ere are 50 albums from 2005 that we love.






Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The carnival came to town in a candy-corn breeze this year. A little late, and unscheduled. We negotiated our price until there was nothing left in the offer, his blue-eyed grin our entry. Then we bought. The barker stamped our hand in caramel and promised a show, an elephant’s trunk of marvels. We entered. We slipped on marble and slate devoted to St. Louis Cathedral now under the ocean. The night was moss. Atlantis came to our lips. So little we thought of it at the time that, when later pressed by the press, we could grasp only at vowels and dim legend and the shreds of ‘stalk in our teeth. We came around though, and knew—knew with enough spine, I think, to voice it—that Marie LeVeau had been holding midnight Chinese checkers matches with Robert Wyatt. Toadstools were wagered and fate cut short. There must have been sea-horses. How could there not have been? But we kept silent about those. We put them in our bathtubs.
[Derek Miller]
[Stylus Review]



Birchville Cat Motel – Chi Vampires
Drone music has expanded its frontiers so rapidly that naming a drone album of the year has become increasingly difficult. The different fronts of drone—doom/sludge, space rock, academic minimalism, etc.—aren’t easily pleased with a single choice. Nevertheless, Chi Vampires is my drone album of the year, precisely because it gathers the genre’s disparate sounds so well. Over the course of four tracks and one hour, Campbell Kneale shows his mastery of Windy and Carl’s glow-pools, the slow-burning metal of Sunn 0))) and friends, and the household of hums of, well, Birchville Cat Motel. The sprawling runtimes are justified by deep, textured soundscapes and huge emotional payoffs. As for drone album of the year, no consensus will ever be reached, but each fanbase will find this a good compromise choice.
[Bryan Berge]
[Stylus Review]



Tod Dockstader – Aerial 1
His first album in nearly four decades, musique concrete pioneer Tod Dockstader’s Aerial 1 is a haunting masterpiece created by digitally magnifying the noises heard between shortwave radio stations. Nearly 90 hours were whittled down to 59 tracks and divided into three volumes. Like the radio waves it uses as source material, the first and best volume evokes the feeling of floating ten miles above the earth and hearing the machinery and humanity below all swallowed into the ether. Dockstader mesmerizes throughout with near-phantasmagoric dins akin to freeway noises, refrigeration, engines, jetliner sonic booms, and other banalities of the factory-produced age—no artist made the commonplace sound as frighteningly alien this year.
[Cameron Macdonald]
[Stylus Review]



Slim Thug – Already Platinum
When it leaked in late 2004 and our worst expectations of heavy-lidded Slim Thug's Big-Budget Neptunes Beats brain-drain came to pass, we wagged our fingers and rolled our eyes. Then we heard it was a false leak and rejoiced! Slim and his production cohorts returned to the lab, and came out of it with one of the key rap albums of the Houston '05 takeover. Although Jazze Pha will remain a blight upon this otherwise excellent major label debut, Chad and Pharell did not fail the big boss of the nawth as anticipated, and from the slight-screw of "Diamonds" to the Clipse block rocker "Click Clack" to the REAL TALK that closes the LP, Slim Thugga held it down.
[David Drake]
[Stylus Review]



Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
With Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River rocks that high-art thing while keeping its feet on the ground. Or, rather, the mud, because the album's central character carries as much spiritual dirt and gets as nasty as you can stand. He's violent, he's manipulative, and he's empty inside. And he's a lost romantic, clinging through the pain to his one love, who, in turn, loves a stone of a man. The lyrics wrench hard enough, but the music gives the final turn to this gorgeous shattering. A character closer in development to Humbert Humbert than to your typical pop creation, music the safe side of experimental and the far side of comfortable, and a delivery that reveals the torment and loveliness all at once make Black Sheep Boy an unforgettable experience.
[Justin Cober-Lake]
[Stylus Review]



Young Jeezy - Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101
“Ehhhhhhhhhh.” Forget the piss and vinegar drug stories. Jeezy announces his tracks like a cotton-candy Fonz, dropping the year’s most charismatic syllable before the beat drops on his first track. It’s one of rock’s oldest tricks: Come with the veteran swagger, reel ‘em in with infectious adolescence. Jeezy’s smoky husk sounds like the wrong end of too many Swisher Sweets, but when the candy-apple synths drop on “My Hood,” it’s easier to imagine Jeez splashin’ around in a sandbox than slinging product. All this makes Jeezy—cherub face, cheeky logo—Atlanta’s biggest little kid. His insistent drug tales may betray his innocence, but it just feels like Jeezy tugging at your shirt, dying to tell you how he fooled the cops by hiding his sacks in Auntie’s house. “I’m your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.” Yeah, whatever Jeez. My dad could beat up your dad.
[Andrew Gaerig]
[Stylus Review]



Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
Music so sickeningly cute you’d expect it to be performed by adorable claymation animals with gigantic, saucer-shaped eyes. It’s not, though. It’s performed by adorable Australians. Sometimes they sing in a fragile way, like a tiny ballet statuette made of snowflakes. Sometimes they excitedly shout in unison, so keen are they for you to share in the utter joy of their record. A joy so pure and so simple that it remains completely immune to frightful cynicism or hurtful sarcastic comments. They’ve been busy little magpies too, stealing from hither and thither—sellotaping the plundered musical results crudely together into a wonderfully haphazard arts and crafts project. This is, to borrow a phrase from fellow Stylusee Tim Ellison, the beginning of the “twee prog” revolution. Submit, or face the Hello Kitty firing squad.
[Peter Parrish]
[Stylus Review]



Bobby Bare - The Moon Was Blue
Damned near guaranteed that you won’t hear another album like this in 2005 (or, for that matter, 2006), Bare’s first new album in over two decades finds the country stalwart tackling an eclectic batch of covers, from “Everybody’s Talkin’” to “Shine On Harvest Moon” (with a stop midway for “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” made famous by Marianne Faithfull). His producers, son Bobby Bare Jr. and Mark Nevers of Calexico, play it mostly straight, giving Bare a series of lush, classically country (think the ‘60s) tracks to sing over in his hefty bass, only occasionally adding an ever-so-rare, light avant-garde touch (the starting-the-tape-in-progress intro to “Talkin’,” the slight bits of feedback in “Am I That Easy to Forget”). The end result is a record that sticks with you much longer than you expect—maybe forever—and is quite possibly the most distinctive long-player of the year.
[Thomas Inskeep]
[Stylus Review]



Jesu – Jesu
Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, creates glacier-paced monuments that soar to uncreated light, with the fire of shoegaze impassioned, striving still to truths unknown. Justin Broadrick joined the ranks of doom-metalists Neurosis, Isis, and Sunn 0))) with this self-titled debut that sought the value in crashing enormous chords against one another as slowly as possible to see what happens when beauty’s fairest pleasure is hitting you in the head with the softest hammer in the world. Did that make sense? Probably not. But that’s something like the mood that Jesu puts you in: it’s the love of joys unknown.
[Todd Burns]
[Stylus Review]



Beanie Sigel – The B.Coming
Intimate in its sins, confrontationally violent and not looking for a confessor. Shuffled off to Dame Dash’s lesser label after the sloppy divorce from Roc-A-Fella, Sigel gets encircled by like minded men who all urge us to: “toast to the man, that when he get out / That he gonna do them things that he rap about.” The result is a low-budget Black Album, brimming with graceful finality and solemn, metered handclaps. The album closing “Wanted (On The Run)” where Killa Cam and Beans make a kinetic and effortless Butch and Sundance isn’t only a definitive close to the early part of Sigel’s career, but also the start of something far more exciting: the opening movements of Beanie’s second act.
[Evan McGarvey]
[Stylus Review]



Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
It’s easy, in 2005, to take Sleater-Kinney for granted. A decade in (for two-thirds of the group), they’re still releasing great records, and more importantly, still intent on trying to shake things up. Try, for a moment, to name ten other bands, past or present, who can honestly make this claim. Five? Right. It’s no matter whether or not their seventh album is better than their second, third, or sixth; that such a discussion is possible is the point itself. If their politics are occasionally heavy-handed, their conviction is cathartic and their concern legitimately moving. Where One Beat, with its “shake a tail for peace and love” mantra, was a record of proactive optimism, The Woods is the sound of November 3, 2004. On the closing track, Corin Tucker pleads, “Give me a spark I could look for instead.” That’s about as much as any of us can hope for, at this point.
[Josh Timmermann]
[Stylus Review]



Khanate – Capture and Release
Khanate vocalist Alan Dubin sometimes screams so shrilly that he goes black; passes out from the power of his own breath. Bassist James Plotkin blew four bass heads in the past year; Stephen O’Malley plumbs the darkest depths of A minor, his strings nearly disconnected from their neck. Whatever heads drummer Tim Wyskida hammers have passed the terror test; that skin company’s practically got a goldmine of an endorsement ad waiting in the wings. Gong, cymbals, toms; an aluminum necked Travis Bean; three vintage Sunn Model-T 120-150-watt heads; a cadre of 4X12 cabinets; an Ampeg SVT head; various reverb and delay units. Muscle, breath, electricity: Sunn O))) is certainly denser, but Khanate is decidedly darker. Where Sunn crowd riffs together into pure concentrate, Khanate allow the basic elements of structure to separate; extremes are more extreme when they number; aural anvils anesthetize. Physiology has no recourse but to react to sound of this stripe.
[Stewart Voegtlin]
[Stylus Review]



