voices that must sound hard from your mom's Seabreeze (Anti-Con) only to be trumped by... this. I don't even want to call it music. The shit Merzbow churns out is more topical than this.
  • Ashlee Simpson - Wait, second thought, can I put her in the Top 5? The fucking comedy this slag has brought out is like an IV of Mr Show and Bill Hicks. Fucking getting ran on a hoedown on SNL only to be booed AGAIN ON LIVE TV at the Orange Bowl (and we all know that the parabolics kept the volume of the boos down. It must've been like a goddamn execution in there). Bereft of talent, value, worth as a human being. Funny that it took SNL for people to realize this. Hello, she had a goddamn show about how her father painstakingly manufactured her sound and how she couldn't sing a goddamn lick. Soon to be fodder for Page 6, E!. I've already taken her on my deadpool. 5-3 odds she pulls a Dana Plato (nekkid, drugs, dead). Golden.
• Other Shit (Which I would've bought it but I didn't. So there): Lamb of God's new one (I had it in my hands several times only to put it down. Now its become sort of stained by that. A musical Jonah), TV on the Radio (why haven't I gotten into this?), Exceptor KA (Passed the cover-rule. I just need to remember to look for it).
• Singles (Maybe on an album, maybe not. I still liked 'em): "Drop it Like its Hot" (sure, this was totally bitten from E-40. But I knew this was going to slay back in September. Fuckheads didn't believe me, said, 'tunes were washed up and now look: four months later and its still here), "Like a Boss" (Unbelieveable and again with that high-school band flex in the background. The Neptunes reestablish themselves), "Ghetto/I'm Locked Up" (Goddamn, Akon. Some hot songs. This was great because it had me declare in my whiteboy exasperation "Man... I'm locked up and they won't let me out!" Simple hymns that work. I'm just worried that the rest of the album might tank so I'm enjoying it from a distance).
• Stupid Fucking Fads (Die Darkman... DIE!)
  • 4th Generation Mall-punk: fuck... Greencard? Who the fuck thought punk rock needed more violin!? I mean- wait, its Yellowcard? What... like soccer? Who the fuck cares. My Chemical Romance, The Used, etc etc all on a scale from dickless to the fucking vanguard of stupid. Now goddamn Good Charlotte, the musical equivalent of a turkish bath anal olympics, is the progenitor of this next generation of mindless farting. What is worst is how all the fucking bands they so glibly plagerize from 6 years ago are still fucking around! If they were all caught face down in the mud taking a steer cock up the ass eating porcine assholes I wouldn't be surprised. Cum-slopping endlessness that will probably kill rock. If this is what all those shitheads on the frontpage are stealing on Kazaa then I'll load up the Ryder truck with ceasium dipped TNT and help the RIAA to its fucking grave.
  • The Official Mashup - Fuck Jay-Z for this. Boys of Linkin Park, I'm sorry to break it to you, but no amount of blackface will give you any legacy. I'm all for them helping out musicians that actually matter. It ain't my dollars, so its like mana from heaven. But you all still like you fucking hitched a ride with Mike's mom to the concert. You still don't mean anything and deserved to get gangfucked in a lockerroom until you piss your fucking pants. Jesus this isn't even a mashup! Thanks MTV for the newspeak. "What, like coloreds and whites working together at the same time? Let's get on that shit! A little fellatio to keep our street cred erection up!" No, this is a Co.LA.Bo.RAY.Shun. Hit 88 mph and get back to 91 when the Judgement Night soundtrack was released. Notice how this has nothing to do with anything. Like everything you fucking do. Jesus, crawl on the ground and fucking die for me.
  • Grime cum two-step cum garage. Same shit, different sack. Who cares?
  • Lil Jon - This isn't even funny anymore. And now that he and Jazzy Pha are biting electro wholesale this is a bit lame. I wish I had some headphones like the sunglasses in They Live where I can hear what folks REALLY say so when they're talking about Lil Jon and how fun and carefree his music is that I get "I love him! He's such a sambo! God... he looks like he should be clearing the median of the highway of trash!"
  • Janet Jackson's titty - WTF. If they want to fine for something, watch as I stick my dick in Ashlee Simpson's ear and she makes that "Daddy just farted in my face while my mouth was open!!!" face. I'll shit on her shoulder just to fill out the frame.
• Final Music Index (As compared to 2003): Technically it's down from 2003, both classic album and average score wise. But I hesitate to put us on a downward slope. More I think music took a major step in 2003 and this year was more about feeling about a bit, getting a sense of our surroundings in this new world. I was disappointed on some albums but it wasn't because they weren't trying. That makes me proud. So I'm going to give it a push.
• Looking Forward to in 2005: Portishead (fuck, this didn't come out? Jeezus. We're at the seven year point here, people), an official ODB requiem album (that Osirus Mixtape was belched out to run on the publicity of his death. Give me real beats and we'll talk), Jesu (actually I already ordered this. I'ma excited), Mu ("Paris Hilton" was hilarious. Probably belongs in the singles. This should be another shot from the hip), BoC (same as Portishead. More WTF's), Corrosion of Conformity (Pepper Keenan's my man. Another long overdue release).

I was thinking about giving a recap of all purchases I made but... shit, this took me two hours to write already. Respond, get some sleep, whatever.