Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes

I have pretty normal taste. This is a little bit about the records that I listened to the most from this decade since I was asked. These are not original opinions.

Radiohead: Kid A

I was 14 when this came out; in a lot of ways this is the most important record for me on this list, and one of my absolute favorites ever.

Kid A is what flicked the switch in my brain in regards to music and what it was capable of inspiring in a person. Hearing this record for the first time was like hearing about dinosaurs for the first time when you're four years old. [Bandmate] Skye [Skjelset]'s mom drove us to Tower Records in Bellevue to buy this record on release day-- I bought the big cardboard version and Skye bought the jewel case one (with the hidden lyric booklet which we discovered that night at his house-- that was rad), and we listened to it all the way back to his house and then every day for months after that.

I went back to the same strip mall complex that December with my own mom, probably with some hare-brained "this will count for Christmas and birthday and four allowances" scheme begging her to buy me some nice Sennheiser headphones, and I remember the huge grin on my face driving home in the dark listening to this record, amazed at all the little bits my old headphones weren't capable of replicating.

This is the record I would put on the stereo in that same car, my mom's old Subaru Outback, on summer nights watching my friends skate at the skatepark; this was the record that I had on in the car during my driver's test and the reason the hip instructor threw out the checklist and just drove around with me listening to it for 20 minutes. (And thus maybe the reason I once drove the car into a ditch.)

On a family trip to New York in 2001 this is the reason I went into Rocks in Your Head and sheepishly bought Can's Tago Mago and Talk Talk's Laughing Stock. Even now this is the record I listen to nowadays when driving from Seattle to Port Townsend in that same Subaru, which I guess I've stolen from my mom now. I owe this record a lot, and I think about it sometimes-- how you can hear a record or song and find it so exciting and appealing that it can change every decision you make in life. I guess that's true of anybody when they discover their main passion but it's still cool. If this band had instead decided to get deep into selling timeshares rather than make music maybe I'd be really passionate about plastics.

Dungen: Ta Det Lugnt

This was a record that my friend Joram introduced me to. We worked together at a restaurant here in Seattle and of all the staff I played the most boring music. Everybody else was playing like B-sides of Nuggets bands and Ethiopiques comps and Can and I was putting in Smiley Smile or some such "not-deep-cuts" album. This is an amazingly beautiful record full of wonderful songs, a lot like Kid A in that it is a window into its own unique world, and even after the record ends you're left with the feeling of that world. I think that's what I like best in records-- a transportive quality. It's like somewhere there are planets called Ta Det Lugnt and Kid A and Ys.

Walkmen: Bows & Arrows

This record is insane. This is from a planet where it's constantly 4 a.m. on New Year's Eve and everybody has their hands out the widows of apartments, smoking cigarettes, brushing snow off the sill-- OK, I'm going to drop the string theory-esque Myst metaphor. It's such a romantic record to me in this Harry Nilsson/Bob Dylan slice-of-life kind of way. Like the perfect distilled spirit of this very particular East Coast tell-off feeling that I have no practical experience with but this record gives a view into. I couldn't count the times me and Skye listened to this in his car just in awe of the vibe and the parts. SO GOOD!

Gillian Welch: Time (The Revelator)

Come on.

Joanna Newsom: Ys

I would say that this album may have the best choruses of the 2000s (or at least among chorus-averse crow foot indie world... "Crazy in Love" has a pretty mighty chorus)... Like the "deep in the night shown a weak and miserly light where the monkey shouldered his lamp" part, or the "and all those lonely nights down by the river" part, or the meteorite / meteoroid rhyme, or the "desire desire" part, or the "bitter herb that blooms but one day a year" part, or the end of "Only Skin" where Bill Callahan chimes in with the cold cupboards thing... Wouldn't some agree that those melodies are Motown-level catchy? I think this record is pretty daunting evidence that creativity is hard work and a lot of elbow grease, this kind of record isn't dumb luck, this is the work of a real craftsman with her sleeves rolled up. I also get excited about the West Coast when I listen to this record for some reason. Just amazing, I am glad to be alive in a world where this is popular music.

A few of my other favorite bands of this decade:

Beach House: Best songwriters in a long time.

Grizzly Bear: Amazing all around. Another stoked-to-be-around-now band.

The Dutchess and the Duke: Just inspiring music.

Elliott Smith: Duh.

