It’s the arbitrary “end” of yet another solar revolution. Last year, I wanted to do a “best music of 2004″ list, and I kept wanting to do one through most of 2005. 2004 was a good music year for me, as there were many releases I thoroughly enjoyed. And that ended up being part of the problem. I kept procrastinating on the effort of paring down the many releases I thought deserved mention to just 10 “best.”

So now that 2005 is over, I figure it’s finally time to pimp some of the music I was loving in 2004. I’m going to be cheap and not pare it down to any particular number (if you want, feel free take the first ten listed as a top ten). I’m also going to include a bit of pre-2004 music, because one of the big themes for me in 2004 (and 2005) was discovering and loving older, classic music I’d not properly tried or enjoyed before. However, I’m not going to cheat and include the few 2004 releases that I didn’t get into until 2005, after seeing them on “Best of 2004″ lists.

• Mr. Projectile – Sinking
• Deceptikon – Lost Subject
  (aka “sweet, sweet booty candy”)
• Jimi Tenor – Beyond the Stars
• Scissor Sisters
  (also worth acquiring are the excellent non-album tracks “Get It Get It” and the 2003 Tiga Remix of “Comfortably Numb”)
• Syndrone – Salmataxia
• Air – Talkie Walkie
• Vesna – Snow Sences
• ML – Man Is The Warmest Place To Hide & ML – Good Morning
  I wish I could say something amazing about this — it’s just wonderful, and owes a lot to the 70s & 80s music of director/composer John Carpenter; the second release is less ‘serious’ but just as good, and only $2 for the MP3s at en:peg)
• Bola – Gnayse
• Erast – Goodair + Minimissing
  (intricate and all over the place, mash-up d’n'b)
• Everything Is Green
  (an excellent IDM compilation on Toytronic Records
• MD8 & The Mafia Rip Bin
  (these two compilations from label n5MD, the second of which is free, are great collections of darker-edged IDM)
• Proem – Socially Inept, Songs 4 The City Bus, Darker Still, liveMD[cd?]
  (I wouldn’t say they were outstanding — well, Darker Still is extremely good — but I listened to them a lot and still do; Proem’s my hero, and boy was he a busy fucker in 2004)
• Aphilas – Instrumentally Ill
  (this was a 12-inch on Merck Records, and I kept waiting for them to release something else, but it just hasn’t happened… it’s lush instrumental hip-hop, richly lazy & dreamy — and available for free at archive.org)
• Landau – Thepicompromise
  (diverse baroque instrumental hip-hop, a real sleeper of an album, you find yourself enjoying it months after initially yawning at it, it really grows on you)
• Ilkae – Bovine Rearrangement & Stained Glass Piñata
  (they do short, scattershot videogame anthems, possibly an acquired taste, all over the map, but these two albums are really good; be advised that Bovine Rearrangement is an appropriately diverse collection of remixes by other artists — and you can download a few sample tracks from Stained Glass Piñata in this net EP)
• Two Lone Swordsmen – From The Double Gone Chapel
  (dirty electric sex-funk punk rock or something, another album that grows on you, possibly after initial distaste)
• Iyunx Productions – Short Term Memory Loss
  (deep, soulful electronic dub with an IDM twist, has an early Warp B12/Black Dog familiarity to it, without being much like those artists at all)
• Deru – Trying To Remember
  (sleepless, sandy, moebius of techno ambience, very beautiful and dry)
• Freeform – Wildcat
  (anything by Freeform is worth listening to)
• Blamstrain – Circular Dichroism, Envelope Diving, Kotno
  (web-released “kotno” is just some good ol’ fashioned, driving, techno; the other two represent tracks released on Blamstrain’s website, deeply introspective ambient music, excellent stuff keeping us sated in our lust for more after his 2003 album, Ensi)
• Solvent – Apples And Synthesizers
  (proving that synth-pop is still alive and electrifying)
• terminal 1
  (this 4-track vinyl compilation from Merck Records offshoot, Narita Records, drives the beats to your feet and haunts the intelligent dancefloor)
• polar – light years
  Headphone Science – 5 Short Stories on Lines
  Phaeon – Concept Pillow
  Fell – A Victim
  (en:peg digital started in 2004, with numerous $2 MP3 releases; hit and miss, I’d say, but boy, the hits! — these are they from 2004; they also had Proem’s “Darker Still” and ML’s “Good Morning” mentioned above)

So those the 2004 releases I enjoyed and recommend. There were some other 2004 releases I liked that are worth mentioning. Orbital‘s Blue Album came out, their last album ever. As a career-closer, it was almost perfect. The problem for me was the silly tracks “Bath Time” and “Easy Serv.” It became perfect after excising those and inserting (after the best track, “You Lot”) “What Happens Next?” from the One Perfect Sunrise single, “Initiation” from the Japanese edition of the Blue Album, and then “Technologicque Park” from, of all places, the xXx soundtrack. This leaves the album ending with “Acid Pants” and “One Perfect Sunrise.” I really like my personal edit much, much better than the official version. All hail the digital age which allows me to do this!

They Might Be Giants also had an album out, with a couple of EPs, but the material just seemed tired and drained. After a strong comeback earlier in the decade, maybe they need a break again. Ratatat’s eponymous debut and Global Goon’s self-released Family Glue album both delighted my ears, but I guess the music was gimmicky, because after a while they lost their luster. The Cure’s latest album, as disappointing as it was self-titled, managed to have a couple of joyously “that’s so The Cure” songs, namely “The End Of The World” and “Taking Off.”

Beyond that, 2004 was a year I explored a lot of music I’d missed or dismissed when they originally came out. Mostly missed, since much of it was released before I got interested in electronic music around 1997. I’ve already written here about B12 (possibly my most-commented post!) and Saint Etienne. Also from the early 1990s like B12 are The Black Dog (forerunners of Plaid), whose early albums Temple Of Transparent Balls and Parallel are very good, but whose Warp Records albums Bytes and Spanners are outstanding.

This revisiting of early 1990s IDM led me to give another try to some of their musical heirs, particularly those on the short-lived, early 2000s deFocus label. Pay special attention to the amazing Aphelion album, Zugzwang (I wish there was more by them!), and the lovely Plus One album, Bare Necessities (produced by Plaid!). This also allowed me to revisit still-going artists Tim Koch (with Shorts In Alaska), whose sick melodies I now enjoy, and the formidable Lackluster (Container and Wrapping), who also had a new release in 2004, the friendly remix album RemixSelection_One (full of gorgeous remixes he’s done of other people’s music). Incidentally, both Lackluster and another deFocus artist, Esem, went on to have good releases on my beloved Merck Records.

(Speaking of which, if you’d like a perfect sampling of Merck to test the waters, or just to keep a slice of history (heh), you should get the Summer 2004 Merck Mix, a continuous mix of great cuts from all the Merck artists. And since the label will be ending soon, they’ll be selling out all their back catalog, so watch for that.)

Finally, one more artist I inexplicably tried again in 2004 and absolutely fell in love with in all their instrumental incarnations: Funckarma, aka Quench (and a handful of other names). I especially recommend Solid State and their Quench albums Exclude, Dyn and Punctuated. They, too, had some 2004 releases, including an abstract Funckarma EP, Smizm, and some higher-tempo, techno-based EPs as Cane. (I won’t mention their production group for the rap group Shadow Huntaz because I didn’t like the vocals and the music was less complex. Oops, I just mentioned it.)

As you can see, 2004 was a very full music year for me. You’d do well to check out any of these releases. Tune in tomorrow, January 1, 2006, for the 2005 music to which I listened.