New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
I'm looking forward to getting more impatient as I get older. Then I'll have even less use for white indie bands for whom obscurantism and limp rhythm sections are things of value. The New Pornographers are an exception, but just barely. Let's list the demerits: they have as many people in their band as my entire extended family, they record songs with tiles like "The New Face of Zero and One," singer/songwriter/führer A.C. Newman allows chanteuse Neko Case access to just a handful of his precious compositions, and they come from Canada. At their best their songs combust like the Raspberries and Big Star's never did, although they often give me headaches. On Twin Cinema Newman and his cronies tone it down some, and the results are spectacular: this is what happens when a band allows its oft-crippling insularity the space to develop into something beautiful and strange ("The Bleeding Heart Show," "These Are the Fables"); when a crew of power-mad formalists write songs about other people instead of other songs ("Falling Through Your Clothes"); when said crew condescends to write the meta-throwaway we/they need ("Use Me"). The best news: Dan Bejar's contorted tunes are as conspicuous as ever. If we pray real hard maybe he'll be gone by the next record.
[Alfred Soto]
[Stylus Review]



Mountains – Mountains
Earlier this year I called Mountains’ debut release subtle and unassuming—two things their self-titled album undeniably is. But, then again, the most profound objects of love and adoration seemingly always stem from unexpected places, rooted in inconspicuous forms. Mountains certainly grew from such a place. Yet, however understated this record was upon first listen, it soon amassed itself into a beautiful sea of swelling atmospherics, laptop-culled melodies, spare acoustic guitar notes, processed field recordings, and translucent drones. Mountains inventively reconfigured such past luminaries as La Monte Young, Kevin Shields, and John Fahey into an album that stands at the forefront of electronic music’s future.
[Ryan Potts]
[Stylus Review]



The Russian Futurists – Our Thickness
Some deceptively simple notes, played on an instrument in just the right way, become something far greater than they appeared to be on paper. The ability of a few adroit artists to do the same with words is less recognized. Toronto’s Matthew Adam Hart, as The Russian Futurists, creates albums of stunning combinations of words, feeling about in the dark for their shape and linking them together in shimmering lines of alliteration and unexpected rhyme. He backs up these sonant streams with vacuum-packed orch-pop flourishes that bump along on mid-tempo bedroom beats. But the way he uses words—not the words themselves—is the real highlight here: Aerodynamic hooks shoot into the sky to haul down clouds so they can be cracked open and emptied of their secrets.
[Erick Bieritz]
[Stylus Review]



Akron/Family – Akron/Family
I’ll try to keep this simple. Akron/Family aren’t from Akron, nor are they related. Listening to their music is like laughing, crying, crooning, swooning, sleeping, freaking, creaking, waiting, rocking, running, swimming, flying, drowning, leaving, and arriving, all at once. Equal parts joyous campfire sing-along, country-folky-classic rock, and lo-fi experimentation (dig the chair-as-instrument on “Italy”), their self-titled debut is a sparkling mish-mash of gorgeous contradictions, culled from bedroom taping sessions and cunningly touched up with the help of Michael Gira, who signed them to his own Young God label, then enlisted them to be his backing band as Angels of Light. He also claims they’re the best backing band he’s ever had. For comparison’s sake, imagine the Beta Band circa The Three EPs but American, or a distinctly human Animal Collective; then put this on, sit back, and discover something else entirely. Like I said—simple.
[Ethan White]
[Stylus Review]



Mannie Fresh – Mind of Mannie Fresh
A 30 track behemoth begging for the gatefold 2LP experience, The Mind Of Mannie Fresh surrounds solid Cash Money raps with gratuitous skits and giggle-fits, including two futile attempts by Lil Wayne to interrupt Mannie’s lovefest with hardcore tales of bitches stabbing bitches. It’d be easy to write the album off as mere silliness, but the wit and heart within signifies intelligence and self-awareness without using it as a cheap selling-point. With Dave Chappelle flaking out and Richard Pryor passing on, this album stands as proof that warm-hearted but incisively satiric humor is alive and well.
[Anthony Miccio]
[Stylus Review]



Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
Emerging blinking from the litigation cocoon as Caribou, the artist formerly known as Manitoba proved that a prolonged period of appellation induced legal agro does wonders for the creative process. Whilst his last album (2003’s Up In Flames) resembled a gaudy chalk mural left out in a summer downpour, The Milk of Human Kindness signaled a crisply detailed return to the gravelly beats and lambent electronica which first elevated Dan Snaith above the hordes of laptop pariahs. Blessed with a lightness of touch that suggests the most finely etched of compositions are bursting into spontaneous life before your ears, songs like “Barnowl” (think Gene Krupa on a hot-tin roof) and “Lord Leopard” (the Ski Sunday theme given a b-Bach makeover) are thrilling rattles of multi-instrumentalism joy. Vitamin C for the soul…
[ Adam Park]
[Stylus Review]



Various Artists – Run The Road
While stateside hip-hop has barely budged aesthetically for 10 years, urban music in the UK maintains a state of perpetual reinvention. In London, this year’s grime is last year’s garage, while in Atlanta, this year’s dirty south is last year’s, um, dirty south. The Brits recognize the significance of the music “scene,” an ideal seemingly long forgotten among heads in the States, and Run the Road provides the ultimate exemplar. For many of us, regardless of nationality, this brave compendium was our first exposure to the grime phenomenon, a scene so flourishing one might assume it came into being well over a decade ago. It has flipped traditional notions of hip-hop on their side by applying rave culture aesthetics and employing a newfound grit to production methods and lyrical delivery. The Run the Road series has captured this emerging spectacle flawlessly while acquainting us with urban music’s stars of tomorrow.
[Will Simmons]
[Stylus Review]



Kate Bush – Aerial
So, what’s Kate Bush got to show for herself after 12 years? An album which penetrates to the core of domestic bliss: the pure sensual worlds of “Pi” and “Bertie”; domesticity as the conduit through which violation and tragedy are transformed into sexuality and abandonment on “Mrs. Bartolozzi”; by the end of the second disc, it's the key to understanding the surge of jouissance which saturates the astounding “Nocturn” and “Aerial.” There are Middle English madrigals (“Bertie”), faux-jazz-flamenco workouts (“Sunset”) and Elvis impressions (“King Of The Mountain”). There are moments which seem to prove that Kate Bush, for all her protestations of normality, is batshit insane; there are moments of tremendous emotional power; there are always moments of pleasure. There is the lady's own voice, which has become a truly astonishing instrument since we last heard it: phrasing so exquisite that couplets like "I stand in front of a million doors / Each one holds a million more" and "we stand in the Atlantic / And we become panoramic" are enough to send the mind spinning into realms of ecstasy.
[Alex Macpherson]
[Stylus Review]



Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
Arguing the merits of You Forgot It In People compared to Broken Social Scene mirrors a referendum on whether you prefer the old Mariah Carey to the new version: do you like the one that was universally loved or the one that’s proven to be ten pounds of insane in a five pound bag? Me, I go for the latter every time. Sure, it’s curvier and crazier, but also sexier and far more entertaining. Had they kept the working title of “Windsurfing Nation,” Broken Social Scene would have found the perfect phrase to intimate the “breezy vs. massive” balance that pervades their eponymous album. Most concentrated on the scorched-tape overdubbing policy, but “Fire Eye’d Boy,” “Hotel, “Shoreline (7/4)” and just about everything else heralded a more kinetic, more melodic Broken Social Scene; not to mention that they sound like six of 2005’s best albums playing at the same time.
[Ian Cohen]
[Stylus Review]



Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock and Roll
So, Art Brut front-man Eddie Argos fell in love with Jonathan Richman and some girl named Emily—who he never really saw play—fell asleep, had a wet dream involving John Cale and a chicken suit, woke up, caught a movie with some new girl, couldn’t catch a break in bed over a four day period, discovered Mclusky, formed a band, wrote some songs, formed another band, learned to sing, forgot about Emily, scolded his little brother, fucked modern art ‘cause it’s better that way, wrote some more songs, and bang! Bang; ends up on everyone’s year end lists. That’s rock’n’roll for ya.
[Ken Cheesy]
[Stylus Review]



Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep
Sometime after his breakthrough, critically-acclaimed second album Run Come Save Me the pressure of hype and expectation got too much for Rodney Smith, son of a Presbyterian lay preacher, and he wound up in an institution, confused, upset, running from ghosts and scared of himself and his status as "the saviour of UK hip hop". Awfully Deep documents this most traumatic experience in schizophrenic style—lyrically a harrowing and candid account of institutionalisation, musically a rich and occasionally outlandish widescreen conglomeration of hip hop, dub, ragga, garage and tense electronic soundscapes that switched from rocking parties to gracing airwaves to triggering dark nights of the soul and back again. The evils of money, the terrors of psychological breakdown and the humiliations of "treatment" are all key factors and lead towards a spiritual reconciliation where hopefully Rodney Smith can find some peace. Somehow the third Roots Manuva album is a glorious success which rises from the most abject of circumstances, tumescent, expressive, dark-hearted but fundamentally redemptive—mental instability never sounded so good.
[Nick Southall]
[Stylus Review]



Eluvium – Talk Amongst the Trees
Coming from a verse-chorus-verse background, my greatest fear when I listen to an album like Talk Amongst The Trees is that I won't “get it,” that the record's charms will elude me. This isn't the right place to debate whether accessibility is a prerequisite for good music, but surely it only adds to the greatness of Matthew Cooper's third album as Eluvium that everyone I have played it for, regardless of their background, has “gotten it” immediately. “It,” after all, is very simple: A series of pieces that conjure breathtaking emotional resonances out of superficially simple drones, tones and loops. The way “Taken” recedes back into the atmosphere feels like my heart is breaking every time, and “New Animals From The Air” remains the most engrossing experience it was possible to have with some headphones and a winter's morning in 2005.
[Ian Mathers]
[Stylus Review]



