Ghostly's 110 Our Favorite Albums of the Decade

January 2010 not only marks the emergence of a new year and a new decade—it's also a bookend on the first ten years of Ghostly International. Naturally, we're feeling a little reflective.

Since our humble beginnings, Ghostly has become much more than a label (or labels), and while the sky's the limit for our ambitions, music remains at the core of our being. As a tribute to the brilliant artists who have inspired us during Ghostly's lifetime, we present Ghostly's 110: Our Favorite Albums of the Decade.

Ghostly's 110 represents a combination of our staff's individual favorites and an eclectic assortment of albums that have been instrumental (pun intended) in forging the path Ghostly has tread. The list sticks to artist albums (no compilations) and non-Ghostly/Spectral releases (we love our artists, but you knew that anyway), and it's presented in semi-alphabetical order by artist for your reading convenience.

From this project's beginnings, we had many a heated argument on the nature of lists and the functions they serve. In the end, Ghostly's 110 is not an attempt to assign distinction, to single out winners and losers—it's just another way for us to share our passion for music.

For a collective of obsessives, whittling this down was a painstaking labor of love. We hope it inspires you to make new discoveries and unearth some old favorites of your own.

Akufen My Way (Force Inc.) 2002 Talk of My Way always—and fairly—starts with Akufen's sampling fussiness and radio-snippet sourcing, but the real story is how damn hard it swings, bringing house to the "micro-" discussion like nothing before or since.

Animal Collective Sung Tongs (FatCat) 2004 Aphex Twin Drukqs (Warp) 2001

Apparat Walls (Shitkatapult) 2007 If Apparat's frequent collaborator Ellen Allien largely defined the sound of their shared home on Berlinette, Apparat's crowning achievement, Walls, looks farther afield. The soulful melodicism of Walls skirts obvious Teutonic signifiers, brazenly passing through dream pop, spacey shoegaze, and blissful funk, while never losing its bearings.

Arovane Tides (City Center Offices) 2003 Uwe Zahn's Tides, a rhapsodic take on breaks-and-keys, still ranks among the most haunting and perfect albums from the classy City Centre Offices label. Four years later, Zahn retired from music, stating he was "currently very much into motorbikes." It's a shame, but at least we'll always be very much into Tides.

Benoît Pioulard Précis (Kranky) 2006 Biosphere Cirque (Touch) 2000

The Books Thought for Food (Tomlab) 2002 The Books' debut is an unlikely classic. The gorgeous interplay of strings, voice, guitar, and banjo with (seemingly) carefree sampling may be novel, but repeat listens reveal a shocking humanity at work. Thought for Food deftly navigates ceaseless musical and conceptual left turns, arriving with humility, humor, and heart.

Broadcast Tender Buttons (Warp) 2005 It's rare that an already-great band drops a member and gets even better, but Broadcast did just that. Tender Buttons sucked the reverb out of the former trio's dark, Spector-y pop and sharpened the focus down to the micron. The results are their most artful, abrasive, and ultimately accessible work.

Burial Burial (Hyperdub) 2006 Dubstep didn't know it needed a hero, but it found one in 2006 when a (then-)unknown bedroom producer emerged with a self-titled album that embodied everything exciting about the UK breakbeat continuum. Never mind that the skittering percussion, de-emphasis on bassweight, and profound, pervasive sadness would keep Burial's tracks out of the scene-reliant clubs—its haunting beauty and mystery found untold converts to the dark, ever-evolving sound.

Closer Musik After Love (Kompakt) 2002 The pairing of Matias Aguayo's South American coo and Dirk Leyers' doomy beats was just too perfect to last forever. While Closer Musik's lone album, After Love, was certainly a stylistic forbear to Junior Boys, theirs was a more seductive and creeping brand of techno-pop, like a lover who is dangerous and irresistible in equal measure.

Cut Copy Bright Like Neon Love (Modular) 2004 Sure, Cut Copy's debut sounded like something we'd heard before—but if Bright Like Neon Love played a formula, we were hitting the repeat button. Brimming with unabashed optimism, the dance/rock hybrid's slamming beats, swirling synths, jangly guitars, and rhythmic chorus lines yielded a near-unhealthy quantity of hooks.

D'Angelo Voodoo (Virgin) 2000 We haven't heard from him since, but D'Angelo created an honest-to-god masterpiece in 2000, and that's all that really matters. While Voodoo's behind-the-beat drums and spidery guitarwork gracefully frame D's intimate vocal performances, it's the mood of the whole thing that really transcends—an elusive quality that some call soul.

Dntel Life Is Full of Possibilities (Plug Research) 2001 Pairing spritely beats with a rotating cast of sensitive male vocalists, Jimmy Tamborello helped invent a sound that would echo throughout the 2000s. As Dntel, Tamborello struck a fragile and peculiar balance that might only been bettered by his more famous Postal Service project.

Erlend Øye Unrest (Astralwerks) 2003 The Faint Danse Macabre (Saddle Creek) 2001

Ellen Allien Berlinette (Bpitch Control) 2003 The last decade saw electronic music grow—surprising, considering the deserved backlash from the '90s marketing-led "electronica" push—and if Berlin was at the forefront, Ellen Allien's ode to her home, Berlinette, is the decade's ultimate stylistic document. With glitch, songy melodies, vocals, raved-up bombast, and steely sound design in play, Berlinette unselfconsciously skirted the minimalist/maximalist divide and stands as one of techno's finest albums.