Carl (A.C.) Newman

Photo by Caleb Beyers

The RockATeens: Sweet Bird of Youth

Though mainly a 90s band, this is their lifetime achievement award. I have generally found that all of the Rock*A Teens fans I know are all my best friends, including my wife.

Destroyer: Your Blues

Yes, I am in a band with him, but all friendship aside, I have to admire him for making his all-MIDI album. This one is the underdog in Dan's catalogue, a sleeper, if you will. He is still one of my favorite writers going and if I have written anything worth a shit in the last decade, it is because I have been chasing him. I love you, man. Let's throw Neko Case's Fox Confessor in here as well and be done with the nepotism. I love you, woman.

Okkervil River: The Stage Names

When we began touring with them, and I saw them for the first time, I was filled with a Salieri-like sadness for a few days. The best records, I find, fill me with that envy, that self-loathing. Sure, I'm friends with them now, but I still hate them for making this incredible album.

The Mountain Goats: The Sunset Tree

John Darnielle destroys all competition in the confessional songwriting competition. "This Year" is definitely my favorite song of the decade.

Animal Collective: Feels

I hate Animal Collective for making this album. Everyone I know loves them, even if begrudgingly. What makes them tick? The new one is incredible as well. You already know that. To restate my point more clearly: They are really really good.

PJ Harvey: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

In particular, "Good Fortune". What a song.

Arcade Fire: Funeral

Have you heard these guys?

Sufjan Stevens: Illinois

Another obscurity that you might want to check out.

Spoon: Gimme Fiction

Or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga or Kill The Moonlight. It's all good.

The National: Boxer

Very few bands combine amazing musicality with amazing lyrics to the same degree. As you can see, I am more into the "alternative" bands. Pretty out there stuff.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I just like them is all.

TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain

Also good. Indie rock, I believe it is loosely called.

The Shins: Oh, Inverted World

A lot of goods bands became popular in the naughts.

The Libertines: Up the Bracket

It is hard not to like them. You wanted to hate them, but the album was just too good.

Frog Eyes: The Golden River

Probably the most underrated band of the decade.

Clinic: Internal Wrangler

The best album of the decade.

Annie

01. OP:L Bastards: "Scorpious"

02. Jimi Tenor: "Utopian Dream"

03. Air: "Mayfair Song"

04. Phoenix: "If I Ever Feel Better"

05. Kylie Minogue: "Slow"

06. Juan McLean: "Happy House"

07. LFO: "Freak"

08. Kelis [ft. André 3000]: "Millionaire"

09. Doc L. Junior: "Baracuda"

10. Empire of the Sun: "Walking on a Dream"

Joey Burns, Calexico

Photo by Gerald Von Foris

Lhasa: The Living Road

A moody set of tunes worthy of any pair of headhones. This masterpiece combines poignant orchestrations with vocals that tap directly into the map of the heart. Lhasa is one of the best, if not the best, female vocalist today.

The Notwist: Neon Golden

The pinnacle of electro-acoustic minimalist deconstructionalism, but I love the soul behind this album most of all. It oozes on this recording and ignites when they play live.

Vinicio Capossela: Ovunque Proteggi

Taking the tradition of singer-songwriting from Italy and standing it on its head. Vinicio has a true talent of bringing chaos and sweetness together in order to map out a more resilient heart.

Benjy Ferree: Leaving the Nest

Great acoustic rock songs with incredible hooks and a voice that makes you want to sing along. I heard this and immediately thought this recording session must have been super fun. Always puts me in a good mood.

Laura Gibson: Beasts of Seasons

Laura's voice certainly draws you in, and when I saw her perform live in Tucson with Portland duo Musee Mecanique I was blown away by the simplicity and sophistication in their arrangements, instrumentation, and textures. Her phrasing is what is really impressive, too, which brings me to that meditative space.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw: The Way the Wind Blows

For a duo from Albuquerque, accordionist/percussionist/vocalist Jeremy Barnes and violinist Heather Trost pack a powerful punch. Their creative vision has taken them to obscure locations to collaborate with musicians in making some of the most inventive music in some years.

Amadou & Mariam: *Dimanche á Bamako

*There is a distinctive mood and atmosphere about this record that gives a sense of hope. Maybe it's the grooves and layers of rhythm, or the earnest stories of life in Mali, or the production and involvement of Manu Chao. Whatever it is, the gravitational pull is undeniable and makes you want to share it with your friends.

