By Sean Flinn and Joseph McCombs | February 27, 2002
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Sean Flinn -- Editor in Chief / Music Editor
- Bjork - Vespertine
 No vocalist in pop (or even in what used to be called "alternative" music) has the range, daring, ability, imagination or grace of Iceland's most popular export, as Bjork proved once again on her fifth full-length album. I'll confess that I might not have rated this album as highly as I do now had I not see Bjork play its songs on tour recently, and had a revelation during the performance: the dividing line between bad pop vocalists and great ones is simple - the great ones have the ability to take a very generic, very broad sentiment, e.g, I love you, and invest it with so much emotion that it feels, to the listener, very specific, very personal. Bjork opened her show with the tear-jerking overture from her soundtrack to the film Dancer in the Dark, and followed it up with the final track from Homogenic, "All Is Full of Love." At that point in time, about a month after the 9/11 tragedy, there could have been no phrase I or anyone else wanted to hear other than "You'll be given love," which Bjork rendered so touchingly and honestly as to make the audience believe she really, really meant it. It was almost too much to bear - a kind gesture on behalf of an artist who has reveled herself to be endlessly generous with her talent and her emotions.
On Vespertine, Bjork performs this feat this over and over, on her best songs revealing shockingly intimate details about herself (see the explicit post-coital reverie of "Cocoon") and assuaging the pains of her listeners ("It's Not Up To You"). She couples the lyrical package with a lush, intricately detailed musical backdrop that blends orchestral arrangements with click-hop (courtesy of the brilliant duo Matmos). The final result is a work that draws on familiar idioms - pop, love songs, trip-hop, chin-scratching sampladelia - that sounds utterly original, perhaps the only work of the year that effectively analyzes and reflects the nature of the world: aggressively in pursuit of modernity, mechanical, yet intractably soft and vulnerable.
[buy this album]
- Lovage - Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By
 While Dan the Automator's last effort - Gorillaz - was mostly the brainchild of Blur front man Damon Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett (creator of Tank Girl), Lovage belongs solely to Mr. Nakamura. Billed as his "tribute to Serge Gainsbourg" and put out under Nakamura's Handsome Boy Modeling School pseudonym (Nathaniel Merryweater), Lovage presents a thick stew of beats, samples and sex appeal, aided in no small part by the kittenish cooings of Elysian Fields vocalist Jennifer Charles and the psycho-loverman vibes of Faith No More / Mr. Bungle vocalist Mike Patton. Turntalist extraordinaire (and Automator's sidekick from Deltron 3030 on up) Kid Koala drops in to make things a little groovy, while spliced-in spots from guest "sexologists" like Albarn, Prince Paul, Maceo and Afrika Bambaataa keep things surreal. And when Charles and Patton really get cooking, as on their cover of Berlin's "Sex," the Gainsbourg spirit seems almost palpable; thankfully, Lovage has much, much more going for it than just that. This is exotica for the 21st century, and if it doesn't get you laid on some late, misty, wine-soaked night, nothing will.
[buy this album]
- Richie Hawtin - DE9: Closer to the Edit
 Fuck Oakenfold. Baldy's got it going on. Few DJs can boast anything like Hawtin's reputation as a DJ or a producer; for well over a decade, he and the rest of the crew at Plus 8 / M_nus Records have been keeping the spirit of Detroit alive with an unending, uncompromising series of minimalist techno singles and albums. And while the rest of the world has lost its nut over the increasingly commercialized sounds of jungle and trance, Hawtin has kept his eyes on the prize: making forward-thinking tracks that, although produced with the latest technology, retain the spirit and the soul of techno's house roots. Even by these high standards, DE9 is a revelation. Produced using N2IT's revolutionary Final Scratch hardware / software package, it finds Hawtin blending over 90 distinct digital and analog sound sources into one seemless futuristic mix. Even better, the mix doesn't sound like it was cooked up in a lab, but mixed right there on the dance floor, and ready to be taken home to your headphones. If Hawtin were a pole-vaulter, the competition would need a jet pack to clear his mark.
[buy this album]
- Zero 7 - Simple Things
 Britain's growing obsession with American nu-soul and R&B has finally paid off; Zero 7 -- a deuce of producers (aka Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker) who've already established themselves as primo remixers (for Radiohead, Lenny Kravitz and others) made perhaps the year's most impressive debut with this collection of downtempo gems. Equal parts Quincy Jones and Massive Attack, Zero 7 seems to have found the missing ingredients that could make trip-hop a dish worth serving again: rich, buttery vocals (courtesy of Sia), heavy doses of Rhodes keyboards and the sort of beats that would make Air drool. The leadoff single, "Destiny" is the best R&B song of the year, putting everything American artists have been doing for the last twenty years to shame, and reflecting the impact that that garage and two-step have had on the entire British scene. Expect monstrous things from these guys in the '02.
[buy this album]
- Ruby - Short-staffed at the Gene Pool
 Whoodathunk? Ruby, the Scottish-based trip-hop band that dropped off the face of the earth after churning out its brilliant late '90s debut, Salt Peter, came out of hiding in 2001 with a new label deal (on Thirsty Ear) and a surprisingly strong sophomore LP. Front woman Lesley Rankine has softened her lyrical punches and refined her delivery since round 1. But rather than watering down the group's sound, her restraint actually enhances the music, helping the band make a silky smooth transition into downtempo from the bouncy, edgy electronic pop they made in the '90s. Even better, the band's roots in both punk (Lesly once fronted the hardcore group Silverfish) and industrial (both Mark Walk and Rankine have worked with Pigface) allow them to approach the genre from an entirely fresh angle. If the duo can maintain their ingenuity and adaptability, it'll be around for quite a while. Let's just hope it doesn't take another 5 years for them to follow this album up.
