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Best of 2004, Part 1: Music

Sitting awake past 2:00 a.m.–so naturally, it’s the perfect time to start my year-end review of things that R0xx0r3d my B0xx0rz over the past 12 months.

Best Music

This was a hard one to come up with, since I spent a huge amount of my listening time in 2004 on scads of obscure New Wave releases from roughly 1978-1987 or so. I’ve currently amassed about 13 hours of the stuff, sitting on my harddrive.

That said, here are what I considered to be my faves from music actually produced in this century:

Zero 7 — When It Falls: The follow-up album to 2001’s platinum-selling Simple Things, and every bit as amazing. Mixing jazz, electronic, orchestral, old-school R&B and more into a style that can only be described as CHILL.

Crystal Method — Legion of Boom: The third album from these guys. Big Beat semi-industrial electronica…GREAT driving music. Lots of guest musicians on this one as well, ranging from human beatbox phenom Rahzel to “I was too good, so I quit Limp Bizkit” guitarist Wes Borland, to actress Milla Jovovich, who provides some drifty eastern-sounding vocals on a track called “I Know It’s You”

Kill Bill: Volume 2 Soundtrack: Hell, I’d have put Volume 1 on this list if it had actually been released in 2004. Both albums are filled with what can only be described as an eclectic mix: Morricone spaghetti-western scores, Latin rhythms, Japanese ballads and odd little pop tunes (like Malcolm McLaren’s sample-based reworking of “She’s Not There”). Tarantino always expands my horizons with his musical selections, and this film continued that tradition.

Well, that’s it for music. Over the next few days, I’ll cover books, games and film/TV as well. Stay tuned.

Over the past couple of days, the following things occurred:

• I watched the appendix materials on the Return of the King Extended Edition DVD, which, like those that came before it, has filled me with creative envy for all those involved in the production.
• I watched the extended Empire of Dreams documentary on the Star Wars Trilogy DVD, which (among other things) talked about how Lucas *didn’t* make his money from the original film, but from the tie-in merchandise.
• I got the latest issue of my subscription to WIRED, which featured an article on Bittorrent. I’m reading the article last night, and come upon the following statement: “Peercasting” drives the final nail in the coffin of traditional must-see TV….Normally the buzz for a show builds gradually; it takes a few weeks or even a whole season for a loyal viewership to lock in. But in a Bittorrented broadcast world, things are more volatile…the pass-around effect of blogs, email and RSS creates a roving, instant audience for a hot show or segment.” It goes on to talk about Gary Lerhaupt, a Stanford grad student who convinced the producers of the documentary Outfoxed to let him put a chunk of the film online as a Bittorrent. Within two months, 1500 people downloaded it. Because of the way Bittorrent works, he only had to poney up the bandwidth costs for getting the original 500 Mbyte file out there, and the peers then took over hosting and sharing themselves, of over 750 gigs worth of traffic. His quote, which hit me like a ton of bricks: “It’s amazing – I’m a movie distributor. If I had my own content, I’d be a TV station.”

If you smell smoke, don’t worry. It’s just the wheels in my head, turning rapidly.

Wheels within wheels…

Over the past couple of days, the following things occurred:

• I watched the appendix materials on the Return of the King Extended Edition DVD, which, like those that came before it, has filled me with creative envy for all those involved in the production.
• I watched the extended Empire of Dreams documentary on the Star Wars Trilogy DVD, which (among other things) talked about how Lucas *didn’t* make his money from the original film, but from the tie-in merchandise.
• I got the latest issue of my subscription to WIRED, which featured an article on Bittorrent. I’m reading the article last night, and come upon the following statement: “Peercasting” drives the final nail in the coffin of traditional must-see TV….Normally the buzz for a show builds gradually; it takes a few weeks or even a whole season for a loyal viewership to lock in. But in a Bittorrented broadcast world, things are more volatile…the pass-around effect of blogs, email and RSS creates a roving, instant audience for a hot show or segment.” It goes on to talk about Gary Lerhaupt, a Stanford grad student who convinced the producers of the documentary Outfoxed to let him put a chunk of the film online as a Bittorrent. Within two months, 1500 people downloaded it. Because of the way Bittorrent works, he only had to poney up the bandwidth costs for getting the original 500 Mbyte file out there, and the peers then took over hosting and sharing themselves, of over 750 gigs worth of traffic. His quote, which hit me like a ton of bricks: “It’s amazing – I’m a movie distributor. If I had my own content, I’d be a TV station.”
  

If you smell smoke, don’t worry. It’s just the wheels in my head, turning rapidly.