my ten essential, mandatory, compulsory, absolutely friggin necessary albums of the 2000's. Many of which I only discovered in the last two years. These are not in any particular order or ranked in any way. Sometimes music manipulates my ears, enters my brain and has a profound and wonderful effect on the electrochemical processes that give ryan cognitive function. These are albums by bands I am grateful to be able to experience.

1 band- Pelican    Album- Australasia. An instru-metal band. I have all their albums but I was particularly struck by this one. Heavy but melodic, primal but meaningful. Catchy but not trite.

2 Band- Isis    Album- Take your pick; celestial, oceanic, wavering radiant, panopticon... sell your television and buy these records right now. It's hard to describe their sound. a sort of dark, ambient at times, shriekingly aggressive at others type of metal. I don't like the "growling" vocal style they use sometimes but I can look past that for this band. Their music is amazing

3 Band- Red Sparrowes     Album- At the Soundless Dawn. I guess I'd call Red Sparrowes post doom-rock. I hate genre names but unfortunately language isn't perfect. This band has gone though a lineup change and I'm still trying to decide what to make of their sound after that. But this album sucked me in and made me love this band.

4 Band- Keelhaul     Album- Subject to Change Without Notice. Cleveland's finest (only?) math-metal band. You need to see this band live. Make whatever sacrifice is necessary to make that happen. Food, sex, sleep... none are as important as seeing Keelhaul live. And make sure you watch the guitarist. (The one who doesn't sing) About half of their music is instrumental and when they sing it's actually pretty good. These guys like to play with timing and dynamics A LOT. Which I love.

5 Band- Russian Circles       Album- Enter. An instrumental rock/metal/post-rock outfit. An amazing drummer and a creative guitarist with a loop pedal. Great, fantastic friggin jump-up-and-down riffs and really nice melodies. Consecutively and/or concurrently

6 Band- the Bad Plus      Album- Give. A fantastic modern jazz band who have their own unique sound and my very favorite drummer. I don't care how good you think you are... David King is better. These guys are known for taking songs by artists like Blondie, Rush, Aphex Twin, David Bowie etc and turning them into twisted jazz covers. But it's their original stuff that I really love. I hope I get to see them live again before I expire.

7 Band- Caspian      Album- the Four Trees. In an increasingly formulaic genre these guys manage to stand out somehow. And they are a lot of fun to see live. Three guitarists, bass, drums and three loop pedals. Waaaaaall of sound kind of thing. Beautiful melodies punctuated by think riffs. Also instrumental... the best kind of music.

8 Band- Clutch      Album- Blast Tyrant. I'm not good at or comfortable with picking a "favorite album" by a band I love but this would be a real candidate. This is before they crossed the line into too much blues and not enough stoner rock. I love Neil Fallon's voice and the heavy groove that is so often the backdrop for it. You can't call yourself a stoner if you don't own a Clutch album.

9 Band- Efterklang      Album- Tripper. It doesn't make sense that I like this record. Ok to be honest I absolutely adore it. It is very electronic and has a heavy focus on the vocals but I've never heard a band make such heart-wrenchingly beautiful sounds. Except Pink Floyd.  Anyway... I bought four more of their albums and I love this band.

10 Band- Meshuggah      Album- Its a toss-up between Catch 33 and Nothing.    Meshuggah is the best math-metal band I've ever heard. They are in many ways the "traditional" metal sound but their songs are rich and complicated and very creative. They are the jazz of metal...not every musician is capable of playing this stuff. Not because they can make a stupid face and play scales really fast but because the timing is often so complicated and offers a really unique listening experience. Catch 33 is my favorite album of theirs and really shows what they can do. But there's a song on Nothing called Straws Pulled at Random that is one of the most moving things I've ever heard. I know it sounds corny but I've actually heard this song in my dreams a few times.

11 Band- Mono        Album- Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined.  I'll just say this... you know NOTHING about beautiful, extended, heavy, droney, wall-of-sound music of you haven't at least heard this. If you're nice to me you can come to my house and listen to it. But I won't loan out cd's anymore. No one returns them.

12 Band- This Will Destroy You        Album- This Will Destroy You. Ignore the somewhat mawkish name. Great instrumental post-rock/ shoegaze, whatever. Lots of ebow and big cymbals. Not as heavy as Caspian and similar groups. These guys are more about pretty melodies. Very good music that stays in your head for a while. I'm listening to it now.