Richard Hawley – Coles Corner
With a croon that defies his age and past (as Longpigs guitarist) and a line in swoonsome, occasionally epic songwriting that cannot be denied, Richard Hawley’s fourth album stuns with its ageless folk-cum-country-pop. “Hotel Room” in particular echoes the 1950s, especially the instrumental classic “Sleepwalk” by Santo & Johnny, but every vocal performance sounds like it’s come off a just-discovered 45 from aeons on gone by. “The Ocean” sounds like a wave crashing over you with the sheer force of a heartbreak, “Born Under A Bad Sign” is a gentle country lament and “Tonight” is the most starkly beautiful song about contemplating suicide imaginable. The title track makes lovelorn optimism seem almost inviting. Feeling, meaning and gorgeous melodies make it a perfect soundtrack to lonely, pensive nights, dreaming of the one you love who doesn’t love you back. A voice for the ages, and songs to match.
[Edward Oculicz]
[Stylus Review]



The Juan Maclean – Less Than Human
Every pre-album single blowing the speakers out of radios and shaking the dust off dance floors makes the reception for the inevitable debut album that much more difficult. DFA’s The Juan Maclean racked up such an insurmountable record with those first three 12” releases that it must have been tempting to keep knocking out singles for years and never record the dreaded long player. That challenge makes this aluminum-sheathed glide through nine peerless tracks all the more impressive. Nimbly balancing the bangers with the brooders with a level of continuity that indie singles artists rarely seem to replicate, The Juan Maclean is equally at home in the oscillating dreamscape of “My Time Is Running Out” and the disco-thumping bombshell of “Give Me Every Little Thing.” LCD Soundsystem made a bigger impact when it hit the ground on fire early this year, but The Juan Maclean may well smolder for much longer.
[Erick Bieritz]
[Stylus Review]



Sway – This Is My Promo
You may have gathered that several of us at Stylus (Eccentric UK Wing) have rather high hopes for Sway when his debut proper This Is My Demo arrives in early 2006; the bulk of our evidence for this comes from these two mixtape promos (eventually packaged into one proper release). Armed with a rapid-fire delivery, an apparently inexhaustible supply of charisma and the noises "uhJIH" and "yiiiiih", UK hip-hop’s newest Great Hope offers various funny-as-fuck but also disarmingly astute insights into Life In Britain, including "Flo Fashion"'s rueful description of chronic fiscal irresponsibility and "Photographer," an alternately hilarious and unsettling account of a Red Bull-addicted paparazzo relentlessly stalking the B-list. Also included for posterity is "Harvey Nicks," a textbook example of completely annihilating the guys who wrote the song in one gloriously mocking guest verse. Feller's possessed of a rare star quality and if there’s any justice, continent-crushing fame beckons.
[Fergal O’Reilly]
[Stylus Review]



Half Man Half Biscuit – Achtung Bono
You're sick and tired of any 40 minute opus by some London-based rapscallion with a few songs about drugs and a casual mention of football violence being referred to as “the sound of Britain today,” right? Nigel Blackwell sorts shit out for you right here. “Asparagus: next left” signs. RAF Brize Norton. The club versus country debate. Horse and Hound magazine. Ken Hom. Edgware Road. Chartists demonstrators. Gordon Burns. Preferring Arthur Lowe to Arthur Lee. Peripheral members of the Bloomsbury Set. Pulled-ups at Bangor-On-Dee. Nick fucking Knowles. These are the things modern day Britain is made out of, and Half Man take the fabric of 21st century life and wrap it around tunes so sharp they get embedded in your head and recalled for the following seventeen months. No other act around today is eleven albums into their career and making music as fresh and as exciting, as Half Man.
[Dom Passantino]
[Stylus Review]



Rachel Stevens – Come and Get It
Compared to the glorious rush-job spurt of this year’s Girls Aloud album, Come and Get It can sound monomaniacal—too focused and too controlled. The amount of detail—sighs becoming hi-hats, vocal EQing shifting almost imperceptibly—means that as much as any IDM album headphones are this disc’s natural habitat. The obsessively worked surfaces sometimes make it seem like a prized car, waxed and polished but garaged and never driven. But because of the cold hard surface, the minute scratches and blemishes that are present mean all the more when they catch the light. Or maybe it’s one of the numerous lads mag photo-shoots that seem to have done Rachel no good—her photoshopped and retouched so heavily that she resembles one of those Japanese airbrushed ‘sexy’ robot pics of the eighties, only they’ve missed a single tear welling in the corner of her eye.
[Patrick McNally]
[Stylus Review]



Kelley Polar – Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
It's not an original image, but the cover of this record, with its almost terrestrial formations set against a darkly glowing, otherworldly backdrop, manages to hint at the appealing juxtapositions found within the music itself. As with his previous collaborations with producer Morgan Geist (in Metro Area), the classically trained Polar adeptly grafts broad strokes of viola onto snappy, dizzying electro beats. But the revelation here is his singing voice: on its own it's a languidly repressed sigh, and as a harmonized chorus, it fluctuates between an ethereal alien and a cathedral echo. Everything that spills out is slinky, slightly menacing, and gorgeous.
[John M. Cunningham]
[Stylus Review]



Isoleé – Wearemonster
Five years on from his minimal-tech landmark Rest, Wearemonster exudes a pure breathless confidence, one that revels in opulent disco and grainy guitars as much brainy tech-house. Part of the initial awe is getting to swirl through Rajko Müller's head as he mixes up influences of funk, italo, acid, and krautrock in a seemingly frictionless blender. But six months down the line, the lasting joy of Wearemonster may actual be in its broader marriage of the textural clarity of house with the lofty ambitions of IDM: A braindance that seeps down to your hips!
[Michael F. Gill]
[Stylus Review]



Wolf Parade – Apologies To The Queen Mary
Music these days is all derived. It’s always coming from influences here and there, with traces or hints or aspects of this, that and, quite possibly the other thing too. With some of their track titles (“Same Ghost Every Night”, “It’s A Curse”, “…I Am My Father’s Son”), it appears that Wolf Parade is very aware of this fact, but they approach this inevitability with a fervent attitude (and titles like “Shine A Light,” “I’ll Believe In Anything,” “We Built Another World”), which makes the zeal with which they deliver their goods that much more infectious. You don’t have to change the world to set the heart on fire; “Sometimes we rock and roll / Sometimes we stay at home / And it’s alright.”
[Matt Sheardown]
[Stylus Review]



Patrick Wolf – Wind in the Wires
Patrick's second album was toned down from the primal, psychosexual lupine howl of his tempestuous debut, a mellowing which reflected his geographical relocation to England's West country as he sought to escape the claustrophobia and mania of the London-centric music industry. The result is remarkable, an intense journey through a picaresque landscape of ghosts, misty coastlines, abandoned railway properties and rural vistas painted with ukulele, violin, unidentifiable electronic winds and Patrick's singular, powerful voice, now reined-in and beguiling where once he was a wailing urchin desperate for castration. That's not to say that our intrepid hero has lost all his bile though—"The Libertine" is a withering, barbed putdown aimed at particular rock stars who are more focused on celebrity than musical endeavour, and "Tristan" is as troubled and kinetic an outburst as anything from his turbulent adolescence, except now tightly focused and tuneful where once it would have been spitting and frayed at the edges. 6'7", beautiful, prodigious—on the evidence of Wind In The Wires, the world is Patrick Wolf's oyster.
[Nick Southall]
[Stylus Review]



Lil Wayne – Tha Carter II
Despite the flurry of reminders that Wayne’s not actually the “best rapper alive” (rap fans scramble to smother hyperbole; why now?), this year made plenty of good cases that he’s at least half-serious about the throne, from The Suffix’s mixtape calisthenics and a variety of guest appearances in advance of his follow up to 2003’s Tha Carter. Wayne still rides the kid brother cache a bit, and that’s fine; while Mannie Fresh and Baby we were out at the mall, latchkey Birdman Junior went Prometheus on us in the empty house of New Orleans. Tha Carter II yawns and crackles with gothic space, synths arcing towards stormy skies like cathedral peaks, swaggering slow, trying to play cool during an attempted ascent into rap’s upper echelon. Wayne’s self-aggrandizement can sometimes tire, but other times, he’s literally infectious; when he confesses “Weezy, allergic to wintertime,” it’s hard to fight back the chills.
[Mike Powell]
[Stylus Review]



Out Hud – Let Us Never Speak of It Again
I like Out Hud because they allow me to pretend that the Tom Tom Club were a historically important band. Let Us Never Speak of It Again isn't quite an album full of "Genius of Love"s, but it does contain ten tracks' worth of rubbery bass, pounding drums, goofy sound effects, and quintessentially Weymouth-esque sighing, child-like vocals. Whereas sister-act !!! got bogged down in meandering jams and uninteresting "political" "commentary," Let Us Never Speak of it Again is far too spritely for that, grooving enthusiastically enough to even make the dreaded jam songs move at a clip. And once you get through the disc's generous surfeit or pure pop gems—"It's For You," "One Life to Leave" and "How Long" among the most delicious—you'll be singing to yourself all day, "Ram sam sam, ram sam sam, kuni kuni kuni kuni, ram sam sam."
[Andrew Unterberger]
[Stylus Review]



Paavoharju – Yhä Hämärää
Rarely does an album truly come out of nowhere. Yhä Hämärää is an exception. Born of born-again Christians living in rural Finland, Yhä Hämärää displays a startling originality earned by near-total withdrawal from society. A compelling story to be sure, but the music far exceeds the mythology of its creation. Sounding more like a soundtrack to religious epiphany rather than a product of its aftermath, Yhä Hämärää reaches peaks of elation only to sink into valleys of doubt. While this topography is common in modern music, Paavoharju’s foggy atmospheres tower over the rest. With its warm blankets of electronic fuzz, desperate operatic vocals, and total sincerity, Yhä Hämärää is perhaps the best Finland had to offer this year. No mean feat, considering that country’s become Xanadu for psychedelic music fans.
[Bryan Berge]
[Stylus Review]