Paul Niehaus, Calexico

Brokeback: Looks at the Bird

An atmospheric and melancholic beauty from Doug McCombs and friends.

Seu Jorge: Cru

The Brazilian singer shows his soulfulness and diverse writing ability on this one.

Johnny Cash: American V: A Hundred Highways

A strong and super emotional collection of songs from Johnny. The sound of his voice seems more riveting than ever.

Martin Wenk, Calexico

Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid

Volker Zander, Calexico

Arthur Russell: First Thought Best Thought

He took his cello to the dancefloor and brought Zen into cornfields. The multi spectrum in his work still unfolds with every reissue and compilation. It's all beauty and love. He went home too early, but sits up there with Sun Ra and Moondog playing heavenly Disco Lyre.

Matthew Herbert

I don't really like lists. Apart from for going on holiday, I try and avoid them. I never know when a list becomes a story. How may words can you use in part of the sub-divisions of lists before it stops being a list and starts becoming something to read in a poetry slam? And then there are the "Fever Pitch" associations of men in rooms with Smiths albums making endless lists for imaginary girlfriends.

I know that I'd like to mention Britney's "Toxic" or Kylie's "Can't Get You Out of My Head", written by Cathy Dennis, as a pap-pop highlights. But for every highlight there seems to be two downsides. For every Micachu and the Shapes record (Good) there seems to be two more vacuous misogynistic blingy videos on TV (Bad). For every great Neptunes production from a few years ago, there is another dude Auto-Tuning himself to death. And so much indie landfill, too. Since when did playing a guitar become more fascinating than playing anything else?

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't try to sum up the decade last thing on a Sunday night when I should be in bed. Maybe I should just give in to my dark fascination with "American Idol"-style music shows and not get so worked up about the ruthless pursuit of consistency, flawlessness and familiarity-- all three the enemy of a meaningful creative process.

The absence of transparency and honesty in the legal side of appearing in one of those shows doesn't help quell the complaint of deception-- if an "Idol" contestant talks about the contract, there is an automatic $5,000,000 penalty, and if you perform an original song on "America's Got Talent", it automatically becomes the property of the show itself.

It would be easier to just come up with one thing that was musically great about the decade, because it would probably be Timbaland. I still propose that "Get Ur Freak On" permanently stopped experimental instrumental electronic music in its tracks. His casual brilliance in the studio has humbled us all at some point. His rapping, on the other hand....

And then there's Beyoncé and the whole exuberance of "Independent Women" and that video for "(Single Ladies) Put a Ring on It". But why then did she do a tour in Japan called "I'm Lovin' It" sponsored by, ahem. And she even played a George Bush re-election rally. Oh, dear.

All the drama of the real world is seeping in again. It is pretty amazing really that, within the decade, musically, it's as though 9/11 never happened. What radical shifts can we see in the intentions of music that mirror the tumultuous present? Where is the grind of the dead against the cheek of the living? The whole thing, for tonight at least, feels like a massive opportunity missed.

Dylan after all now appears in SUV ads and is signed to Starbucks. Not even the collapse of the Music Industry itself appears to register as a possible lyrical subject. Maybe Auto-Tune is the perfect symbol for this dangerous paralysis we have reached: A facile, cheaty approximation of an idea rather than anything genuinely troubling or difficult.

But, despite my sincere belief that we are probably all screwed, either by malicious economic systems or the planet, or more likely both, I still can't help hearing a snippet of any Tom Waits record from this decade and feeling truly thrilled that there is one musician who actually makes better records (on actual record labels) as he gets older. And, if one person can nurture such beguiling, finely crafted and relevant musical worlds in times such as these, then maybe we all still have a chance to do it right in the next ten years.

Geoff Barrow, Portishead

Jaylib: Champion Sound

A classic hip-hop record, hugely influential on me.

Sunn O))): Black One

O'Malley and Anderson opened a new part of my brain.

OM: Conference of the Birds

Doesn't matter what decade it is, this is MAN music.

Radiohead: Kid A

Proving music can be heavily emotional and hugely popular.

Crippled Black Phoenix: "Sharks and Storms"

A track off the A Love of Shared Disasters album. I was around in the studio when this was made, amazing to see one man's vision [Justin Greaves] come alive in front of you.

