Friday 20 November 2009

An impossible task

Hello!

So, the wonderful forums on Head Heritage's website have set the site's numerous visitors the double challenge of naming one's favourite 20 albums of the noughties, and 25 faves of all time.

A near-impossible task, but the kind of geeky challenge I love, so after much pain and soul-searching, here goes, bearing in mind that I hate myself for leaving out a wealth of bands:

1) Top 20 albums from 2000 to 2009:

- Boris: Flood (2000)
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)
- Khanate: Khanate (2001)
- Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO: Univers Zen ou de Zero a Zero (2002
- Songs: Ohia: Didn't It Rain (2002)
- Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter: Reckless Burning (2002)
- M83: Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts (2003)
- DNA: DNA on DNA (2004) - all recorded in 78-79, but this only came out in 04, a first for most of the tracks, certainly on CD
- Wilco: A Ghost is Born (2004)
- Ilyas Ahmed: Between Two Skies (2005)
- Antony and the Johnsons: I am a Bird Now (2005)
- Mono & World's End Girlfriend: Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2005)
- Om: Variations on a Theme (2005)
- Richmond Fontaine: The Fitzgerald (2005)
- Baikal: Baikal (2007).
- Burial: Untrue (2007)
- Fuck Buttons: Street Horrrsing (2008)

- Tetragrammaton: Elegy for Native Tongues (2008)
- To Blacken the Pages: A Semblance of Something Apertaining to Destruction (2008)
- Teeth of the Sea: Orphaned By the Ocean (2009)


It's in chronological rather than preference order, as it's easier and it wasn't specified. Again, I left out so much I wanted to cry. Apologies to Sunn O))), Earth, Patrick Wolf, Ladytron, David Sylvian, A Silver Mt Zion, D'Agostino, Foxx and Jansen and The Heads...

2) Top 25 albums of all time:

1. Neil Young: On the Beach
2. The Velvet Underground & Nico: The Velvet Underground and Nico
3. Television: Marquee Moon
4. Joy Division: Closer
5. PiL: Metal Box
6. Amon Duul II: Yeti
7. David Bowie: Low
8. The Stooges: Funhouse
9. Slowdive: Pygmalion
10. Love: Forever Changes
11. Factrix: Scheintot
12. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited
13. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless
14. Japan: Tin Drum
15. Throbbing Gristle: The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle
16. Funkadelic: Maggot Brain
17. The Cure: Pornography
18. Ash Ra Tempel: Ash Ra Tempel
19. Gene Clark: No Other
20. Tony Conrad and Faust: Outside the Dream Syndicate
21. Yoko Ono: Plastic Ono Band
22. Comus: First Utterance
23. Boris: Flood
24. King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King
25. Antony and The Johnsons: I Am A Bird Now

I have to go now, or I will definitely be changing some, if not most of these. Don't hate me Fela, Miles Davis, Tangerine Dream, Cabaret Voltaire and Flower Travellin' Band!!!