List some of your favorite records that turn 20 this year

I feel like this was a banner year for me as a music fan. The year I started paying a lot more attention to current music and also having a lot more access to music due to broadband.

I'd been on ILM a couple of years, but this was the year it really started feeling like a community and I remember going to a few FAPs and meeting fun people in Cambridge and London.

Also it was the year Sick Mouthy let me write my first ever published music articles for Stylus, so that felt like a big deal to me.

Wolf Eyes - Burned Mind

This was also the year I got really into US noise, Amerindie and Freak Folk stuff. The excitement burned bright, albeit with diminishing returns after a while

2004 list I made at the time:
1. The Uncle Devil Show - A Terrible Beauty (Del Amitri incognito)
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus
3. Stan Ridgway - Snakebite
4. Tears For Fears - Everybody Loves A Happy Ending
5. Magnetic Fields - i
6. Hem - Eveningland
7. Interpol - Antics
8. Robyn Hitchcock - Spooked
9. Wonder Stuff - Escape From Rubbish Island
10. Nora O'Connor - Til The Dawn

Late Finds & Singles:
Boxer Rebellion - 3 singles
Killing Joke - Chaos For Breakfast (first 4 singles plus disc of demos)
Longwave - Life Of The Party EP
Lucero - That Much Further West (2003 release, found early in 2004)
Jesse Malin - The Fine Art Of Self-Destruction (2003 release, found early in 2004)

Best Compilation / Reissue / Live:
Tommy Keene - Drowning (rarities compilation)
Mekons - Punk Rock (all early material played live)
Andy Partridge - Fuzzy Warbles Vol 5+6
Weirdos - We Got The Neutron Bomb (Weird World Vol 2)
Wire - On The Box: 1979

Best CDRs:
A House - Rarities (all vinyl-only material)
Cud - Cudstock Naked
Gerard Langley - LIT Volume 2

Most Disappointing: Tanya Donelly - Whiskey Tango Ghosts
OR They Might Be Giants - The Spine

At the time, Arcade Fire's Funeral felt like an album for the ages. It's Pitchfork's number one for 2004. I haven't listened to it in years, and am not likely to now.

Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks
Sagor & Swing – Orgelplaneten
Stereolab – Margerine Eclipse
Peter Hammill – Incoherence
Hold Steady – Almost Killed Me
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Marissa Nadler – Ballads of Living & Dying

i just looked at pitchfork's top 50 of 2004 and the only album on it that i love and own is blueberry boat. i think i was mostly listening to metal and old music back then. i did write monthly for a metal magazine at the time. i think. maybe i was just writing for the Voice. i know that ilx made me buy stuff that i never listened to back then. like junior boys.

for the record, i still listen to blueberry boat ALL the time. i'm kinda fixated on it. and their other stuff. but that one in a big way. some things just get ya.

just checked out that top 50 and there are vv few albums i still listen to or even own on there. Medulla, Madvillainy, The Blue Notebooks, Last Exit. I should probably own Blueberry Boat, that's a classic. There are some mystifying picks which probably don't make sense to anyone who wasn't there, though.

!!! - Louden Up Now
Asa-Chang & Junray - Tsu Gi Ne Pu
Electrelane - The Power Out
Halcali - Ongaku no Susume
Oneida - Secret Wars
Plumbline - Pin Points
Selfish Cunt - No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper
Stereolab - Margarine Eclipse
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - The Royal Society

Blueberry Boat is a masterpiece and only gets better with age.

Secret Machines - Now Here Is Nowhere
Languis - The Four Walls
The Dead Texan - s/t
Lali Puna - Faking The Books
Bardo Pond & Tom Carter - 4/23/03
Ana da Silva - The Lighthouse
The Muffs - Really Really Happy
Juana Molina - Tres Cosas
Jack Rose - Raag Manifestos
Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars

2004 releases that I remember liking a lot back then:

David Darling and Wulu Bunun Tribe - mudanin kata
Brightblack - Ala.cali.tucky
Deathprod - morals and dogma
Joanna Newsom - the milk eyed mender
AnCo - Sung Tongs
Mylo - destroy rock n roll
Madvillainy
Fennesz - venice
Bjork - medulla
Junior boys - last exit
Arve Henriksen - chiaroscuro
Sachiko M / Toshimaru Nakamura / Otomo Yoshihide - Good Morning Good Night
Sufjan Stevens - seven swans
Susumu Yokota - symbol
Annie - anniemal
Xiu xiu - fabulous muscles
Blonde redhead - misery is a butterfly

Probably missing several others… espers, akira rabelais, max richter, deerhoof, tom waits, dungen, air, DFA1979… pretty good year

Listening to Blueberry Boat now... I know this is a total cliché, but if this album were released today, it would still sound totally "fresh" (IMO)