Spoon – Gimme Fiction
If Interpol gets a commanding sound by throwing loads of anglophilia atop Pixie-patented dynamics, Spoon do it by underlining the American qualities—Francis’ acoustic strums rather than Santiago’s reverbed leads. Gimme Fiction is the arguable peak of their celebrated discography, opening up sound that was gradually morphing into a suffocating mix of Wire and Billy Joel. Those two focal points remain, but with an extra helping of Crazy Rhythms to turn the hepcat angularity into seductive grooves. REM fans who miss sharp alt-sounds and a voice that said more than its lyric had no better soothing for their muddled minds this year.
[Anthony Miccio]
[Stylus Review]



Girls Aloud – Chemistry
You can argue that nobody listens to Girls Aloud other than 12 year old girls, raving homosexuals, and formerly-indie music critics, but that's more than enough to sustain a career these days. Three albums in, though, and you have to think we’re looking at the twilight of the Girls' career: next year will come the Greatest Hits album, followed no doubt by pregnancy, and CD:UK hosting jobs. But what a send-off it is: “Biology" begins like Meg trying to convince Jack White to go to a lap-dance bar with her and then crashes head-on into light-as-air Europop, while "Watch Me Go" takes Gwen Stefani's interpretation of J-Pop and then randomly fuses it to some sort of Shampoo-meets-Neneh Cherry girl band rap. This album is just going to make January 2007's split all the more harder to stomach.
[Dom Passantino]
[Stylus Review]



LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
On his first LCD Soundsystem 12”, James Murphy set up an elaborate joke with “Losing My Edge”—a piss-take on music geeks pissing contests. Three years later, Murphy finally provided the punch-line with his self-titled debut album by aiming upwind. LCD Soundsystem’s pastiche-athon of finely-curated influences not only cultivated a bizarro world where Stylus scribes and DFA label heads argued over the definition of ‘meta’ but also where Daft Punk is playing at Murphy’s house and LCD Soundsystem is playing at OC mansions. If everyone we know is more relevant than everyone you know (as this is a list of the best albums of 2005), LCD Soundsystem is here for a reason.
[Nate Deyoung]
[Stylus Review]



Vitalic – OK Cowboy
Vitalic's early singles set such a high benchmark that it was natural to expect at least minor disappointment from this album—apparently the man himself wasn't too optimistic that he'd ever top the Poney EP—but OK Cowboy's freewheeling dancefloor monstrosities like "My Friend Dario" and the reworked "Newman" happily induce the same deliriously intense reaction as the '01 vintage. These all perfectly encapsulate the various stages of gleeful exuberance and subsequent creeping paranoid terror experienced during and after your average chemically-fuelled eight hour bosh-fest down at the local young person's electro-house club. Moderating the stream of 4/4 kick beats and catatonic eastern European robot vocals are various oddly-paced slower numbers—"Trahison" and "The Past" in particular are startlingly evocative—that lend things an unexpected emotional depth and suggest that Pascal Arbez may actually be some kind of mad wonky-synth genius.
[Fergal O’Reilly]
[Stylus Review]



Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
There’s potential that by the time Sufjan Stevens tackles the mythic American West, we’ll be looking at an entire orchestra backing a 200-strong orphan choir and a stage show featuring Prospector Sufjan baptizing Charles Manson. For now, though, his amusing ambition and band-dork musicianship are charming. Sufjan’s greatest strength is that he breaks out glockenspiels, accordions, and vibraphones for The Fields Surrounding Chicago, the musical equivalent of putting on makeup to sit on your couch, watch infomercials, and snack on Wheat Thins. Or saving your most touching, empathetic lyric for a man who dressed as a clown to kill children. This is Phil Spector’s brain on God. Any questions?
[Andrew Gaerig]
[Stylus Review]



Jamie Lidell – Multiply
Retro- and neo-soul both got love this year, from the rugged live instrumentation of Leela James' debut to the plush pseudo-opera of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" saga. But the biggest soul surprise of ought-five came courtesy of gangly Brighton electronica producer Jamie Lidell, who stepped out from behind his laptop to sing straight from the chest. Possessed of a natural soul voice that melts in the ear like butter on steaming grits, Lidell poured every inch of it into the expansive production of Multiply, bringing together bouncy 80's R&B;, organic 90's nu-soul and post-everything techno. But what makes this Sunday morning record such a joy is its liveability: a perfect soundtrack for an evening drive, a morning's walk to work or a night of baby-making, dozens of spins in and it still stands as a signpost on the road smack in between soul music's past and its future.
[Mallory O'Donnell]
[Stylus Review]



Antony and the Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
You know those dumb motherfuckers who want to set up Nizlopi versus Shayne Ward as some sort of battle of good versus evil in pop? Fuck that. The real lyrical Armageddon went down at the Mercury Music Prize. Satan's hordes were represented by the odiously sneering right-wing haircut indie muppets the Kaiser Chiefs. And with God on his side? Big Gay Ant, with the voice of a thousand gin soaked divas ruing missed opportunities and an album alternately beautiful, chilling, and heart-wrenching, triumphed, in pretty much all possible definitions of the term. That shit eating grin on Ricky Wilson's face when he realized that he hadn't won the Mercury makes this an album of the year on its own.
[Dom Passantino]
[Stylus Review]



Animal Collective – Feels
Animal Collective now make body music for the head; whether it be leaf-rustling calm or guttural screech, they go immediately for the gut, while being weird enough to sear your brain. Used to be, though, that you only had a one-or-the-other choice, and ne'er the twain should meet. So they veered from their very earliest burbles, toddles, and fumbling discoveries; to Sung Tongs' wide-eyed first-time self-awareness; and now to Feels' sudden growth spurt. The body may now be gangly and awkward, but it's also flush with newfound muscle and emboldened with its first, blooming love. It's all luscious uncertainty here—they flit completely heedlessly from doe-eyed, future-bound optimism (“Did You See the Words?,” “Turn Into Something”) to dumb-struck panic (“Grass,” “Purple Bottle”) to those purgatories where it all blends together in a light-speed haze (everywhere else). And damned if “Banshee Beat” isn't the most drop-dead gorgeous thing ever.
[Jeff Siegel]
[Stylus Review]



Kanye West – Late Registration
By the beginning of 2005, Kanye West was well on his way to wearing out his welcome as just another sample-happy pop rap auteur who went from do-no-wrong to do-no-right practically overnight (cf. Wyclef). Instead, Kanye rolled up his sleeves and won over even some of the doubters who scoffed at The College Dropout’s instant classic status. And by letting Jon Brion sprinkle twee keyboard pixie dust and inspired string arrangements all over Late Registration, Kanye came up with a bold sound that both reinvigorated his sturdy soul-sampling production formula and made even more white people love him. It’s hardly the first time in history that the most universally popular rapper of the moment was a guy who’s better at producing than rapping (forgot about Dre? Puffy? And again, Clef?), but that just proves that what people want more than perfect rhymes is someone with personality and vision.
[Al Shipley]
[Stylus Review]



The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
“I won’t be much for all this Humbert Humbert stuff,” says a girl named Hallelujah at the outset of Separation Sunday. Little does she know that with his latest band’s second record, Craig Finn has spun a dizzying narrative of Nabokovian bounds. Instead of turning a jaundiced eye to a cast of thousands, as in Almost Killed Me’s “Positive Jam,” Finn keeps a draftsman’s focus on his narrator and a hoodrat named Holly. The narrative jumps, chronology collapses, but all you need to remember is the Twin Cities, camps by the river, and how a resurrection really feels. Through eleven taut cuts, the Hold Steady become the world’s first all-seeing, laser-guided bar band, as Finn and Tab Kubler fire off riff after sacred riff. From Lifter Puller through Separation Sunday, Mr. Finn’s been building a formidable body of work while evolving from urban chronicler/crank into a dusty, incisive orator. Holy.
[Brad Shoup]
[Stylus Review]



Robyn – Robyn
The never-fathomed nexus point between ABBA, Fannypack, and Dave Chapelle, Robyn suffuses Swedish dance-pop with a pair of elements formalists often forget—emotional intensity and wit. US and UK poppeteers manufacture passable melodrama, but rarely are heartbreak (“Be Mine”), insecurity (“Who’s That Girl”) or codependence (“Bum Like You”) conveyed with such intimate conviction. The immediacy of pop frequently demands a singular purpose, but musical and thematic tension alike abound here, between desire and revulsion in “Handle Me,” between composure and withering self-critique in “I Should Have Known.” Robyn may make herself vulnerable, but she’s nobody’s robotgirl, robbing houses and calling playboys Nazi creeps, secure in her toughness knowing tears never show in the pouring rain.
[Josh Love]
[Stylus Review]



The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
Ultimately, it’s not that John Darnielle simply survives the difficult adolescence and abusive stepfather tangled in the lyrics of The Sunset Tree; the story could be found in countless frayed journals across the world. What stuns is that in the process, he finds strains humor in his own bullshit on “This Year,” manages to capture the strange, redemptive feeling of glee one finds in the midst of catastrophe on “Dance Music,” and achieves an almost self-effacing sensitivity on “The Day that Dennis Brown Died.” While these flags of sympathy are what makes him one of the best lyricists working today, there’s the meta-textural sucker punch of the autobiographical process: music helped save his life. You could catch a nostalgic sentiment about music blindfolded, handcuffed, and tied to a chair, but The Sunset Tree throws it into a present tense so moving, it’s cruel to resist: “I'm in my room with the headphones on, deep in the dream chamber / And then I'm awake and I'm guarding my face, hoping you don't break my stereo / Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without, and so I think about that and then I sorta black out.” Testify.
[Mike Powell]
[Stylus Review]



Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Maybe O.C. exposure deflected the punch of first listen. So it didn’t quite reach the top, but for my money, Silent Alarm was the quiksilver guitar assault of the year. Post-punk and dance-punk were gathering a second generation’s dust by the time Silent Alarm emerged early this year in the UK, and suddenly all that clamor sounded dim, Lilliputian. Okereke was hyper-foot, a lithe dread-locked Jon King pouting in shout against our scorn for balloting. But what a smoove way to swallow a silverfish: dance, slender, but listen, even if this foaming only seeps into the hollow of you sweating yourself out! We did and we didn’t, but we moved against time to the scathing paranoia of Radiohead put to the revolt of groove. Are you hoping for a miracle? Not anymore, kid.
[Derek Miller]
[Stylus Review]



M.I.A. – Arular
If only this were as simple as finding a personal ad on the back of Globalization Monthly saying: “Developing world grime siren/disciple of Chuck D seeks South American dance floor white-boy who writes performance love-letters to DJ Premier.”