The Strokes: Is This It

I absolutely hated this lot when I first heard of them, then over time realized they were a fucking amazing pop band.

Oneida: Secret Wars

Real band, real music.

Baxter Dury: Len Parrot's Memorial Lift

An undiscovered English gem of an album.

Quasimoto: The Further Adventures of Lord Quas

The Frank Zappa of hip-hop. Nobody can get anywhere near this guy. Mind blowing!!

Black Mountain: Black Mountain

Didn't leave my stereo for weeks.

I'm sure that I've missed loads, but there you go.

Jamie Stewart, Xiu Xiu

Photo by David Horvitz

Thee 2000s

When I was in my early twenties, I had the chance to play in a band with Paul Roessler of the Screamers. Paul did not have the best life at this time. He had a wife named Helen from hell, two children, lived in Culver City, and worked night and day at 100 different jobs to try and keep everything together. Geza X (Producer of the Germs, Black Flag, and Dead Kennedys) was the singer in this band, and one night the three of us were at a party. Paul said, "No matter how difficult my life has been, music has always been the one thing that is there for me." Geza, who had been famously fucked by the music business over and over again, brushed it off with a cynical and sarcastic, "Oh, how cute, Paul!" and the conversation turned to other things.

That statement from Paul would not make sense to me until this past decade. This is the decade that music became the reason that I live. It has rescued me from suicide more times than I want to consider. While I have failed music many many times, its unsolvable mystery and emotional fortitude always waits for me to try again.

Thank you, music. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The band that I play in is as moved by and interested in pure timbre as it is by harmony and rhythm. A timbre, frequently, is the inspiration for an arrangement as much as the linear ideas of the topic and lyrics. That which goes beep in the night is as important to Xiu Xiu as is the night. Without the things that make sounds, there would be no sounds. It is sounds that have saved me and to have given this existence meaning. BONGO!

This list is of the musical objects that have made this decade for me. I hope this is not silly and I hope this not idol worship.

01. Harmonium

"The sound of Xiu Xiu," I have heard several times. A harmonium is a hand-pumped reed organ that begs you to create dissonant and beautiful chords. The first one I ever saw belonged to Don Dias, a brilliant accordionist who was in Xiu Xiu for a brief time and played on our first record. He left it at my house for a while, and I tried to steal it after he quit. There have been six different harmoniums in the fold since. One I bought from a church, and one was destroyed by a Russian airline. It is the only instrument wherein everything one plays feels like something. It is the most haunted and alive instrument. VIVA SWEET TUNE BINA! It awaits, and I will give it back whenever you want it.

02. Fuzz Probe fuzz pedal by Zvex

Effects pedals, aside from using cheap distortions for synths, had never been interesting to me until we experimented with omitting the drum machine on tour for the first half of 2008. (Although it makes a triumphant return for 2010!) I leaned on making a lot of crazy sounds by programming and needed to figure out what to do instead. Pedals provided an obvious solution. The most amazing one I have in a sickening array of sickening little boxes is the Fuzz Probe. It issues the most ground up explosion ever and, on top of that, it avenges blindness with a piercing feedback tone that one can bend with the use of a light sensing plate that you control with your foot. If you move your foot quickly, the feedback zips up and down the microtonal scale. Placed before other effects in a chain, it makes you want to fuck a boulder to death.

03. Late-90s Pro Tools pitch shift

The version of Pro Tools that I use is Frankensteined together from cards and converters that my late father pulled from the trash when he worked at Digidesign. It is of an essentially vintage variety. The pitch shift plug-in that it has is all wrong. Nothing sounds merely pitch shifted when you run something through it. Invariably it adds some beautifully strange transient and warp that would never have been there other wise. I use this more than anything else. It is perfect for something unexpected and odd. If you stack several pitch shifted (mangled) tracks upon each other the symphony you create can be horribly unique. An engineer in Torino once yelled at me, "¡BASTA PITCH SHIFT!"

04. Roland MC 307 Sequencer

At a show with Final Fantasy in Hamburg, Owen Pallet referred to this drum box as the "Xiu Xiu grand piano." Almost every drum machine song from 2003 on was composed on this. I have three of them, as they are getting to be old, and if one died during a tour we would be without hope. It does not sound the best or have amazing sounds, but it is very, very easy to use and this ease of use keeps it out of your way as one pursues the elusive song panther. One thing that I love about using sequencers is that one can be unencumbered by the distraction of physical playing and really listen to what is happening. It leads to bizarre or pretty electronic accidents that one could never really play.

