Damek.

But that was then, and this is now.

2005 was a strange year. According to iTunes, I seem to have acquired about the same amount of music I did in 2004. And yet I can’t seem to remember much of anything off the top of my head. Probably because I was focusing on my life more and trying to affect some changes there.

In fact, as the year progressed, I became increasingly disinterested in trying out new music, preferring instead to stick to trusted artists and labels, and to revisit favorites from the past. I suppose that fits with someone who’s reviewing his life and trying to “re-connect with himself.” Introspective moods breed retrospective habits.

Nevertheless, I did listen to a lot of music in 2005, but with few standout releases, and many more questionable items. A big influence on my retro tastes this year may have been the let-downs of a few new releases I had been greatly anticipating:

• Daft Punk - Human After All
• The Chemical Brothers - Push The Button
• Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
• Gorillaz - Demon Days
• New Order - Waiting For The Sirens’ Call

Not too much to say about those. Despite a few good tracks on each, I’d rather forget them as a whole. I would say that at least Boards of Canada pulled the magic trick of being boringly derivative of themselves, but then that’s what New Order did, too, so it seems less special. And while I’ve never been a big fan of New Order, I just loved their last album, Get Ready, so I guess that set me up. Oh, and the Gorillaz album was only half disappointing; I actually like about half the tracks quite a lot.

They Might Be Giants had another album this year, this one for kids like 2002’s No! — Unfortunately, this one wasn’t as good for adults, being more of a concept effort, with music to accompany an educational DVD (with puppets of TMBG!) for learning the alphabet. Good for my niece, maybe, but not so much for me.

While I was being disappointed (or left out of the target audience) by those releases, I was really digging some 2004 releases that I had found in some the year-end best-of lists:

• Secret Frequency Crew - Forest Of The Echo Downs
• o9 - Church Of The Ghetto P.C.
  (a diverse set of driving techno and harder ambient excursions that doesn’t sound like anyone else out there)
• Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
• The Arcade Fire - Funeral

Beyond that, the new releases I was digging in 2005 were primarily from long-time favorite artists (consider the first ten my tops of 2005):

• Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House
  (quite possibly the perfect album, I absolutely and truly could not get enough of this album this year — and making it even better, I actually bought it in England! …and, true to form, Saint Etienne came through on the b-sides to the Side Streets & A Good Thing singles, too)
• M.I.A. - Arular
  (one of the few new artists I heard and loved — mainly because the singles were out the previous year and mentioned in 2004 lists)
• Broadcast - Tender Buttons
  (they lost a member and subtly reworked their sound, yielding an even better, more minimal and immediate album than ever before — a big surprise for me because, though I liked their previous albums OK, they never grabbed me, while this has forced me to keep playing it)
• Solvent - Elevators And Oscillators
  (a fabulous remix-heavy follow-up to 2004’s Apples And Synthesizers)
• Fischerspooner - Odyssey
  (surprisingly awesome; I had been bracing for this to be bad like those others I listed above, but they did not disappoint — Fischerspooner transcend the vacuous hipster scene from which they originate)
• Freeform - Outside In
  (I love freeform, but I admit he gets a bit silly; and then this album, which is surprisingly soothing, a mellower level of fun — every album is an evolution with him, and he just keeps getting better)
• Lackluster - Slice & What You Want Isn’t What You Need
  (I finally got into his music just last year, and he goes and releases two new good albums — the former being full of better, recent music; the latter being a collection of some of his simpler, older unreleased tracks… together they make an enlightening pair)
• AFX - Analords 1-11
  (aka Aphex Twin; although a few of the tracks dispersed on these 11 records left me flat, together they prove the master can still create classics, or at least dig them up from his pile of old, unreleased tracks — also worth mentioning in Aphex-land was Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin, but that was more impressive than exciting)
• Autechre - Untilted
  (autechre — I’ll just leave it at that)
• Yard - Bloom
  Anders Ilar - Nightwidth EP
  Arctic Hospital - Infirm and Attentive
  (Merck Records spin-off Narita comes through with these techno dancefloor records — the standout to check out being Yard’s Bloom — also note that these are the first new artists in the list since M.I.A.; everyone else so far are people I’ve been listening to for years …and these don’t really count because of the label)
• L’usine - Inside-Out EP & Serial Hodgepodge
  (the EP is from this year, the album is from 2004, but I enjoyed them both; the ep is spiritual kin to the dance techno from Narita, while the album wraps a similar feel with more traditional IDM themes)
• Brahma - Plink
  (check it out, it’s a free internet release for you! — this quartet contains Darrell Fitton, aka Bola, and this album strongly reflects the funk themes heard in his 2001/2002 albums, Fyuti and Voile; it’s an “unreleased album” so the music here likely dates from back then, too …if you don’t like the ragga voice intro and interlude, stick with it, the music is worth it, and after a while you get used to it anyway, in an endearing sort of way)
• Marumari - Pathscrubber & bonus tracks
  (nice surprise comeback from Marumari who’s been gone a while; not outstanding, not as good as his last album, 2001’s , but very nice, whetting my appetite for more, and hey — check it out, it’s another free internet release for you!)
• Yunx - In The Heat Of The Night
  (can it be? A disco IDM album? Really? And it’s good!)
• Secede - Tryshasla
  (an ambient masterpiece, with moments of beaty joy, from this up-and-coming artist)
• The Devlins - Waves
  (unlike anything else I listen to, The Devlins are a throwback to my Tori Amos days, when I saw them open for her in Minnesota — not outstanding, but they’re great at what they do, and I keep buying their albums. This one was really good, I thought. Now, speaking of Tori…)
• Tori Amos - The Beekeeper
  (not as wonderful as her last, Scarlet’s Walk, but almost; Tori seems to have morphed into adult contemporary in a much shorter time span than it took David Bowie to do the same…)
• Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
  (so sue me, i liked it — better than his last)

Beyond that, Gimmik over at Toytronic released a small selection of old, unreleased tracks, but it wasn’t too notable. n5MD sated fans of Funckarma with a good collection of their remixes of other artists.

Beloved Merck seemed to be coasting a bit with their releases: a collection of Blamstrain Remixes, a sequel to their acclaimed Aurora compilation of ambient music, a mix CD of and by Proswell, and two (two!) albums of lush semi-political hip-hop by Malcom Kipe. It’s all good stuff, mind you, especially the Blamstrain Remixes and Aurora 2, but you can tell they’re getting ready to call it quits.

en:peg kept the flame going with another slew of $2 downloads, most notably (and this is a wide variety, so definitely try before you buy), Gumble Chutney The Sea Ferret by Decadnids, Dreamscapes by cheju, Meschqui by Quark Kent, EME by Polar, and the excellent grower Between Octavia And Laguna by Fell. Also memorable were Persist by Renku and The Conspiracy Of Silence by Underscore. Most recently, Moon Fear Moon’s Incubator and Lobo Halcyon’s Completely Regular Semigroups show promise, but I haven’t had enough time yet to tell for sure.

Finally, as I drew inward this year, especially in the fall while I was taking Biology I at BMCC, I discovered and rediscovered the wonders of somewhat harsh instrumental/ambient music. Good for studying to and just otherwise thinking and reading, Quake and Esa Ruoho’s Spaces were quickly joined by a few livesets by Lackluster (Esa Ruoho) and more by Proem. Recorded live IDM shows tend to have the same sort of somewhat edgey ambience to them that nurtures my thoughts somehow.

Now that that’s over, here’s hoping 2006 is a banner year, for everyone!