13 Band- the Necks        Album- Chemist. This is a three-piece modern jazz band from Australia. They like to play hour-long things that somehow manage to keep your attention the entire time. Usually bass, drums and piano but this album has a guitarist in the first song. The other unusual thing about this record is that is consists of three songs, each about twenty minutes or so instead of one hour-long thing as mentioned above. These guys are really something. If you'd like to experience the musical equivalent of heroin listen the the record Aether.

14 Band- Tristeza (Portuguese for "sadness")       Album- Dream Signals in Full Circles. Another great instrumental post-rock band that manages to have their own voice in a sea of derivative dreck. Interesting themes to their songs that are catchy but nicely done and not corny.

15 Band- Turing Machine       Album- A New Machine For Living. Buy their albums. Support them. Let them sleep in your living room if you're lucky enough to have them play in your town. We need to make sure these guys keep playing. Really interesting instrumental rock. Has a nice groove with subtledistortion and occasional weird sounds.

16 Band- Lucy     Album- Self-Titled EP. This is my band. I put this hear because it is a musical keystone of the last ten years for me.  It's also the best music I've ever been a part of and I get to make it with my best (and only) friend.

17 Band- We Followed Lions          Album- Who the hell knows. Someone loaned a home-made cd to me with an album on it by this band. I don't think it had the name of the album itself written on it. But it's sooooo damned good. This is a small-time but very talented band. I hope to hear more of their stuff. I played this record over and over for a week. My wife was not pleased.

18 Band- Esbjorn Svennson Trio        Album- Seven Days of Falling. Possibly the most amazing jazz three-piece I've ever heard. And I've heard a lot. Their music is so creative and beautiful and cutting-edge. Three very talented individuals. The bassist (who plays an upright, like any bassist in a jazz trio should) uses effects occasionally... distortion, wah, etc but does so in a good, subtle way and often their music is quite aggressive for a band with just bass, drums and piano. Very, very, very good jazz.

19 Band- Slayer         Album- God Hates Us All.  I played this over and over for weeks. This record epitomizes metal for me. Kerry King's playing, Tom Araya's voice... the absolute metal archetype. Whether you like metal or not you should at least hear this once. Maybe.

20 Band- Happy Apple       Album- Please Refrain from Fronting. Absolute groove insanity shoved into your hearing-holes by drums, bass, and saxophone. There's nothing more to say. Get this album today.

21 Band- Lightning Bolt          Album- Hypermagic Mountain. Lightning Bolt is a bass and drums duo. I had a hard time deciding which of their albums had the most profound effect on me. Lightning Bolt is the auditory equivalent of a savage ass-beating. I listen to them when I go for a 5-mile run and it shaves minutes off my time. If I ever decide to destroy the world this will be the soundtrack.

22 Band- Medeski, Martin and Wood         Album- Uninvisible.    Their sound is hard to describe. Bass, drums and keyboard with lots of samples and synth sounds. It varies a lot from really nice, funky jazz to crazy fusion to fairly straight-forward head-bopping rock. Instrumental of course. These guys are really something and I highly recommend giving them a listen even if you don't like jazz.

23 Band- Battles       Album- Mirrored. This band doesn't make a lot of sense. It's almost as if they're trying to annoy you. But the music is really good despite their attempts to make into into some kind of cartoony madness. And it's so different from the ubiquitous pop garbage out there that it's really refreshing.

24 Band- Mastodon         Album- Remission. It's hard to stand out in the metal genre but these guys do. They were great until Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye. I don't know what happened to them then but Remission is a really good record. Very nasty metal grooves with a fantastic drummer and some nice guitar work. I like the vocals too which is rare for me. Pay close attention to the first song on this one. It's called Crusher/Destroyer and is in my opinion the perfect metal riff.

25 Band- Tomasz Stanko Quartet        Album- Lontano. Tomasz Stanko is a trumpet player from Poland. A pretty good one. And on this record he has a really talented band behind him... piano, bass and drums. Good stuff if you like real jazz. If you don't you're wrong.


I am not going to check the content or spelling of this list because I am tired of typing and I want to play my bass.

-ryan