05. GHS flat wound guitar strings

Having been a bass player primarily before trying to sing (sigh), I always had a hard time with how flimsy guitars felt. Flat wound strings wrapped themselves around my neck and strangled me to the other side. They sound darker, they require more tension at pitch, so they are more resistant when you play, and they are thicker so you can beat on them very, very hard before they break. Dark, resistant, thick, and can take a beating... Let that lead you where it may.

06. Room reverb

A mastering engineer once asked me how we got certain reverbs, and, although I was not smart enough to have done this consciously at our onset, I think about it all the time now; I answered him, "It was just the room." This is no great secret to anyone who records at all, but natural reverb is an ace. It is such a, well, joy to me. I clap my hands in almost any quiet new space I go into. When recording, we try every hall, stairwell, bedroom, closet and bathroom that the oft-transplanted home studio has proximity to. I wish i had a tiny, tiny microphone and a heap of dead bodies to see what the inside reflections of a pelvis or skull would sound like.

07. Guild classical guitar

As a gift from a former Xiu Xiu member, I have a very psychedelic guitar that has 10,000,000 song ideas trapped in it. If I have a particular, but un-describable feeling and I pick it up, the first steps of a song will come out. 100% of the time. It does not happen with any other guitar I have, and I would be lost without it. I never really play it casually, but only when this premonitory feeling occurs. There is a Slayer sticker on it. I have never thought if this has any significance. Maybe it has a lot?

08. Korg DS 10 sequencer for the Nintendo DS

This is an analog model 2 track sequencer and drum machine for a fucking Nintendo DS. It is perfect. It is tiny. It sounds amazing. It is easy to use. It allows for tremendous creativity. I wrote about half of the newest Xiu Xiu record on it sitting on a plane or lying on my back falling asleep. Most electronic instruments require a certain amount of commitment to use. But one can turn this on and, in 30 seconds, be making music. Because it is a toy, essentially, you can play with it and that makes you feel free. I have never had the money for real analog gear, but I feel like I would know what to do with it now. I think that also, because you can use it for ten minutes while waiting for someone to pick you up on the corner, any moment could lead to a work of art.

09. Stagg Guillotine cymbal

Ches Smith found this cymbal at a really good guitar store in Seattle called Trading Musician (not to be confused with my favorite guitar store ever, the Starving Musician in California). It is four feet across and, I think, costs $800. It is so massive that it is almost hard for one person to carry. Being obsessed with gongs and bells, I worship this as the Kali of them all. Sadly, Stagg is a b-rate company and it kept cracking while on tour, so I think it is now reserved for recording here and there, but during its tenure, it made such a splash (Rim shot, please. Oh dang, another rim shot, please! Ugh.) that I could feel it through my chest every time Ches would hit it. The most wonderful part about it was, because it is so big, it has very long but delicate sustain if you play it softly and, because it is so big, it is really, really fucking loud.

10. Mandolin feedback through a Leslie speaker

Where I used to live in San Jose, in a crappy, cock addled, roommate, nightmare house, God at least allowed us to be incredibly noisy. No one cared, and if they cared, you could remind them that you did not care. Cory McCulloch, who started Xiu Xiu with me, lived here, too, and bought a Silvertone mandolin with a pick up in it, plugged it into his Leslie speaker and cranked it. He could sit in front of the speaker for, like, an hour getting really good at controlling the feedback, being melodic with it. There is no way that this could happen at any sane living situation. AN HOUR of this on several occasions. I am so thankful that at the beginning of Xiu Xiu we had the freedom to try anything with no restrictions on volume or harshness. Cory could take the wrongest of combination and work to make it touching. I learned so much from that.