Moving on from the precocious thievery of Piracy Funds Terrorism, Maya Arulpragasam smashed together her own place in Sri Lanka’s centuries old ethnic conflict, her own discovery of American rap as a youth in East London, and a disdain for “dominant culture” music. She then let her lover, a skittering, sublimely talented DJ named Wesley, break up every taunting verse over an archipelago of non-English speaking beats. It’s not just that M.I.A. and boyfriend/digital svengali Diplo are becoming a fully functional Missy and Timbaland for the globalized youth of the Internet, it’s that they might have pushed the politics of dance music into reality.
[Evan McGarvey]
[Stylus Review]



20 REISSUES OF NOTE
Various Artists - "You Ain't Talkin' to Me": Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music
The Band - A Musical History
Various Artists - One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found
Orange Juice - The Glasgow School
Embrace - Dry Kids (B-Sides 1997-2005)
Ennio Morricone – Crime and Dissonance
Luomo – Vocalcity
Shirley Collins and Davey Graham – Folk Routes, New Routes
Scritti Politti – Early
Various Artists - Texas Funk: Black Gold from the Lone Star State
The Boo Radleys – Find the Way Out
Various Artists - The Sexual Life of the Savages
Roboterwerke - Roboterwerke
For Against - December
Luke Haines - Luke Haines Is Dead
Jean Claude Vannier - L' Enfant Assasin des Mouches
Various Artists - Welsh Rare Beat
Maximum Joy - Unlimited (1979-1983)
Ken Nordine - Word Jazz LPs
Various Artists - Mixed With Love: The Walter Gibbons Salsoul Anthology

INDIVIDUAL LISTS
Henry Adaso
1. Stevie Wonder – A Time To Love
2. Kanye West – Late Registration
3. Gorillaz – Demon Days
4. Common – BE
5. The Perceptionists – Black Dialogue
6. John Legend – Get Lifted
7. Depeche Mode – Playing The Angel
8. Slum Village – Slum Village
9. Quasimoto – The Further Adventures of Lord Quasimoto
10. GZA/Genius vs DJ Muggs – The Grandmasters
11. Little Brother – The Minstrel Show
12. One.Be.Lo. – SONOGRAM
13. The Game – The Documentary
14. Damian Marley Welcome To Jamrock
15. Sean Price – Monkey Barz
16. M.I.A. – Arular
17. Amel Larrieux – Bravebird
18. CunningLynguists – A Piece of Strange
19. Self Scientific – Change
20. Living Legends – Classic

Bryan Berge
1. Birchville Cat Motel – Chi Vampires
2. Paavoharju – Yhä Hämärää
3. Caribou – Milk of Human Kindness
4. Steven R. Smith – Crown of Marches
5. Animal Collective – Feels
6. ES - Sateenkaarisuudelma
7. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
8. Minamo – Shining
9. Mountains – S/T
10. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
11. Akron/Family – S/T
12. White Rock – Tarpit
13. Pumice – Worldwide Skull
14. MIA – Arular
15. The Skaters – Gambling in Ohpa’s Shadow
16. Davenport – Rabbit’s Foot Propeller
17. Hototogisu - Green
18. CJA – Ironclad
19. Wooden Wand – Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg
20. Dreamed Yellow Swans – S/T

Erick Bieritz
1. Out Hud – Let Us Never Speak Of It Again
2. The Russian Futurists – Our Thickness
3. Isolee – We Are Monster
4. Hood – Outside Closer
5. Ladytron – Witching Hour
6. Tarwater – The Needle Was Traveling
7. Slim Thug – Already Platinum
8. Nortec Collective – Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3
9. Morane – Everyone Is Like You
10. C-Murder – Truest Shit I Ever Said
11. Hystereo – Corporate Crimewave
12. Ferenc – Fraximal
13. The Juan MacLean – Less Than Human
14. Roisin Murphy – Ruby Blue
15. Girls Aloud – Chemistry
16. Jaga Jazzist – What We Must
17. Kaos – Hello Stranger
18. Beanie Siegel – The B-Coming
19. Kelley Polar Quartet – Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
20. Jackson & His Computer Band – Smash

Todd Burns
1. Kelley Polar – Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
2. Omar-S - Just Ask The Lonely
3. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
4. Watain - Casus Luciferi
5. Jesse Somfay - Between Heartbeats
6. Alex Smoke - Incommunicado
7. Chelonis R. Jones - Dislocated Genius
8. Jesu - Jesu
9. Neuraxis - Trilateral Progression
10. ES - Sateenkaarisuudelma
11. Nile - Annihilation of the Wicked
12. Pier Bucci - Familia
13. Alex Under - Dispositivos De Mi Granja
14. Birchville Cat Motel - Chi Vampires
15. Marc Leclair - Musique Pour 3 Femmes Enceintes
16. The Evens - The Evens
17. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
18. Robyn- Robyn
19. Espers - The Weed Tree
20. Crebain - Night of the Stormcrow

Rob Carolan
1. Sufjan Stevens- Illinois
2. Final Fantasy- Has A Good Home
3. Patrick Wolf- Wind In The Wires
4. Laura Veirs- Year of Meteors
5. Rachel Stevens- Come And Get It
6. Larkin Grimm- Harpoon Baptism
7. MIA- Arular
8. Todd- Purity Pledge
9. Robyn- Robyn
10. USAISAMONSTER- Wohaw
11. Madonna- Confessions On The Dance Floor
12. Arcade Fire- Funeral
13. Sleater Kinney- The Woods
14. Christian Vogel- Station 55
15. Vitalic- OK Cowboy
16. Wilderness- Wilderness
17. Lightning Bolt- Hypermagic Mountain
18. Mount Eerie- Singers
19. Beck- Guero
20. Fiona Apple- Extraordinary Machine

Ken Cheesy
1. Lichens – The Psychic Nature of Being
2. Plot to blow up the Eiffel tower – Love In the Fascist Brothel
3. Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock and Roll
4. LCD Soundsystem – s/t
5. Torngat – La Rouge
6. Broken Social Scene – s/t
7. Bear vs Shark -- Terrorhawk
8. Subtitle – Young Dangerous Heart
9. Hanged Up – Clatter For Control
10. Elliot The Letter Ostrich – Blood Cape
11. Kanye West – Late Registration
12. Roisin Murphy – Ruby Blue
13. Danger Doom – The Mouse and the Mask
14. Fifths of Seven – Spry From Bitter Anise Folds
15. Negativeland – No Business
16. Ghetto Pony – Post Apocalyptic Bubble Gum
17. Dirty Projectors – Getty Address
18. Growing – His Return
19. Bettye Lavette – I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise
20. Against Me – Searching for a Former Clarity

Justin Cober-Lake
1. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
2. Princess Superstar - My Machine
3. Otis Taylor - Below the Fold
4. Akron/Family - Akron/Family
5. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
6. Salim Nourallah - Beautiful Noise
7. MIA - Arular
8. Buck 65 - This Right Here Is Buck 65
9. Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
10. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll
11. John Legend - Get Lifted
12. Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono
13. Slim Thug - Already Platinum
14. Angels of Light & Akron/Family - Akron/Family & Angels of Light
15. Paavoharju - Yha Hamaraa
16. The Go-Betweens - Oceans Apart
17. Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
18. Deerhoof - The Runners Four
19. David Crowder Band - A Collision
20. The Juan Maclean - Less Than Human

Ian Cohen
1. Sufjan Stevens- Illinois
2. My Morning Jacket- Z
3. Rogue Wave- Descended Like Vultures
4. Wolf Parade- Apologies To The Queen Mary
5. Broken Social Scene- s/t
6. Bloc Party- Silent Alarm
7. The Go! Team- Thunder, Lightning, Strike!
8. Low- The Great Destroyer
9. The New Pornographers- Twin Cinema
10. Spoon- Gimme Fiction
11. Dungen- Ta Det Lugnt
12. Wilco- Kicking Television
13. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead- Worlds Apart
14. Mazarin- We’re Already There
15. Serena Maneesh- s/t
16. The Frames- Burn The Maps
17. Animal Collective- Feels
18. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah- s/t
19. Vitalic- OK Cowboy
20. Blueprint- 1988

John M. Cunningham
1. Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
3. Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again
4. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
5. Isolee - Wearemonster
6. Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
7. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
8. M.I.A. - Arular
9. Superpitcher - Today
10. Robyn - Robyn
11. The Juan Maclean - Less Than Human
12. Feist - Let It Die
13. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
14. Kanye West - Late Registration
15. Edith Frost - It's a Game
16. Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt
17. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
18. The Books - Lost and Safe
19. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
20. Sam Prekop - Who's Your New Professor?

