AlbumLove (January 2024): 2000-2004
Time Period: 2000-2004
Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love
Tell us what it is, and why.
Additional Details
Why AlbumLove?
In this day and age, algorithmic recommendations for music are easy to come by, and it's trivial to seek out new music that interests you by searching online. AlbumLove offers an opportunity to sift through music loved by others, including those who might have divergent tastes from you. Think of this as an opportunity to listen outside of your comfort zone, with music that you know someone else adores, from a small pool of thoughtful hand-selected options.
What do I post?
Any album that you love and that you feel deserves more appreciation. There are no restrictions on genre, year, or anything else, and nothing is “too popular” or “too niche”. If you think it needs more love — for whatever reason — then it’s welcome in AlbumLove.
Name the artist and the album, and then, most importantly, share what you love about the album. It could be the music itself, but it could also be your associations with it -- maybe the album reminds you of someone you love, or you saw the band live and got a new appreciation for the studio songs.
Also, commenting on others' recommendations is encouraged! If you love something that someone else shared, let them know!
Do I have to listen to what everyone else posts?
Nope. You don't have to listen to anything if you don't want to. This is about creating a menu of options that people can explore as they wish.
Can I post more than one album in a month?
Nope. Limit one! This helps us be more selective about what we choose, as well as preventing the threads from getting flooded with too many contributions to keep track of.
Why albums and not songs/artists?
I like albums. :)
Seriously though, I feel like it's a very different thing to like an album as a whole versus a few songs or just an artist's general vibe. I like the idea of quantizing music for appreciation in the same way we might do with books or movies.
What about EPs?
Fair game!
This year span is pretty empty in my favorite albums, and I really don't know why. I think I associate it with middle school, where buttrock into pop punk were blasting and I drank the 80's rock and metal kool-aid for a few years... D'Angelo's Voodoo stands out to me, though - it, along with the Samurai Champloo soundtrack (also from this period!) and To Pimp a Butterfly all opened my pasty eyes to jazz-infused hip-hop and neo-soul in college.
I'm a huge video game music fan and there are a ton of GOAT game soundtracks from this period that I occasionally just listen to - mainly Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal, Super Smash Bros Melee, F-Zero GX, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Nintendo's stayed winning when the GameCube sales weren't up to snuff.
I'll agree that buttrock was really annoying...to the point I enjoy it more now via the lens of nostalgia then I did then (even then it's like 5 songs out of thousands).
Maybe check out Machinae Supremacy - Deus Ex Machinae.
Metal band with a lot of videogame influences of the era.
Also Nerdcore was on the rise. Surprised but also not surprised to not see any popping up. A lot of it did not age well.
Thank you! I got out of metal shortly after because I burned out of it, and a weird mix of jazz/electronic/indie stuff replaced through high school, but a friend recommended Blind Guardian recently and I dug it so I'll throw some of that on my new music playlist.
Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth? - The Soft Pink Truth (2004)
Wiki | album.link
The album is a bunch of hardcore and punk covers done as microhouse. The artist is Drew Daniels, member of the EDM duo Matmos. He does a masterful job of keeping the edge and energy of his source material, but stylistically transforming it into a completely new sound. For example:
Teddy and the frat girls - I owe it to the girls
The Soft Pink Truth - I Owe It To The Girls
This album was a relatively recent find for me, which I discovered from Fact Magazine's Best 100 Albums of the 2000s. Their list is a goldmine of deep cuts from all kinds of different genres and holds up well today; highly recommend.
Edit: Changing my answer, I thought this album was published earlier, but it was in 2000. It's half-cheating because its combo of 3 EPs released through 98-00
Lemon Jelly - Lemonjelly.ky
A great downtempo album I never see mentioned. Not my favorite album of theirs (64-95 gets that title), but I love all of them.
Ignore my last answer:
Daft Punk - Discovery, particularily the movie form of it: Interstella 5555.
Deeply personal album for me, one of the first things my wife and I watched together.
It's already well-loved, but it always deserves more IMO. It is to me what Dark Side of the Moon was to my parent's generation.
200%, that album and movie had such an oversized effect on my music/media tastes.
Masta Ace - A Long Hot Summer
Typically soulful Hip Hop is a trademark of the West Coast, but 'A Long Hot Summer' is one of the few East Coast records that brings the soul to New York. This album and the movie 'Do The Right Thing' exist as a couple in my mind, for really conveying that oppressive summer heat felt in the small corners of a big city.
It's one of those slightly-too-long Hip Hop concept albums with two-dozen skits that populated the late 90s/early 2000s, but this is the one I find myself going back to. It tells a small story of making it as a struggling artist in NY at the time. Much like Ace himself, it's understated, uncomplicated, and has style that has hardly aged a day.
While no masterpiece, it paints a lush picture of the city, and there's few albums that sound as good walking through the streets with the sun hitting the high rises on those thick July days. Feels a little wrong to be sharing in January, but maybe a little of that warmth will come through on a cold day too.
Highlight: Da Grind
I could program a whole radio station with music from this era. It's hard to pick just one album.
I'll go with mclusky - mclusky do dallas
If you're going to listen to just one song from the album, I'll recommend To Hell With Good Intentions.
This album, for me, captured a cacophony of raw, absurd, loud energy that hadn't really been seen much before. Years later it also became something of a cult classic so it's been quite an experience watching waves of new people experience it for the first time. Their live show was one of the best I've ever seen and probably did permanent damage to my hearing.
Lately I've been listening to the Jet Set Radio soundtrack quite a bit. The game came out in 2000 so I think it qualifies for a mention here. Unfortunately the complete tracklist isn't streaming anywhere; while I've been enjoying a partial playlist on Spotify, it wasn't until last week that I found this exhaustive FLAC collection and put together my own offline complete set in high quality. Here's a fun introduction to the game and its sequel if you're not familiar with them, to get a bead on the unique underground funk/hip-hop/punk/dance cultural milieu they exist within.
Back in 2011, a JSR fan shared a couple DJ mixes he'd made that were inspired by the music of the games, in the /r/gaming community on reddit. The original download links are dead, and as far as I can tell they don't exist online anywhere anymore. But I still listen to them often and realized this morning that I should upload them to the Internet Archive so they're not lost to time. If you enjoy the game soundtracks, here's the TILDES EXCLUSIVE link to those because they're worth a listen! I also have to mention the two tribute albums 2 Mello released, which are both great works themselves: Memories of Tokyo-To and Sounds of Tokyo-To Future.
I’ve been rocking my own personal FLAC rips of the JSR and JSRF soundtracks for years now (I paid a pretty penny to import both discs, as well as a ton of DDR soundtracks, back in the day).
Also, thank you for that EXCLUSIVE link! I’m excited to dive into those mixes.
Motorcycle Diaries OST
Composer: Gustavo Santaolalla
Year: 2004
I was going to add this one to the Feb AlbumLove, but realized it's a year off.
Why I love it and am sharing: As a movie soundtrack, I'm not sure it would get a lot of attention, but it's brimming with atmospheric instrumentals that feel both calming and energized (I'm not the best at defining genres). There are a couple of high energy vocal songs sprinkled throughout that I usually skip, but on the whole, it's long been one of my faves.