Fennesz Endless Summer (Mego) 2001 At a time when "clicks & cuts" was running amok and so many were worshiping the glitch, Fennesz offered a reminder that beauty should always trump cleverness. Endless Summer's titular Beach Boys reference was wholly appropriate for the wash of warm, digitally abstracted guitar instrumentals found therein. And not for nothing, but "Caecilia" is one of the finest tearjerkers on record.

Four Tet Rounds (Domino) 2003 Gas Pop (Mille Plateaux) 2001

Ghostface Killah Supreme Clientele (Razorsharp/Epic) 2000 Ghostface sparked up the new millennium with an unimpeachable collection of breathless, street-fluent joke raps over boombap soul. By then, hip-hop was already moving in different directions than Ghost, but the timeless formula he perfected on Supreme Clientele will remain among hip-hop's—let alone the Wu's—greatest legacies.

Grizzly Bear Veckatimest (Warp) 2009 Grizzly Bear Yellow House (Warp) 2006

Isolée We Are Monster (Playhouse) 2005 Rajko Müller's dance tracks aren't tracks, per se—they have as much in common with classical composition as they do with techno—and they're not even necessarily for the dancefloor, although they work there just fine. On We Are Monster, Müller throws convention to the wind and writes an album of idiosyncratic, melodic techno "songs" and, lo and behold, it works.

Jay Dee aka J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw) 2006 For a record in which most of the songs clock in under two minutes, you wouldn't expect to have such a strong attachment to each, or feel such personal emotion emanating from such fractured, vocal-free beats. But Donuts has it all, and somehow J Dilla made one of most enjoyable records of the decade and broke the hip-hop mold forever.

Junior Boys So This Is Goodbye (Domino) 2006 Lush sequencing, darkly sensual beats, and Jeremy Greenspan's feathery voice conspired to make the Junior Boys' second offering an instant classic. From driving electro-house numbers to melancholic lullabies, So This Is Goodbye was destined for twilight drives and nocturnal dances. Few contemporary albums ooze greater per-track sex appeal.

Lali Puna Scary World Theory (Morr Music) 2001 Lali Puna dispelled fears of a sophomore slump with Scary World Theory, an ambiguously nostalgia-inducing album from the first listen. Valérie Trebeljahr's breathy, deadpan timbre found a perfect instrumental blanket in Marcus Acher's marching synth-pop perfection.

M83 Saturdays=Youth (Mute) 2008 Madvillain Madvillainy (Stones Throw) 2004

M83 Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (Gooom Disques/Mute) 2003 The post-rock crescendo mafia had a hell of a run there. But of all the bands who traded in the long, tortured, emotional build, none demonstrated the clarity of vision and merciless execution of M83 on their debut. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts's martial drum machines and analog-synth tsunamis are tempered with just enough grace to keep the whole affair in that elusive sweet spot of uplifting desperation.

Midlake The Trials of Van Occupanther (Bella Union) 2006 Midlake refashioned the best parts of soft rock in the mid-late-'70s (sepia-toned harmonies, tightly woven song structures, an air of gentle, autumnal resignation) into a paradoxically unassuming concept album about Americana and the alienation of modern life. Catchy tunes, too.

Milosh You Make Me Feel (Plug Research) 2004 Mike Milosh's freshman effort ushered in a new breed of candlelight listening. You Make Me Feel's intimate, languorous tunes are stitched together by soulful vocals and a steady feed of soft, pulsing beats and fuzzy snaps. Combining elements of old-school R&B; and latter-day experimental, Milosh repackaged the familiar love song into something alien and exciting.

The Notwist Neon Golden (Domino/City Slang) 2002 Six albums into a meandering career and the German duo of Markus and Micha Archer finally cracked the code, abandoning their heavy-metal roots in favor of painstakingly arranged, melancholy electro-pop. It may be the album that launched a thousand Postal Service clones, but with songs like these, Neon Golden'll outlive them all.

Peter Broderick Float (Type) 2008 Phoenix United (Astralwerks) 2000

Slum Village Fantastic Vol. 2 (Goodvibe/Barak) 2000 With the first national release from Detroit trio Slum Village, the specter of J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) stepped out from behind the boards for the Pharcyde and De La Soul to invent a loose, loping sound and inspire a generation of future-funk producers.

Sun Kil Moon Ghosts of the Great Highway (Caldo Verde) 2003 Just as Mark Kozelek's Red House Painters project was slowing down, Sun Kil Moon sprang to life, reinvigorating a prolific and perennially underrepresented career. Invoking a lost America and its folklore, Ghosts is a stunning second act if there ever was one.

Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself (Bpitch Control) 2009 After two albums that helped both define and interrogate their respective scenes, Telefon Tel Aviv released their magnum opus: an intensely personal, shouted veil of rock and experimental techno that brimmed with dogged resolve. Immolate Yourself would launch the duo past their supposed peers, while forging a sound all its own.

Thom Yorke The Eraser (XL Recordings) 2006 Critics of Thom Yorke's first solo album fixated on the record's needling, claustrophobic anxiety. And yet, underneath all that, The Eraser was an album of heartrending honesty and unmistakable beauty. Never before had we heard Yorke's vocals so fragile, so haunting. Amid The Eraser's digital flourishes, we feel a very human cry.