Nate De Young
1. Isolee – Wearemonster
2. Robyn - Robyn
3. Kelly Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
4. Outhud - Let Us Never Speak of it Again
5. V/A - Run the Road
6. Animal Collective - Feels
7. V/A - Rwd Magazine Mixtape Vol. 1
8. Dandy Jack and the Junction SM - Los Siete Castigos
9. Audion - Suckfish
10. Mountain Goats - Sunset Tree
11. Jan Jelinek - Komischer Pitch
12. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
13. DJ Koze - Kosi Comes Around
14. Pier Bucci - Familia
15. Optimo - Psyche Out
16. Damien Lazuras - Suck My Deck
17. Alan Braxe - The Uppercuts
18. Ariel Pink - Worn Copy
19. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
20. Quasimoto - Further Adventures of Quasimoto

David Drake
1. T.O.K. – Unknown Language
2. Beanie Sigel – The B. Coming
3. Three-6 Mafia – Most Known Unknowns
4. Amerie – Touch
5. M.A.N.D.Y. – Body Language
6. Lil Wayne – The Carter II
7. Sean Paul – The Trinity
8. Young Jeezy – Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation
9. DJ Logan Sama - Rewind
10. AZ – A.W.O.L.
11. Slim Thug – Already Platinum
12. Mariah Carey – Emancipation of Mimi
13. Trina – The Glamorest Life
14. Mike Jones – Who Is Mike Jones?
15. C-Murder – The Truest Shit I Ever Said
16. The Clipse – Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2
17. Ewan Pearson – Sci.Fi.Hi.Fi.
18. Superpitcher - Today
19. DFA – Holiday Mix 2005
20. Kanye West – Late Registration

Andrew Gaerig
1. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
2. Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
3. M.I.A. – Arular
4. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
5. My Morning Jacket – Z
6. Jamie Lidell – Multiply
7. Animal Collective – Feels
8. Slim Thug – Already Platinum
9. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
10. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – S/T
11. Young Jeezy – Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101
12. Antony and the Johnsons – I am a Bird Now
13. Three 6 Mafia – Most Known Unknowns
14. Deerhoof – The Runners Four
15. Black Mountain – S/T
16. Broken Social Scene – S/T
17. Edan – Beauty and the Beat
18. Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower
19. New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
20. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree

Michael F. Gill
01. Isolée - Wearemonster
02. Kevin Blechdom - Eat My Heart Out
03. Justus Köhncke - Doppelleben
04. Robyn - Robyn
05. Dandy Jack & The Junction SM - Los Siete Castigos
06. Juan Atkins - 20 Years: Metroplex 1985-2005
07. DJ Milo - Live At The Cat Club 1979
08. Electrelane - Axes
09. Greg Wilson - Credit To The Edit
10. Ellen Allien - Thrills
11. Robag Wruhme & Wighnomy Bros - Remikks Potpourri
12. DJ Naughty - One Night In Berlin
13. Senor Coconut - Coconut FM
14. Woodbine - Best Before End
15. The Glimmers - DJ Kicks
16. Kiki & Herb - Kiki & Herb Will Die For You
17. The Fall - The Complete Peel Sessions
18. Sing-Sing - Sing-Sing & I
19. Crazy Rhythms - Revenge Mix No. 4
20. YMCK - Family Music

Todd Hutlock
1. LCD Soundsystem -- LCD Soundsystem
2. Smog -- A River Ain’t Too Much To Love
3. Pajo -- Pajo
4. Jamie Lidell -- Multiply
5. Sigur Ros -- Takk...
6. Bloc Party -- Silent Alarm
7. Spoon -- Gimme Fiction
8. Feist -- Let It Die
9. Audion -- Suckfish
10. Carl Craig -- Fabric 25
11. The Kingsbury Manx -- The Fast Rise And Fall Of The South
12. British Sea Power – Open Season
13. The Juan Maclean -- Less Than Human
14. Antony & The Johnsons -- Now I Am A Bird
15. Teenage Fanclub -- Man-Made
16. Richie Hawtin -- DE9: Transitions
17. Broadcast -- Tender Buttons
18. Go-Kart Mozart -- Tearing Up The Album Chart
19. M.I.A. -- Arular
20. Annie -- DJ Kicks

Thomas Inskeep
1. Billy Corgan – TheFutureEmbrace
2. Kanye West - Late Registration
3. Lee Ann Womack - There’s More Where That Came From
4. Alan Braxe & Friends - The Upper Cuts
5. Bobby Bare - The Moon Was Blue
6. Kraftwerk - Minimum-Maximum
7. Los Super 7 - Heard It On the X
8. Trisha Yearwood - Jasper County
9. Gary Allan - Tough All Over
10. Martina McBride - Timeless
11. Carl Craig - Fabric 25
12. nine inch nails - With Teeth
13. The Free Design - The Now Sound Redesigned
14. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
15. Roll Deep - In at the Deep End
16. Joe Nichols - III
17. Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation - Mighty Rearranger
18. Robin Guthrie/Harold Budd - Music from the Film Mysterious Skin
19. George Jones - Hits I Missed…And One I Didn’t
20. Snoop Dogg - R&G; (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece

Mike LeChevallier
1. Portastatic - Bright Ideas
2. The Constantines - Tournament of Hearts
3. The Evens - The Evens
4. Archer Prewitt - Wilderness
5. Pelican - The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
6. Animal Collective - Feels
7. The Clientele - Strange Geometry
8. The Fall - The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004
9. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
10. John Vanderslice - Pixel Revolt
11. The Coral - The Invisible Invasion
12. Flotation Toy Warning - Bluffer’s Guide to the Flight Deck
13. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Howl
14. Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
15. The Howling Hex - All-Night Fox and You Can’t Beat Tomorrow
16. The Ponys - Celebration Castle
17. The Orange Peels - Circling the Sun
18. Echo & the Bunnymen - Siberia
19. Neon Blonde - Chandeliers in the Savannah
20. Minotaur Shock - Maritime

Cosmo Lee
1. Dark Tranquillity - Character
2. Opeth - Ghost Reveries
3. Nevermore - This Godless Endeavor
4. Between the Buried and Me - Alaska
5. Nile - Annihilation of the Wicked
6. Neuraxis - Trilateral Progression
7. Trivium - Ascendancy
8. Behemoth - Demigod
9. Premonitions of War - Glorified Dirt
10. The Red Chord - Clients

Josh Love
1. System of a Down – Mezmerize
2. Robyn – s/t
3. DJ Target – Aim High, Vol. 2
4. Keith Anderson – Three Chord Country and American Rock ‘n’ Roll
5. Rachel Stevens – Come and Get It
6. Mannie Fresh – The Mind of Mannie Fresh
7. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
8. Fannypack – See You Next Tuesday
9. Lee Ann Womack – There’s More Where That Came From
10. Architecture in Helsinki – In Case We Die
11. Justus Kohncke – Doppelleben
12. System of a Down - Hypnotize
13. Jason Aldean – s/t
14. The Decemberists – Picaresque
15. Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
16. David Banner – Certified
17. Kano – Home Sweet Home
18. Gary Allan – Tough All Over
19. Animal Collective – Feels
20. Stephen Malkmus – Face the Truth

Cameron Macdonald
1. FM3 – Buddha Machine
2. Elliot Perkins – Eurodac Express
3. The Budos Band – S/T
4. Tod Dockstader – Aerial 1
5. V/A – Radio Pyongyang
6. Désormais – Dead Letters to Lost Friends
7. Sharon Jones and the Dap-kings – Naturally
8. V/A – Keep In Time: A Live Recording
9. The Books – Lost and Found
10. Out Hud – Let Us Never Speak of It Again
11. V/A – 4 Women No Cry
12. Songs of Green Pheasant – S/T
13. Jason Forrest – Shamelessly Exciting
14. Breakestra – Hit the Floor
15. Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
16. Jan Jelinek – Kosmischer Pitch
17. Eats Tapes – Sticky Buttons
18. V/A – The Streets of Lhasa
19. Cobra Killer – 76/77
20. Matthew Herbert – Plat Du Jour

Alex Macpherson
1. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
2. Kate Bush - Aerial
3. Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It
4. MANDY - Body Language Vol 1
5. Lil Kim - The Naked Truth
6. Kanye West - Late Registration
7. Ellen Allien - Thrills
8. MIA - Arular
9. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
10. Chelonis R Jones - Dislocated Genius
11. DJ Bossman - Street Anthems Vol 2
12. Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter
13. Madonna - Confessions On A Dance Floor
14. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways
15. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
16. Ruff Sqwad - Guns’N’Roses Vol 1
17. Diplo - FabricLive24
18. Saul Williams - Saul Williams
19. Glimmers - DJ Kicks
20. Roots Manuva - Awfully Deep

Ian Mathers
1. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
2. Readymade - All The Plans Resting
3. Eluvium - Talk Amongst The Trees
4. Low - The Great Destroyer
5. Sweet Billy Pilgrim - We Just Did What Happened And No-One Came
6. Jesu - Jesu
7. Paavoharju – Yha Hamaraa
8. Ok Go - Oh No
9. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
10. The Russian Futurists - Our Thickness
11. Hood - Outside Closer
12. Robyn - Robyn
13. Magnolia Electric Co. - What Comes After The Blues
14. Mountains - Mountains
15. Engineers - Engineers
16. Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
17. Constantines - Tournament Of Hearts
18. My Morning Jacket - Z
19. Animal Collective - Feels
20. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl

