The noughties have seen probably the most radical changes in the music industries since the advent of the record. Consumption habits have dramatically moved from traditional to digital formats, music has been increasingly seen as something to steal rather than to buy, and listening habits means that nowadays, the album is becoming increasingly redundant. Or is it? Whereas it had, at least in some circles, become totally acceptable to fill records with substandard music, it is now essential for artists to create consistent pieces of work if they want to retain the attention of their audience. The last ten years have delivered their fair share of hits and misses, and this list doesn’t pretend to be in any way shape or form exhaustive. This is just, in no particular order, the definitive list of the 20 albums that have defined the noughties at themilkfactory.

JOANNA NEWSOM
Ys
DC303CD
Drag City 2006
05 Tracks. 55mins41secs
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An album like no other, by an artist like no other. Containing just five songs, some developed over fifteen minutes, Ys, named after a small mythical city on the coast of Brittany, France, is the second album by American folk singer and harp player Joanna Newsom. Van Dyke Parks wraps lush orchestrations around Joanna Newsom’s weird and wonderful tales to give her poetic lyrics additional relief and accentuate the emotional nature of her compositions.

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MURCOF
Martes
BAY23CD
The Leaf Label 2002
09 Tracks. 51mins55secs
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Sampling contemporary classical works and assembling them into stark electronic pieces, propelled by micro beats and glitches, Mexican artist Fernando Corona, recording under the name Murcof, created one of the most compelling and evocative electronic debuts of the decade.

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BROADCAST
Tender Buttons
WARPCD136
Warp Records 2005
14 Tracks. 40mins32secs
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By the time they released their third album, Broadcast had simmer down to just Trish Keenan and James Cargill, and had shed most of the rich and ornate forms of previous records to only retain the gritty electronic core of their music.

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ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Merriweather Post Pavilion
WIGCD216
Domino Recording Co. 2009
11 Tracks. 54mins42secs
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Merriweather Post Pavilion is a far cry from the primal tribal sound of Animal Collective’s early records, yet it is also a testament of how the band have retained the essence of their sound while continuously evolving into more song-based forms.

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PORTISHEAD
Third
1764013
Island Records 2008
11 Tracks. 50mins06secs
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It took over ten years for Portishead to release the follow up to their eponymous second album, but Third proved worth the wait. Gone was the trip-hop of the mid-nineties, replaced with healthy doses of Krautrock, but at the heart of it still lies ‘that voice’.

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ARVE HENRIKSEN
Cartography
ECM2086
ECM Records 2008
12 Tracks. 51mins11secs
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After three genre-defining albums for Rune Grammofon, Arve Henriksen’s Cartography, released on ECM, showed a more mature approach. Working with the cream of Scandinavian jazz, Henriksen created with this fourth album a truly masterful work.

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BIOSPHERE
Dropsonde
TO66LP
Touch 2005
06 Tracks. 37mins52secs
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After a series of increasingly isolationist ambient records, Biosphere’s Geir Jenssen took a different path with his eighth album, incorporating jazz rhythms and richer, warmer soundscapes into his sumptuous ambient compositions.

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CLARK
Body Riddle
WARPCD149
Warp Records 2006
11 Tracks. 42mins21secs
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Clark has established himself as the most consistent of Warp’s electronic artists of the decade with a string of excellent electronic records. Gritty, raw and angular, Body Riddle, his third album, defined Clark’s sound more than any other.

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AUTECHRE
Quaristice / Quaristice (Versions)
WARPCD333X0
Warp Records 2008
11 Tracks. 67mins49secs
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Seventeen years on from their first release, Autechre continue to redefine their sound record after record. Quaristice, with shorter, snappier tracks, showed a return to more accessible musical forms, while its sister album, Quaristice (Versions), offered totally different versions of some of the same tracks.

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BURIAL
Untrue
HDBC002
Hyperdub Records 2007
10 Tracks. 50mins28secs
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A strong progression from the clinical dubstep of Burial’s debut, Untrue introduced haunting voices and swirling melodies, wrapped around razor sharp beats.

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TWINE
Twine
GI18
Ghostly International 2003
09 Tracks. 63mins32secs
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Twine’s fourth album constituted the pinnacle of the duo’s electro-acoustic work. Processing acoustic and electric instruments and incorporating them in their complex electronic constructions, occasionally adding vocal samples, they created a truly compelling record.

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BENOÎT PIOULARD
Précis
KRANK098
Kranky 2006
14 Tracks. 36mins52secs
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Combining delicate acoustic song forms and electronics, American musician Thomas Meluch, recording as Benoît Pioulard, produced a stunning record, filled with poetic touches and intelligent pop music.

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THE BLACK DOG WITH BLACK SIFICHI
Unsavoury Products
PUPLP3
Hydrogen Dukebox 2002
20 Tracks. 65mins26secs
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Prior to The Black Dog becoming a trio again, Ken Downie recorded this record with Scottish poet Black Sifichi, who can be heard throughout the album placing his odd surrealist tales over Downie’s impeccably classy electronica.