[buy this album]
- Stereolab - Sound Dust
 Everyone's favorite quasi-Marxist lounge pop collective - OK, maybe the world's only quasi-Marxist lounge pop collective - maintained their reputation as one of the most prolific bands on Earth with the release of their umpteen billionth LP, Sound Dust, this past Summer. Of course, what's most impressive about the 'Lab isn't so much the frequency of its output, but its consistency. Heck, forget consistency - the band isn't always just good. They seem to get better and better. Even self-indulgent mis-steps like 1999's Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night contain several gems and a perpetually unfolding complexity - both of sound and of content -- that keep listeners returning for another go 'round. Sound Dust is one of those magical moments when everything lines up, though; Laetitia Sadier's pointedly political lyrics - often sung in her native French - fit like a key into composer / guitarist Tim Gane's locked-down arrangements. The marriage of content and form is so dead on this time around that the band can swing from pure pop confection to chin-scratching abstraction without sounding distracted or meandering. If you can make it all the way through shimmering, shining tracks like "Hallucinex" or "Double Rocker" without breaking into goosebumps - or even a grin - you might wanna check yourself for a pulse.
[buy this album]
- Quivver - Transport 5
 I used to have a rule against including mix discs in year-end top 10s. I guess it says something about the strength of John "Quivver" Graham that I've broken that rule for the first time this year. Or maybe it just says something about trance music, which, after hearing Graham's album, I'm positive has been cleanly bifurcated into two camps: the commercial, pop-influenced variety popular among the candy ravers and glowstick wavers; and the darker, tougher "progressive" sound pioneered by Brit decksters like Digweed and American jocks like Christopher Lawrence. Heck, even Ultra acknowledges the split; they changed the name of the series from Tranceport to Transport on disc 4 in an attempt to distance it from the poppier offshoot. Graham's real challenge here is not simply to turn out a great mix CD - it's to stand tall while spinning in the shadow of Paul Oakenfold (who kicked off the Tranceport series, and still hand picks the DJs who produce its installments) and Dave Ralph (whose Tranceport II pretty much benchmarked the genre). Graham performs more than affably, turning out a disc that's every bit as strong as its predecessors while also capturing the spirit of the times; this tough, beat-centric mix will serve as a touchstone for future progressive DJs for years to come.
[buy this album]
- Groove Armada - Goodbye Country, Hello Nightclub
 There's nothing on Groove Armada's third LP that's anywhere near as catchy or flashy as Vertigo's "I See You Baby," and that's actually a good thing. While Vertigo was one of last year's "instant classics," this year it's as stale as a …. Well, forget stale. It's really just plain annoying. Goodbye Country … takes a different tack, using subtler rhythms and less hooky melodies to get the group's grooves across; only one track uses any sort of house diva vocals, while the rest find a quiet strength in GA's growing talent for producing lush, almost ambient soundscapes. The duo also made a wise move in asking '60s folk legend Richie Havens to sing on a few tracks, which gives songs like "Little By Little" and "Healing" a timelessly soulful quality, ensuring that they'll be remembered and sung along with years after this whole downtempo thing has gone to pasture.
[buy this album]
- Orbital - The Altogether
 Brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll returned in 2001 in more ways than one. They bounced back from a few years of hiatus to produce a new album (their first since 1999's Middle of Nowhere) and, on that album, managed to return to making the sort of music that began attracting a fan base to begin with - concise, head-twisting slices of pop-inflected electronic music. The Altogether, which combines a dozen new songs with several unreleased and re-worked tracks (like the group's live staple, "Doctor?," a sly reworking of the Dr. Who theme song) is sprawling, ambitious, and yet tight - none of the songs clocks in over 6 minutes (with the exception of "Meltdown" - the final track on disc 1). By Orbital standards, this is a miracle. Singer-songwriter boy wonder David Gray lends his pipes to "Illuminate," one of the year's most overlooked songs. In other places, the group mixes samples like Emeril blends spices, throwing in bits and pieces of tunes by acts as varied as Tool and Ian Dury into a slowly simmering, buoyantly bubbling stew of electro-pop that's aware of its surroundings, but confident of its own identity. The Hartnolls remain one of the few acts in electronic dance music that seems unconfined by the dictates of any genre - if we're lucky, their lessons will leak out all over the rest of the scene.
[buy this album]
- Curve - Gift
 Nobody paid any attention to this record, and it's a damn shame. You could blame Curve for this, the band having taken its own sweet time in releasing this album and, as a result, putting it out well after people stopped giving a damn about electronically tinged, goth-influenced rock. Truthfully, Curve is just one more record industry victim; their label underwent years of struggle with its parent company, which resulted in Gift being shelved for years after Curve wrapped up production. The group and the label finally straightened things out this past year, but the album dropped like a rock. That's unfortunate, as it stands shoulder to shoulder with any album in the band's acclaimed catalog; the opening track, "Hell Above Water," a thundering slab of kick-drum fueled industrial rock, pretty much sold me the album - I walked from the listening station to the record store register with a sustained, enthusiastic chill. And while there are one or two weak spots (mostly due to outdated production flourishes and silly lyrics), the rest of the album maintains the opening track's pounding momentum. Plus, you're not gonna find a voice much sexier than Tony Halliday's disaffected British coo, which alone is worth the price of admission.
[buy this album]
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