Evan McGarvey
1. M.I.A. – Arular
2. The Wilderness – S/T
3. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
4. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
5. Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter II
6. Jamie Lidell – Multiply
7. My Morning Jacket – Z
8. Three 6 Mafia – Most Known Unknown
9. Young Jeezy – Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101
10. R. Kelly – Tp.3 Reloaded
11. Slim Thug – Already Platinum
12. Russian Futurists – Our Thickness
13. The Clientele – Strange Geometry
14. Mike Jones –Who Is Mike Jones? (Screwed & Chopped)
15. Wolf Parade – Apologies To The Queen Mary
16. Prefuse 73 – Surrounded By Silence
17. Black Mountain – S/T
18. Paul Wall – The People’s Champ
19. David Banner – Certified
20. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – S/T

Scott McKeating
1. Antony and the Johnsons - I am a Bird Now
2. Coil - Ape of Naples
3. Pajo – Pajo
4. Black Sun Productions - Operett Amorale
5. Jamie Lidell – Multply
6. The Game - The Documentary
7. Number None - 'Urmerica'
8. Gorillaz - Demon Days
9. Jesu – Jesu
10. Jazzfinger - Ugly for a Living
11. Brian Eno - Another Day on Earth
12. Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain
13. Team Sleep - Team Sleep
14. Autechre - Untilted
15. Rufus Wainwright - Want Two
16. Clue To Kalo - One Way, its every way
17. Sun Kil Moon - Tiny Cities
18. Tunng - Mother's Daughter and Other Songs
19. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Multiples
20. Birchville Cat Motel - Chi Vampires

Patrick McNally
1. Witchcraft – Firewood
2. Alasdair Roberts – No Earthly Man
3. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Days Of Mars
4. The Focus Group – Sketches and Spells
5. V/A – Congotronics 2
6. Gang Gang Dance – Gods Money
7. Edan – Beauty and the Beat
8. Antony and the Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
9. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
10. Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas - Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas
11. Rachel Stevens – Come and Get It
12. V/A – Run the Road Vol. 1
13. Mike Simonetti & Dan Selzer - RVNG PRSNTS MX4: Crazy Rhythms
14. The Clipse – We Got It For Cheap Vol. 2
15. Sharon Jones - Naturally
16. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
17. Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering
18. Belbury Poly – The Willows
19. Danger Doom - The Mouse And The Mask
20. A Frames – Black Forest

Anthony Miccio
1. Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
2. Electric Six - Senor Smoke
3. Louis XIV - The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
4. Robyn – Robyn
5. Spoon - Gimme Fiction
6. Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze
7. Brakes - Give Blood
8. Mannie Fresh - The Mind Of Mannie Fresh
9. R. Kelly - TP3.Reloaded
10. Kelly Osbourne - Sleeping In The Nothing
11. Missy Elliott - The Cookbook
12. Turbonegro - Party Animals
13. Stephen Malkmus - Face The Truth
14. Trina - The Glamorest Life
15. Moby – Hotel
16. Audible – Audible
17. Caesars - Paper Tigers
18. 50 Cent - The Massacre
19. Darkness - One Way Ticket To Hell And Back
20. Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright

Derek Miller
1. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
2. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
3. Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
4. Patrick wolf – the wind in the wires
5. Kelley polar – love songs of the hanging gardens
6. Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary
7. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap your hands say yeah
8. Juan Maclean – Less than human
9. Sigur Ros – takk
10. Shortwave Set – debt collection
11. Robyn – Robyn
12. Paavoharju – Yha Hamaraa
13. Matias aguayo – are you really lost
14. m.i.a. - arular
15. Animal Collective – Feels
16. fiery furnaces - ep
17. Susumu Yokota – Symbol
18. Vitalic – ok cowboy
19. Spoon – gimme fiction
20. Broken Social Scene –Broken Social Scene

Edward Oculicz
1. Richard Hawley - Cole's Corner
2. Rachel Stevens - Come And Get It
3. Laura Cantrell - Humming By The Flowered Vine
4. Patrick Wolf - Wind In The Wires
5. Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House
6. Roisin Murphy - Ruby Blue
7. Shakira - Oral Fixation, Vol. 2
8. Simone Cristicchi - Fabbricante di Canzoni
9. Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter
10. Shivaree - Who's Got Trouble
11. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
12. Robyn - Robyn
13. Ladytron - Witching Hour
14. Anneli Drecker - Frolic
15. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
16. Tom Russell - Hotwalker
17. Cowboy Troy - Loco Motive
18. Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono
19. Nickel Creek - Why Should The Fire Die?
20. Cagedbaby - Will See You Now

Mallory O’Donnell
1. Jamie Lidell – Multiply
2. Hot Chip - Coming On Strong
3. The Juan Maclean - Less Than Human
4. Morgan Geist - Unclassics (Mix)
5. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
6. Whitey - The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train
7. Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
8. Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of it Again
9. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
10. Kaos - Hello Stranger
11. LCD Soundsystem - s/t
12. Miss TK & The Revenge - XOXO
13. Sons & Daughters - The Repulsion Box
14. Munk - Aperitivo
15. Andy Votel - Vertigo Mixed (Mix, natch)
16. MIA - Arular
17. Four Tet - Everything Ecstatic
18. Optimo - How to Kill the DJ, Pt. 2 (Mix)
19. V/A - Disco Dimensions, Vol. 1
20. Electrelane - Axes

Fergal O’Reilly
1. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
2. Sway - This Is My Promo
3. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
4. Patrick Wolf - Wind In The Wires
5. Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono
6. Robyn
7. Rachel Stevens - Come and Get It
8. Isolee - Wearemonster
9. The Fall - Fall Heads Roll
10. Kano - Home Sweet Home
11. Sugababes - Taller In More Ways 12. The Mountain Goats - Sunset Tree
13. Girls Aloud - Chemistry
14. Editors - The Back Room
15. LCD Soundsystem
16. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock'n'Roll
17. The Juan MacLean - Less Than Human.
18. John Moore - Half Awake
19. Brutish Sea Power - Open Season
20. Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter

Adam Park
1. Cyne – Evolution Flight
2. Deaf Center – Pale Ravine
3. VEX’D – Degenerate
4. Piana - Ephemeral
5. This Is Spank Rock – Voila
6. Modeselektor – Hello Mom
7. Robert Lippok and Barbara Morgenstern - Tesra
8. Broadcast – Tender Buttons
9. Rhythm and Sound – See Mi Yah
10. Psapp – Tiger, My Friend
11. Studio Pankow - Linienbusse
12. Tod Dockstader – Aerial
13. M.I.A. – Arular
14. Four Tet – Everything Ecstatic
15. Julien Neto - Le Fumeur de Ciel
16. Caribou – Milk of Human Kindness
17. Seven Ark – Noise of the New
18. Sole - Live From Rome
19. Kraftwerk - Minimum Maximum
20. Village Orchestra - Et In Arcadia Ego

Peter Parrish
1. Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel
2. Decemberists - Picaresque
3. Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
4. Kate Bush - Aerial
5. Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
6. The Fall - The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004
7. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
8. Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins
9. Piano Magic - Disaffected
10. Library Tapes - Alone In The Bright Lights Of A Shattered Life
11. Goldfrapp - Supernature
12. Eluvium - Talk Amongst The Trees
13. Echo & The Bunnymen - Siberia
14. Wedding Present - Take Fountain
15. This Is A Process of Still Life - Light
16. Maplebee - Chasing Eva
17. Queen Adreena - Live At The ICA
18. The Drift - Noumena
19. New Model Army - Carnival
20. Rob Dickinson - Fresh Wine For The Horses

Dom Passantino
1. Half Man Half Biscuit- Achtung Bono
2. Tom Russell- Hotwalker, Bukowski, and A Ballad for Lost America
3. Corb Lund- Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer
4. Adam Green- Gemstones
5. The Hold Steady- Seperation Sunday
6. Robyn- Robyn
7. Roots Manuva- Awfully Deep
8. Girls Aloud- Chemistry
9. Eels- Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
10. Do Me Bad Things- Yes
11. Antony and the Johnsons- I’m A Bird Now
12. Gwen Stefani- Love Angel Music Baby
13. Sway- This Is My Promo Volume 2
14. K-os- Joyful Rebellion
15. Cowboy Troy- Loco Motive
16. Notorious BIG and Frank Sinatra- From Blue Eyes to Bed Stuy
17. Simone Cristicchi- Fabbricante Di Canzone
18. Cassetteboy- Dead Horse
19. Majik Most- Molesting Hip Hop
20. Feist- Let It Die

Ryan Potts
1. Mountains – Mountains
2. Keith Fullerton Whitman – Multiples
3. Animal Collective – Feels
4. Greg Davis & Sebastien Roux – Paquet Surprise
5. Minamo – Shining
6. Boredoms – Seadrum/ House of Sun
7. Growing – His Return
8. M.I.A. – Arular
9. Eluvium – Talk Amongst the Trees
10. Tod Dockstader – Aerial #1 and #2
11. Colleen – The Golden Morning Breaks
12. Orthrelm – OV
13. Dalek – Absence
14. Animal Collective & Vashti Bunyan – Prospect Hummer
15. Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
16. Brian McBride – When the Detail Lost its Freedom
17. Sunroof! – Silver Bear Mist
18. Paavoharju – Yha Hamaraa
19. Vibracathedral Orchestra – Tuning to the Rooster
20. Jesu – Jesu

Mike Powell
1. Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
2. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
3. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
4. Animal Collective - Feels
5. Kiki & Herb - Kiki & Herb Will Die For You
6. Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche a Bamako
7. Clipse - We Got it 4 Cheap, Vol. 2
8. Robyn - Robyn
9. Mannie Fresh - The Mind of Mannie Fresh
10. Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
11. M.I.A. - Arular
12. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
13. Matias Aguayo - Are You Really Lost
14. Justus Kohncke - Doppelleben
15. Paavoharju - Yha Hamaraa
16. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II
17. Isolee - Wearemonster
18. Alvarius B - Blood Operatives of the Barium Sunset
19. Konono No. 1 - Congotronics
20. Dominik Eulberg - Kreucht & Fleucht