If you have anything from this decade that makes sounds and has given you something, write me a note at

willitburn@hotmail.com. I would love to know what it is. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

The Willowz

Graduating high school, dropping out of college to tour, the Stooges reforming, Obama, Levon Helms midnight rambles, Black Flag playing for free at Ameoba, No Country For Old Men, Michel Gondry, Paul Gondry, a million festivals with all the same exact bands playing, M.I.A. singing that Clash song, Robert Plant winning a bunch of Grammys instead of Coldplay, MGMT, the Buffalo Killers, the Strange Boys, iPhones, music journalists from music magazines being replaced by kids with English degrees, planes crashing, GPS for touring, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vitaminwater, meeting Richie in college, 9/11 attack, seeing Graceland, Red Bull, Dorito munchies, crazy dressed hipsters, Borat, Indiana Jones box set, Star Wars trilogy, kid robot toys, and any stupid toys for adults, everyone deciding they can do graffiti, rock clothing for children, touch screens, Shazam.

Laurent Brancowitz, Phoenix

D'Angelo: Voodoo

To us, it was the musical equivalent of Einstein's relativity, ripping off the fabric of time in a beautiful, traumatizing way.

The Strokes: Is This It

With songs and arrangements as elegant as mathematical formulas, they gave rock'n'roll its dignity back. Underestimated even when overestimated.

Sebastien Tellier: "La Ritournelle"

French genius in its purest platonic form!

Amerie: "1 Thing"

One of the most mysteriously amazing songs of the decade, it gives the illusion that some crucial secret is about to be revealed.

Dirty Projectors: "Rise Above"

The bass + voices at 1:40: They KILL me unfailingly.

R. Kelly: "I'm a Flirt"

A truly prodigious blend of the highest and the lowest forms of human imagination.

Panda Bear: "Bros"

I've been obsessed with this song for months, and I still don't know why.

Fall of Troy: Doppelgänger

Devil's music!

Dan Snaith, Manitoba, Caribou

Photo by Michael Forester

Here is an incomplete, not-quite-chronological, somewhat-thematic list of music which got me extremely excited at some point throughout the last decade. Reading back over what follows I note that I've completely failed to communicate this excitement, for which I apologize.

Also, much of the music which has inspired me most over the decade has been made by friends but I have decided not to list music made by friends so as to avoid the hazards of favouritism and the unrewarding task of choosing between them.

Here goes...

Timbaland & the Neptunes

Timbaland, the Neptunes, and their respective collaborators seemed to me to have a stranglehold on innovation in the early 2000s (even though much of Timbaland's most exciting work was already behind him by that time). The year 2000 saw the release of Aaliyah's "Try Again". Hearing it for the first time was a complete revelation. It still stands out for me looking back over the singles of the past 10 years. Add to that other Timbaland productions such as Jay-Z's "Hey Papi" and "Big Pimpin'", Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On", Aaliyah's "We Need a Resolution" and "More Than a Woman", Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River", Petey Pablo's "Raise Up", and Timbaland and Magoo's "People Like Myself" and Neptunes productions such as Jay-Z's "I Just Wanna Luv U (Give It to Me)", Ludacris' "Southern Hospitality", Clipse's "Grindin'", N.O.R.E.'s "Nothin'" and "Grimey", and you get a pretty compelling picture of why pop music was so saturated in their influence for the first half of the 00s.

Jay-Z: The Blueprint; Kanye West: The College Dropout; Just Blaze

It's hard to believe that The Blueprint came out in 2001-- its now-ubiquitous sped-up soul sample sound seems a more contemporary phenomenon. The Blueprint was my introduction to both Kanye and Just Blaze who in the following years had me drooling over Kanye's The College Dropout and Just Blaze's productions including Freeway's "What We Do" and Jay-Z's "Kingdom Come" (the instrumental of which kept me coming back to Just Blaze's MySpace page for the better part of a year before it was released in attenuated form with an enervating Jay-Z vocal).

Quasimoto, Madvillain, and Jay Dee

Being envious of the music made by Madlib and J Dilla occupied a good portion of my past ten years. Quasimoto's The Unseen became a like sacred object, listened to obsessively and at times exclusively, until it was matched by Madvillain's Madvillainy and Jay Dee's Ruff Draft and Donuts. And on and on...

Daft Punk

The consensus seems to be that Daft Punk's most recent album Human After All is their slightest, but for my money I can't see a way of choosing between their uniformly superlative studio albums (of which Discovery and Human After All belong to the 00s). If there is a better definition of millennial pop music than theirs, I don't know it.

