MY LIST FOR PITCHFORK'S "THE PEOPLE'S LIST"

Here is my list for Pitchfork's "The People's List." Having to put my choices in order was incredibly difficult (I'm still not sure I got it right, though I feel pretty comfortable with #1); I would've preferred to just list them alphabetically by artist. Also, to avoid having ridiculous numbers of entries by the same artist(s), I limited my selections to one album per band/artist.

1. Bark Psychosis - ://Codename: Dustsucker (2004)
2. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
3. Portishead - Third (2008)
4. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I (1999)
5. Stereolab - Sound-Dust (2001)
6. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006)
7. Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997)
8. The Weeknd - Thursday (2011)
9. Four Tet - There Is Love in You (2010)
10. The For Carnation - The For Carnation (2000)
11. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)
12. Mogwai - Young Team (1997)
13. Burial - Street Halo EP (2011)
14. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (2010)
15. Fever Ray - Fever Ray (2009)
16. Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP (2000)
17. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes (2001)
18. SBTRKT - SBTRKT (2011)
19. Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey EP (2007)
20. Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms (2009)
21. Bjork - Homogenic (1997)
22. Aphex Twin - The Richard D. James Album (1996)
23. Fennesz - Black Sea (2008)
24. Sonic Youth - Murray Street (2001)
25. Lokai - Transition (2009)

I wanted to keep it to twenty five choices because that seemed like a good number. Any more and I feel it starts to become a little harder to justify that each album really meant something to me on a personal level. I tried really hard to avoid putting any albums on my list just because they're supposed to be "important." My rationale for selection was basically "what are twenty five albums released between 1996-2011 that I really love listening to?"

Actually, to be perfectly honest, it wasn't that hard to stop at twenty five. It would've been more difficult to keep going--I doubt I could get to fifty with the one album per artist rule and all of the other rules I tried to set for myself. Based on my scribblings on a sheet of paper, though, the next fifteen would look something like this:

• POLARBEAR - Why Something Instead of Nothing? (1999)
• Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998)
• Darkstar - North (2010)
• Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension (1996)
• Blue Daisy - The Sunday Gift (2011)
• Real Estate - Days (2011)
• Girls - Album (2009)
• The Besnard Lakes - Are the Roaring Night (2010)
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - B.R.M.C. (2000)
• Chavez - Ride the Fader (1996)
• Bardo Pond - On the Ellipse (2001)
• Gonjasufi - A Sufi and a Killer (2010)
• Broadcast - The Noise Made By People (2000)
• The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011)
• Menomena - Under an Hour (2006)

One thing I find interesting about all of this is that you can see the pattern of my listening, in some ways. Most entries are either ten+ years old or from the past five. That space in between was spent largely listening to older stuff--digging into back catalogues or doing my homework on various genres. Obviously some artists on the list continued to release stuff throughout the decade that I listened to, but in a broad sense it's really only in the past four or five years that I've started to focus on the here and now again. Also, it's interesting the way that the slightly different criteria I used shifted the ordering from end of year lists I've made in the past (like with Four Tet and Flying Lotus, or SBTRKT and Blue Daisy).