The Top 50 Albums of the 2000s: 35-31

35 | FUNKSTÖRUNG The Return to the Acid Planet
Studio!K7, 2007

DOWNLOAD | “Wearing Old Armani”

Truthfully, there used to be a lot of baggage associated with the microgenre formerly known as “Intelligent Dance Music,” or IDM for short. Much like the term “emo,” there is little consensus on who coined the term or what they were actually trying to get at with it, but the artists that had been tagged — pretty much every record on Warp before they signed Grizzly Bear — were saddled with someone else’s ideas. Funkstörung existed on the outskirts of that mostly British scene, and were fairly unknown before issuing a stunning remix of Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love” in 1999. Over the next six years, they did their best to reinvent themselves in every which way, but it was 2007’s The Return to the Acid Planet that brought Funkstörung slightly back down to earth. It’s like Aphex Twin made an album of acid tracks that sounded like “Windowlicker” — which, let’s face it, we all wish he would.

34 | STARS Set Yourself on Fire
Arts & Crafts, 2004

VIDEO | “Ageless Beauty”

I wanted to say that it bummed me out that Stars always seemed to be eclipsed by their high-profile side project, Broken Social Scene, but then I realized that I made an unintended astronomy metaphor and that bummed me out more. So I’ll say this instead: Set Yourself on Fire feels more like a long-form narrative than a disparate collection of songs. It was the album I used to rediscover New York City upon moving back in 2004; it was the album I went to when I wanted to reimagine my life as a movie. If you’ve ever walked across the city using your eyes as camera angles — blurring for soft focus, turning your head for hard pans — you’d know what I mean.

33 | APHEX TWIN Drukqs
Warp, 2001

VIDEO | “Avril 14th”

Released to mixed reviews, Drukqs — the ambitious double-CD collection that served as Richard D. James’s only full-length album of the decade — suffered from a typical critical demand for “editing.” That is to say, not even Prince could get away with releasing 30 songs in one shot. The problem with this criticism is that we don’t listen to Aphex Twin records the way we listen to Prince: Had Drukqs delivered almost two hours of jackhammer drum ‘n’ bass, we’d likely all have surrendered before Disc 2. But this is, by far, Aphex Twin’s most curated excursion: His trademark breakbeat edits sit alongside ambient soundscapes; a newfound interest in deep house (“Bbydhyonchord”) makes sense in proximity to a John Cage–inspired curiosity with prepared piano. Drukqs is so complete in its scope, in fact, that it’s almost okay that James never bothered to follow it up.

32 | TOKYO POLICE CLUB Elephant Shell
Saddle Creek, 2008

DOWNLOAD | “Tessellate”

For most of 2006 and 2007, Tokyo Police Club were the biggest band in the world with only one sixteen-minute EP to their name. Eight songs, yes. But sixteen minutes. (They even played David Letterman!) It was the kind of instant notoriety that only happens to rappers who add sixteen bars to a Jay-Z track. Therefore, Elephant Shell, the band’s first full-length, was received with some skepticism — Pitchfork gave it a 6.3 and essentially said, “We liked them better when they sounded like shit” — but in the context of a decade with several shitty-sounding bands that only made one good record, it’s an album that will be vindicated for its attention to songcraft. For my money, Elephant Shell strikes that rare balance between plaintive contemplation and shrill post-adolescent angst. If people didn’t get it the first time, it’s likely because they were still living in one world or the other.

31 | REKID Made in Menorca
Soul Jazz, 2006

VIDEO | “85 Space”

Rekid’s Made in Menorca was unexpected on every level. It’s not as if Radio Slave producer Matt Edwards needed another studio guise. He’s busy enough as it is. And even if he did have something new to say, I’d never expect a label that made its name on reggae, soul, and Arthur Russell records to show interest. But that’s the kind of idiosyncratic album this is: “Diamond Black” is a retromodern take on dark and dubby house; “85 Space” feels like a decelerated Giorgio Moroder record on ecstasy; “Retro Active” stakes its claim as a swollen exercise in synth disco. Whether or not anyone else toyed with a concept like this in the 2000s, nobody else came through with the execution.