20 Pete Rock – Soul Survivor II

Pete Rock and a selection of guests bring out an outstanding album of varying styles to suit all moods. From the uplifting of Appreciate, to a dirty ironic club banger of Warzone the programming and use of samples are just plainly inspiring. Pete who’s been in the business for a long time is such a consistent producer, invokes inspiration with this album for any aspiring producer and musician.

19 Super Furry Animals – Rings Around The World

Another one of those rare bands who constantly better themselves with each of their albums, Rings Around The World is special for the simple fact the No Sympathy is on. The serene backdrops of a beautiful acoustic song is then mixed into a dirty schizophrenic techno ending. This concept has helped fuel many ideas for music production and DJ mixes from Hentucky, which is the reason why this album has placed so highly. However the rest of the album has some beautifully constructed pieces, long attack on their instruments to give a nicely drawn out pedestrian feeling without being ‘background muzak,’ amongst other experimentations of genre bending.

18 The Eels – Blinking Lights And Revelations

The Eels are again another fantastically consistent band. Dark lyrics mixed amongst quite straight down the line happy go lucky tracks. The string work featured in this double album is fantastic, and really add to the sentiment of the tracks. Infact the use of a lot of various instruments from some xylophone, subtle synths that may guest on the track really give that poignant feel to the whole album.

Again this is a proper journeyman album, and sitting through it in order if you can spare the time will really help to provoke some thoughts when you’re in ‘that’ mood.

17 The National – Alligator

Sometimes an album just touches you instantly. Track after track Matt Berninger’s deep rusty voice seem to really add to the beauty of the songs as you work your way through. Production is meticulous on this album, with a lot of subtle strings, plodding pianos, guitars and straight beats all come together to produce brilliance. One of the hardest things in music is being controlled with your instrument, and with constant examples of sudden bursts of nice ‘twiddley’ bits throughout, they emphasis the dynamics of the songs in relation to the vocals with perfect execution.

16 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

This album is just hideously good. Track after track of amazingly written songs, with classic scratchy off key vocals by Alec Ounsworth really make this album quite distinct from your atypical indie band. Lots of simplistic riffs that are layered up and down throughout over a solid well played beat sounds like something different from your usual Indie crop, despite having all the classic ‘post punk/nu wave’ elements behind it. Simple fact whatever they’ve done, they have done it well whilst being full of energy.

15 The Essex Green – Cannibal Sea

Another album of the decade which really embraced the whole folk/60-esq scene with a whole new modern take. After meeting Jeff Baron from the band I was massively excited to see what drew their influence to write this album, and basically from the conversation they wanted to write an album, which if you would to put on you could imagine it being straight from the 60s.

I was disappointed by that idea, because a lot of the modern touches on “The Cannibal Sea” makes this album so much better than being another rehash piece. There is such a distinct vibe throughout this album of feeling warm and fuzzy, in such a way it has been very antidotal to any angry moments I’ve come across in the past. So if you want indie sensibility over ideas from the past then this is for you. If you want to relive the 60s, then go listen to Jefferson Airplane.

14 Various Artists – Breakin Bread – The Deadly 7″ Sins

Speaking of the past, continually trying to live there is not a good thing. However, taking some ideas of the past and putting it together with ideas of today can be a great thing. Breakin Bread’s philosophy of good time funk, soul, hip hop music is inspiring to dance, mix , listen and produce to.

This compilation of various Breakin Bread producers from Colour Climax to Rob Life shows you a side of the UK scene that needs more prominence than a lot of the dry arse UK rappers out there. The beats and the ideas are all mashed together to produce a distinct UK feel without losing that feeling of soul and funk. Hearing these songs it makes you actually want to dance it down, rather than wanting to pistol whip someone.
Effectively the good elements of what made hip hop and the culture I think are properly represented by Breakin Bread, and more than this being a compilation of amazing cuts, it’s a reminder that it doesn’t have to be all doom, gloom, glocks and Rubicon.

13 Amy Winehouse – Frank

Sheeeit Amy what the fuck happened to you? This album was definitely the best album of 2003 for the simple reason it brought back musicality to my life. It’s not a massively complicatedly produced album, but being a pianist and hearing the piano come out on songs over a really powerful voice was just refreshing to me from my world of big beats, noisy guitars and samples. Seeing her perform this album live was infact better than the album itself so that was a beautiful sight to behold. This was way before she discovered a bit of Dutch courage in booze and drugs, and was a shy girl whose stage presence was one of belting it out when singing, then reverting back to being a shy girl inbetween songs.

But let’s not dwell on this too much. Her lyrics of using good old fashioned slang phrases of ‘sket’ and ‘cained’ were very pleasing to hear over a nice chord and string section. Also the sample of Nas and the bonus track “Just Imagine,” made this album distinctly special.

12 RJD2 – Deadringer

The beats, the samples, the programming… just superb. Slight glitchy beats over straight ideas work perfectly to execute an inspiration album. For any producer out there anyway, this album has inspired a lot of my programming to wanting to recreate that style of hip hop of almost toeing towards backpacking … but not. Simple fact fuck keeping the fanboys happy (I just wanted to say it… again).

11 Coldplay – Parachutes

The time I heard this album I was doing Alevels and to be specific it was exam time. I was at the time into 1992 Hardcore, 1995 UK/US Garage and some dirty 2step. The idea of listening to that to study to was not an option, as was with listening to silence. A friend then recommended me this album and it all changed from there.
Serene music without being overly offensive would be a harsh description of Coldplay. A band who have unfortunately turned into something very strange, as listening to their first two albums they kept the purity of their instruments without trying to run some insane expensive effects over it to ‘achieve the big stadium sound’ which seems to come out of their recent stuff.

That little rant over, songs like Shiver, Everything’s Not Lost are just epic. With big riffs that you do not get bored with and Chris Martin belting when the track hits the big crescendo, it’s just something utterly special. This album was just perfect with not one weak track on it (I mean relatively weak), and helped to open my mind to a lot of other music when I went to university.

Albums 10-1