UK Garage

Looking back over the explosive but short-lived popular triumph of UK Garage, it's hard to make sense of all the artists involved who made it so exciting, let alone all the tracks. Although a lot of my favourite UK garage was released in the 90s (Todd Edwards, Dem 2) or straddled the decades (MJ Cole's "Sincere" and "Crazy Love", Wookie's "Scrappy" and "Down on Me", Azzido da Bass' "Dooms Night (Timo Mass Remix)", Zed Bias' "Neighbourhood"), there was still plenty to be excited by in the early 2000s: Wookie's "Battle", So Solid Crew's "Oh No (Sentimental Things)" and "Dilemma", the Streets' "Has It Come to This?", Dizzee Rascal's "I Luv U" and even the chart conquering pop of Daniel Bedingfield's "Gotta Get Thru This".

Lightning Bolt

I only discovered Lightning Bolt's music with the release of Wonderful Rainbow in 2003, but their effect on me was immediate and dramatic. Their music all of a sudden made everyone else's appear insipid and monochrome. Where possible, I haven't missed one of their shows since.

Animal Collective / Panda Bear

It seems likely that there will be a consensus amongst fans and critics that Animal Collective and its members made some of the most impressive and influential music of the decade. Rightly so, I reckon. Few acts consistently surpassed my expectations and happily surprised me like they did. Choosing my favourite records from their discography-- perhaps Person Pitch and Sung Tongs-- seems beside the point when their music has been so repeatedly pyrotechnic.

Ariel Pink

The first thing that attracted me to Ariel Pink was, as with most people I imagine, the tape-degraded production and sense of contemporary nostalgia. But I've been continually drawn back by his songwriting, which is idiosyncratic but always tuneful. I've spent a fair bit of time picking apart his songs to see what makes them work without being able to decipher any conclusion other than I like his music a lot.

James Holden

I said I wouldn't include any friends in this list, but I didn't become friends with James until after becoming thoroughly obsessed with his music. His anarchic take on dance music is largely responsible for reinvigorating my interest in electronic and dance music. I didn't discover his music until 2006's The Idiots are Winning, but equally impressive are his earlier and more recent remixes (Madonna, Britney Spears, Nathan Fake, Radiohead, Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid [double cronyism alert]). There is, I believe, an album in the works, which I await eagerly.

Theo Parrish, Carl Craig, Ricardo Villalobos

It's a rare treat when an already lionized musician surprises by upping the ante with unexpectedly fresh sounding new music more than a decade into their career. Hearing Theo Parrish's new tracks "Love Triumphant" and "Goin' Downstairs" at his consistently fantastic DJ residence at Plastic People in London last year was as surprising as it was exciting. It's probably unfair to lump these three very different producers together, but all three of them seem to be undergoing a renaissance much past the typical sell-by date of dance producers. From Theo Parrish's aforementioned tracks, Ugly Edits and "Dusty Cabinets", to Carl Craig's remixes of Parrish's "Falling Up", Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom's "Revelee", Junior Boys "Like a Child" (again, cronyism alert!) to Villalobos' "Enfants", "Fizheuer Zieheuer", and Philip Glass cut-up on "For Discos Only", these three have produced much music to get excited about in recent years.

Iration Steppas

Iration Steppas is my pick for overlooked artist of the decade. His brand of digital dub has no equivalent or counterpoint that I know of, despite it's recent adoption by and influence on dubstep culture. I've been going to see him when he comes to London's University of Dub club night sporadically throughout this last decade, and every single time he DJs he plays new productions of his own which melt my mind. I just wish he would release more of the incredible music he's making and DJing.

Arthur Russell

Like most of the world I didn't know much about Arthur Russell outside of his existence as a disco auteur until 2004 when more of his music began to be reissued, re-examined, and released for the first time. I mention him as an addendum only because, although none of his music was made in the 00s, some of the best of it was released for the first time in this decade-- and it beggars belief that music 20 years old could seem so vibrant and contemporary.

Alasdair MacLean, The Clientele

01. Plush: Fed

02. Humphreys & Keen: The Overflow

03. Destroyer: This Night

04. Autistic Daughters: Uneasy Flowers

05. Boards of Canada: Geogaddi

06. Edmund Cake: Downtown Puff

07. Wood-Sorrel: Echoes of Before (song on www.myspace.com/woodsorrel)

08. Ghost Club: Suicide Train

09. Charlemagne Palestine, David Coulter & Jean Marie Mathoul: Maximin

10. The Puddle: The Shakespeare Monkey

Next> *Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr., Matmos, Saint Etienne

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