Daniel Rivera
1. Antony and The Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
2. M.I.A. – Arular
3. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
4. Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
5. Deerhoof - Runners Four
6. Jens Lekman - Oh - You’re So Silent Jens
7. Robyn – Robyn
8. Feist - Let It Die
9. Wolf Parade - Apologies To the Queen Mary
10. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
11. Ladytron - The Witching Hour
12. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
13. Sigur Ros – Takk
14. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
15. Kanye West - Late Registration
16. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
17. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
18. Diplo - Live in Montreal
19. Fiery Furnaces – EP
20. Beanie Sigel - The B-Coming

Paul Scott
1. Sway - This Is My Promo Vol 2
2. The National - Alligator
3. Bloc party - Silent Alarm
4. Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono
5. Wolf Parade - Apologies To The Queen Mary
6. Girls aloud - Chemistry
7. Go Kart Mozart - Speeding Up
8. MIA - Arular
9. LCD Soundsystem - S/T
10. Tullycraft - Disenchanted Hearts Unite
11. Brakes - Give Blood
12. Stephen Malkmus - Face The Truth
13. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
14. Joy Zipper - The Heart light Set
15. Spoon - Gimme Fiction
16. Ccc - Revolved
17. Animal Collective - Feels
18. John Cale - Black Acetate
19. Arcade Fire - Funeral (UK release 2004)
20. Franz Ferdiand - You Could Have It So Much Better With

Matt Sheardown
1. Wolf Parade – Apologies To The Queen Mary
2. Stars – Set Yourself On Fire
3. Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock And Roll
4. New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
5. Vitalic – OK Cowboy
6. The Russian Futurists – Our Thickness
7. Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
8. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
9. Ladytron – Witching Hour
10. Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
11. Constantines – Tournament Of Hearts
12. Surfjan Stevens – Illinois
13. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
14. MIA – Arular
15. Common - Be
16. Antony & The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
17. Architecture In Helsinki – In Case We Die
18. Isolee – We Are Monster
19. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
20. Wilderness - Wilderness

Al Shipley
1. Kanye West - Late Registration
2. Apollo Sunshine - Apollo Sunshine
3. System Of A Down - Mezmerize
4. Rod Lee - Vol. 5: The Official
5. Beanie Sigel - The B. Coming
6. Grand Buffet - Five Years Of Fireworks
7. Brendan Benson - The Alternative To Love
8. Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter
9. The Posies - Every Kind Of Light
10. Medications - All Your Favorite People In One Place
11. Amerie - Touch
12. Cassidy - I'm A Hustla
13. Ebony Eyez - 7 Day Cycle
14. The Evens - The Evens
15. Black Rob - The Black Rob Report
16. Missy Elliott - The Cookbook
17. Sheek Louch - After Taxes
18. Scott Amendola Band - Believe
19. Enon - Lost Marbles And Exploded Evidence
20. Petra Haden - Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out

Brad Shoup
1. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
2. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
3. Steven R. Smith - Crown of Marches
4. Jandek – Raining Down Diamonds
5. Xiu Xiu – La Forêt
6. Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää
7. Ulver - Blood Inside
8. Clit-45 – Self-Hate Crimes
9. Nevermore - This Godless Endeavor
10. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
11. Matthew Herbert - Plat Du Jour
12. Geto Boys - The Foundation
13. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
14. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
15. Kreator - Enemy of God
16. The Books – Lost and Safe
17. Bright Eyes – Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
18. Antony and the Johnsons – I Am a Bird Now
19. The Juan Maclean – Less Than Human
20. Jamie Lidell – Multiply

Jeff Siegel
1. Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
2. Animal Collective - Feels
3. The Chap - Ham
4. The National - Alligator
5. Christof Kurzmann and Burkhard Beins - Erstlive 003
6. Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain
7. Akron/Family - self-titled
8. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Multiples
9. Jamie Lidell - Multiply
10. Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak Of It Again
11. Cloud Cult - Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus
12. Mountains - self-titled
13. Broadcast - Tender Buttons
14. Juan MacLean - Less Than Human
15. Mitchell Akiyama - Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep
16. Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
17. Paarvoharju - Yha Hamaraa
18. LCD Soundsystem - self-titled
19. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
20. Hood - Outside Closer

Will Simmons
1. M.I.A. – Arular
2. Junior Senior – Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
3. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings - Naturally
4. Kelley Polar – Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens
5. Eric Malmberg – Den Gåtfulla Människan
6. The Game – The Documentary
7. V/A – Run the Road
8. The Quantic Soul Orchestra – Pushin’ On
9. Matias Aguayo – Are You Really Lost
10. Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas – S/T
11. Matthew Herbert – Plat du Jour
12. Jamie Lidell – Multiply
13. V/A - Box Jams
14. Julien Neto – Le Fumeur de Ciel
15. Fannypack - See You Next Tuesday
16. Sean Paul – The Trinity
17. Who Made Who - S/T
18. Róisín Murphy – Ruby Blue
19. Susumu Yokota and Rothko – Distant Sounds of Summer
20. Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep

Alfred Soto
1. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
2. The Go-Betweens - Oceans Apart
3. M.I.A. - Arular
4. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
5. Kanye West - Late Registration
6. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
7. LCD Soundsystem - s/t
8. The Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang
9. Kate Bush - Aerial
10. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
11. Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
12. Amy Rigby - Little Fugitives
13. Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor
14. Franz Ferdinand - You Can Have It So Much Better…
15. 50 Cent - The Massacre

Nick Southall
1. Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep
2. Patrick Wolf – Wind In The Wires
3. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
4. Polar Bear – Held On The Tips Of Fingers
5. Kate Bush – Aerial
6. British Sea Power – Open Season
7. Acoustic Ladyland – Last Chance Disco
8. Elbow – Leaders Of The Free World
9. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
10. Sigur Ros – Takk…
11. Boards Of Canada – The Campfire Headphase
12. Jamie Lidell – Multiply
13. The Shortwave Set – The Debt Collection
14. The Juan Maclean – Less Than Human
15. Sugababes – Taller In More Ways
16. Caribou – The Milk Of Human Kindness
17. Vitalic – OK Cowboy
18. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
19. The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
20. Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene

William B. Swygart
1. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
2. Laura Cantrell - Humming By The Flowered Vine
3. Girls Aloud – Chemistry
4. Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
5. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
6. Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter
7. Half Man Half Biscuit - Achtung Bono
8. Sing-Sing - Sing-Sing & I
9. Jim Noir - Tower Of Love
10. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
11. Roots Manuva - Awfully Deep
12. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
13. Woodbine - Best Before End:
14. The Clientele – Strange Geometry
15. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll
16. King Creosote - KC Rules OK
17. The Rogers Sisters - Three Fingers
18. Tatu - Dangerous & Moving
19. The Russian Futurists - Our Thickness
20. Misty's Big Adventure - The Black Hole

Josh Timmermann
1. M.I.A. – Arular
2. Robyn
3. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
4. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
5. The Game – The Documentary
6. Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
7. Diplo – Live in Montreal
8. Fannypack – See You Next Tuesday
9. Girls Aloud – Chemistry
10. Emiliana Torrini - Fisherman's Woman
11. V/A - Run the Road
12. Antony and the Johnsons - I am a Bird Now
13. Feist - Let It Die
14. CocoRosie - Noah's Ark
15. Kathleen Edwards – Back to Me
16. Ashlee Simpson - I Am Me
17. Kate and Anna McGarrigle - The McGarrigle Christmas Hour
18. The Clipse - We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 1
19. Young Jeezy - Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
20. Natalie Rose LeBrecht - Imagining Weather

Andrew Unterberger
1. M83 – Before the Dawn Heals Us
2. Tom Vek – We Have Sound
3. Out Hud – Let Us Never Speak of it Again
4. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
5. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
6. Devin Davis – Lonely People of the World Unite
7. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
8. The DFA – Holiday Mix
9. Gorillaz – Demon Days
10. The Go Team – Thunder Lightning Strike
11. Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
12. The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
13. Danger Doom – The Mouse & the Mask
14. The Juan MacLean – Less Than Human
15. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
16. The Russian Futurists – Our Thickness
17. Ladytron – The Witching Hour
18. Konono No. 1 – Congotronics
19. Vitalic – OK Cowboy
20. Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel

Stewart Voegtlin
1. Watain - Casus Luciferi
2. Deathspell Omega - Kenose
3. Khanate - Capture & Release
4. Craft - Fuck the Universe
5. Ondskapt - Dodens Evangelium
6. Haemoth - Kontamination
7. Crebain - Night of the Stormcrow
8. Asva - Futurists Against the Ocean
9. Vrolok - Soul Amputation
10. Thralldom - Black Sun Resistance

Ethan White
1. Akron/Family – Akron/Family
2. Jan Jelinek – Kosmischer Pitch
3. Tod Dockstader – Aerial #1, #2
4. Isolee – We Are Monster
5. Paavoharju – Yha Hamaraa
6. Broadcast – Tender Buttons
7. Birchville Cat Motel – Chi Vampires
8. Burning Star Core – Let’s Play Wild Like Wildcats Do / The Very Heart of the World
9. Mountains -- Mountains
10. Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness
11. Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower
12. Various Artists – Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box
13. Alog – Miniatures
14. Audion – Suckfish
15. Colleen – The Golden Morning Breaks
16. Animal Collective – Feels
17. Lau Nau – Kuutaarha
18. Afrirampo – Kore Ga Mayaku Da
19. Mitchell Akiyama – Small Explosions That Are Yours to Keep
20. DJ Koze – Kozi Comes Around