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MAX RICHTER
The Blue Notebooks
CD1304
130701/Fat-Cat Records 2004
11 Tracks. 40mins36secs
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One of the brightest talents on the new classical scene, composer and pianist Max Richter created a truly evocative piece of work with his second album, mixing delicate piano pieces, compositions for string quartets, discreet electronics and found sounds.

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THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA
Et In Arcadia Ego
HPLL014
Highpoint Lowlife 2005
09 Tracks. 57mins00secs
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The first album by Marcia Blaine School For Girls member Ruaridh Law was released five years ago on the excellent Highpoint Lowlife, deploying inspired atmospheric soundscapes and complex beat structures over just under an hour.

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310
Recessional
BAY33CD
The Leaf Label 2003
15 Tracks. 54mins37secs
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Combining elements of hip-hop, jazz, electronica and folk has been at the core of 310’s work for over a decade now, but on their fifth album, their third for Leaf, the duo formed of Joseph Dierker and Tim Donovan gave their sound a more accessible twist while losing none of its original intricacy.

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VARIOUS PRODUCTION
The World Is Gone
XLCD204
XL Recordings 2006
12 Tracks. 46mins52secs
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Operating under a rather anonymous name, British duo Various Production conjured the contradictory forces of urban dubstep and pastoral folk into one fascinating record, served by a plethora of vocal contributors.

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COLLEEN ET LES BOITES A MUSIQUE
Colleen Et Les Boîtes A Musique
BAY53CD
The Leaf Label 2006
14 Tracks. 38mins55secs
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French artist has released three magnificent records in the last decade, yet it is this mini album, originally commissioned by French public service radio station France Culture, composed entirely on music boxes and processed on computer later on, that has proved the most enduring, evocative and poetic of the lot.

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SUPERSILENT
6
RCD2029
Rune Grammofon 2003
06 Tracks. 57mins51secs
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The sixth album by Norwegian super group Supersilent showed yet another dimension to the quartet’s incredibly vast repertoire by investigating the slightly more subtle ambient side of their improvisation work.

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BEN FROST
Theory Of Machines
HVALUR2
Bedroom Community 2006
05 Tracks. 38mins40secs
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Australian musician Ben Frost’s first album for Bedroom Community was like a series of shockwaves delivered in the space of forty minutes and five tracks. A deeply haunting and often threatening record, it continues to make a considerable mark.

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TWINE
Violets
GI59
Ghostly International 2008
10 Tracks. 58mins42secs

Greg Malcolm and Chas Mossholder met in high school in the late eighties and began collaborating as Twine toward the end of the nineties, after having spent part of their formative years in various bands. Their first album, Reference, was released on AdAstra in 1999 and was quickly followed by Resource, a split album with Horchata. Since, the pair’s complex and emotional mix of glitch, dense atmospherics, reminiscent of 4AD at its haunting peak, and intricate electronic structures adorned with found sounds, has been constantly refined, redefined, and applied on three magnificent albums, released over a three year period, from Circulation (Komplott, 2001), to Recorder (Bip-Hop, 2002) and Twine (Ghostly, 2003). Since, despite being announced for over three years, Violets had remained mysteriously out of Ghostly’s release schedule, until now.

Right from the album’s opening sequence, as a lonely electric guitar is caught between a stormy backdrop and occasional dense swathes of treated guitars, Twine revive the vastly emotional and seismic soundscapes of their previous opus and continue to polish a sound which, although deeply reliant on electronics, actually focuses primarily on structural layers of electric guitars treated to various levels. Sounding like the ghost of My Bloody Valentine, stripped of distortions and noise, with its emotional essence and scope intact and laid bare, Twine weave a series of harrowingly beautiful instrumental pieces which they ornate with excerpts of phone conversations, monologues and crowd noises. On Endormie, Cranes singer Alison Shaw is found murmuring in her best French about feeling on the edge of sleep and dreams while ominous clouds of drones, treated guitars and clicks develop in the background.

As the album progresses, the atmosphere becomes denser and darker, especially on tracks such as In Through The Devices, Violets or the epic Lightrain and the minimal structures drawn by Malcolm and Mossholder feel more spacious and vast, while remaining at the same time deeply claustrophobic and oppressive. But Twine don’t content themselves with creating stark atmospheric pieces, and, deep amidst thick layers of textures flourish subtle melodies, which develop almost imperceptibly, at times eventually emerging entirely from the sonic fog and radiating glowing warmth over the pair’s post industrial formations, at others remaining hidden below the surface, growing like a cancer or snaking their way through arrhythmic pieces.

With Malcolm living in Baltimore, Maryland, and Mossholder in Boulder, Colorado, Violets was, very much like its predecessors, recorded as the pair exchanged files over the net and added layer after layer of textures and depth to their compositions. This certainly contributes to the impression of extreme fine detailing that prevails throughout. On Violets, Twine take the dense and moody soundscapes of its predecessor and amplify them, accentuate the relief and depth of their music, but, crucially, loose nothing of the emotional scope that gave their previous work its gravitas. While it has been a long wait, Violets proves that the flame that has kept Twine alive until now deserves to burn brighter than ever.

4.9/5

Twine (MySpace) | Ghostly International
Buy: CD | iTunes