Vote

Chocolate and Ice EP from My Morning Jacket.

CD: Puddle of Mudd: Come Clean. SACD: Rolling Stones: Let it Bleed.

Two albums have tied for my 2002 album of the year. The first is ( ) by Sigur Ros and the second is Sea Change by Beck. The Sigur Ros album is some of the most beautiful music I have heard since first experiencing Debussy's La Mer. Beck's album reveals a side of the artist that we have never seen

Scary Music by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops on Telarc SACD.

Billy Bang, Vietnam the Aftermath (Justin Time 165-2). Moving musical commemoration of Billy Bang's and his collaborators' experience in the war. Music is heavily influenced by Vietnamese styles and fused with brilliant improvisations from jazz masters Bang, Frank Lowe, Ted Daniel, Sonny Fortune, John Hicks, and Michael Carvin. Ensemble conducted by Butch Morris.

Dream Theater

Jonathan Butler: Surrender!. This is an awesome CD. Great performances and excellent recording

Coln Vearncombe's Smoke Up Close. In a word: Intimate.

I spent most of the year buying used vinyl. I acquired a ton of albums I didn't own, in good shape, for far less than I would have spent on CDs. There just wasn't much new material that interested me this year.

Patricia Barber's Verse. Even though I like all of her discs, I found it took me a bit of time to get into this one, but it has definitely rewarded the effort.

Reissue from early Rolling Stones as SACD/CD Hybrids.

Well, actually I have two. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by Flaming lips and Paradize from French Indochine. Two wonderful albums which I listen to in loop mode with great pleasure. Yes, I'm a bit mad.

Are you telling me that there was some music worth buying this year?

Unfortunately, I am once again forced to face the shameful truth that the recording and radio industries have no clue as to what people really want. Stop investing your dollars in short-lived pop phoenixes.

A band called eyes for telescopes on a small indie label called sandbar music released a CD called sounds around us that just blew me away. I liked it so much, I (gasp) paid twenty dollors for the experience!

You know, that one with the great bass...

In the LP category, Neil Young's Are You Passionate? and Graham Nash's Songs for Survivors for DVD-A

Beck: Sea Change. Don't have it? Get it.

The Rolling Stones ABKO Hybrid SACD releases

The best? Pierre Laurent Aimard: Live at Carnegie Hall! Runners up include: Rush: Vapor Trails, David Bowie: Heathen, Ryuichi Sakamoto/Morelenbaum: Casa, Magnus Lindberg: Cello Concerto with Esa Pekka Salonen and the LAPO, and Estrella Morente: My Songs and a Poem.

To ask repeatedly for the "best" recording is a little disingeneous, to say the least. With so much good stuff coming out every year, how could we possibly pick, and even if we did, what would be the point?

CD: Echolyn Mei. Finally, a great American progressive rock album that doesn't sound like Genesis, Yes, or Pink Floyd, but is instead a 50-minute symphony where Aaron Copland meets the Grateful Dead. DVD-A: REM Reveal. The Pet Sounds for the new millennium in glorious surround sound. SACD: The Rolling Stones Aftermath (UK). I'd like to give it to all 22 discs, except they should have fit everything onto about half as many, with a few bonus tracks. At least they show that it must be economically feasible to spread SACD production pretty thin. LP: Whatever you found at the last flea market.

Steve Earle's Jerusalem is my pick for CD of the year. I hope it comes out on vinyl!

The White Stripes' White Blood Cells.

Alain Bashung's "L'imprudence".

CD: 1000 Kisses by Patty Griffin.

I not sure if it came out in late 2001 or early 2002, but I'm voting for J. Mascis and the Fog's More Light LP.

The Delos Pops and Caviar SACD. I bought mine at HE2002, and it was well-received in every room that I requested it. The waltz from Swan Lake introduced one young audiophile to classical music in the Tenor Audio/ Pipedream room, and the romance from the Masquerade Suite had the purest violin tone I have ever heard (other than live, of course) in the Nordost room with the Valhalla cables, Gamut electronics, and Verity Audio Parsifal speakers.

The Flaming Lips: Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots!

THe new sheryl crow album...the one with "Steve McQueen" on it. THat song kicks ass.