1. Gorillaz - Demon Days

Feels a bit odd giving the top slot to an an album I don't de facto own, but Gorillaz is at least something resembling a new act. And the album is great.

Highlight: Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey's Head - The Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud meets the 21st century.

2. Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks

OK, I admit they are attempting to capture old glories and failing. Still, the album has it's moments. These guys can still make good music, even if it asn't groundbreaking anymore.

Highlight: Tour de France Étape 2 - The whole Tour '03 sequence is great, but this portion is particularly magnificient.

3. King Wayne - The Hidden Sword

Eraserhead delivers his best effort to date. Short and to the point. The only negative thing to point out is the artwork and I'm to blame for that.

Highlight: MacGyver Theme - Because.

4. David Bowie - Heathen

It's inconsistent. The subject has been beaten to death already, so I'll just leave it at that.

Highlight: I Would Be Your Slave - David demonstrates he can still write, and come up with something at least resembling new stuff.

5. Gorillaz - Gorillaz

The debut has it's moments. It also has it's non-moments, especially on the early part of the album, tracks that sound a little too close to the sound of Blur's 13 to warrant their place on a Gorillaz album.

Highlight: Clint Eastwood - By now probably a bit of a cliché, but my god the song rocks.

6. Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars

Again, an artist (well, two) who made great stuff a few decades ago attempt to capture the magic and fail. The adventurous sound of No Pussyfooting and Evening Star is gone, replaced by a cold, over-conceptualised sound on tracks named after (you guessed it) the seven Equatorial stars. The result is basically a run-of-the-mill ambient album, something the two first Fripp/Eno albums certainly were not.

Highlight: In the name of all fairness, they all sound the same.

7. King Wayne - Turkish For Death

Partially soundtrack-work, a bit too long with inferior pieces thrown in, but also includes the first true King Wayne classics.

Highlight: Turkish For Death, too weird for it's own good but just that, good.

8. Mike OIdfield - Tubular Bells 2003

An inferior note-by-note recording of the classic (but overappriciated) original. A lot of the spirit of the original is lost with the use of modern technology in the recording process, resulting in a lifeless ghost of the vibrant original. Where Oldfield strayed from the original mix, the changes are for the worse.

Highlight: Hmm. There isn't one.

9. Suede - A New Morning

I value this today a lot more that I valued it when it came out. The only problem is, I value Suede a lot less. It's a passable album.

10. Karl Bartos - Communication

Kraftwerk's former percussionist tries to show that he too can make music. And he can. Unfortunately his gifts as a lyricist aren't up to a scrath (maybe he should have asked Schult to help out with them?). The album gives an interesting idea of what Kraftwerk's sound might have developed into if the group had chosen a different path in the early 90's... the biggest problem is that the album also sounds like it dates from 1993, not 2003.

It's interesting to note that this album was released in 2003, and like Bowie's offering from the same year, it includes a track called Reality.

Highlight: 15 Minutes of Fame

Project Michelangelo | LiveJournal