Retreat!

When the world closes in, one writer finds music for chameleons and homebodies.

By Peter Nicholson

THE YEAR 2005 sucked for most people. New Orleans sank. Citizens and soldiers alike died in Iraq. The Village Voice got in bed with New Times, and it seemed like the next time I checked the news it would be, "Four horsemen of the apocalypse sighted – more at 11." Despite all the doom, the calendar was filled with enough visiting DJs and live shows to occupy fans in a city smaller than SF for a few years. Yet with all the amazing electronic music coming out that didn't need a club sound system to sound dope, I had a hard time getting motivated to leave my living room. Let Rome burn while I fiddle with my MP3s and CD-Rs – in the face of so much ugliness, there was plenty of introspective music to score the perfect escapist soundtrack. Call it the ostrich instinct to sink my head in the sand, or merely inertia, but 2005 was a year when downtempo ceased to be a dirty word.

Leading the call of the contemplative was Boom Bip's Blue Eyed in the Red Room (Lex). Fans of his hip-hop-based work with the likes of Doseone were in for a surprise on Mr. Bip's latest, which moved even further from his last, Corymb (Lex). From the opening bass-and-guitar chug beneath a reflexive, harpsichord-esque figure on "Cimple," Boom Bip delivered an album that was innovative and engaging not for any one element (although there probably weren't too many other records that featured chopsticks on a banjo), but for how he pieced it all together. Sounds grew, melodies flowered, then withered, and emotions sank or soared as Boom Bip built structures of incredible intricacy that nevertheless remained totally intimate. How can you marry technical brilliance that never preens and raw honesty that doesn't need words to speak? Listen to Blue Eyed in the Red Room.

Though the Domino duo of Caribou and Four Tet both released albums in 2005 that continued weird and wonderful explorations of what happens when you graft together folk, hip-hop, and psychedelia, it was sometime Caribou-collaborator Koushik who kept me coming back. His Stones Throw EP, Be With, jammed 14 songs into 26 minutes, keeping up the label's reputation for the most songs per release. However, unlike labelmate Madlib's often forgettable output ("Hello? Department of Quality Control? Can we get an editor here?"), Koushik's sketchlike songs were uniformly excellent and fully realized despite their brevity. The 57 seconds of "Homage" – with its freewheeling seagull cries, backspinning guitars, and scattered but fat drum kit – were just as satisfying as the more traditional 3 minutes and 31 seconds of "One in a Day," which paired tunnel-echoed vocals with a tom-tom beat hotter than any classic sample.

But the real stay-in-and-ignore-the-madness record of 2005 didn't come until the summer grew cool with the return of Boards of Canada. On The Campfire Headphase (Warp), the Scottish brothers unfurled an album with a woozy coziness worthy of its title, all subtly swaying beats, dreamy production that swirled like oil on water, and tilting guitars pinwheeling off into space. Losing myself in the shimmering cymbals and reflecting reverb of "Dayvan Cowboy" or the dubbed-out, metallic-edged bass drum of "Slow This Bird Down," or the submerged acoustic guitar melodies that gradually unfold on "Peacock Tail," creeping across the speakers like a white contrail high in the blue sky, I was rapt in a world of beauty. It was easy to ignore the land beyond my living room, a land where Democrats in Illinois found it expedient to back an antiabortion senatorial candidate and where "educators" in Kansas saw fit to challenge years of science with creationism rebranded as "intelligent design." As long as the mailman, IM, and Yousendit.com keep bringing me all this wondrous music, I see no reason to leave my cocoon. Maybe in 2006 ...

10 tracks to kick me in the ass and get me off the couch

2005 may have been My Year of Living Lazily, but that didn't mean there weren't plenty of tunes worth dancing to. Here they are in no particular order.

Mathias Aguayo, "Drums and Feathers" (Kompakt)

Jneiro Jarel, "Do Yo Thang" (BBE/Rapster)

Kerri Chandler, "Bar A Thym" (NRK)

Claude VonStroke, "Deep Throat" (Dirty Bird)

Basic Soul Unit, "Surface and Submerge" (Versatile)

Carl Craig, "Angel" (Planet E)

Solid Groove, "This Is Sick" (Front Room Recordings)

Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, "Sykkelsesong" (Eskimo)

Different Gear, "Pop Idle" (Lazy Eye)

Max Fresh, "Ride up to the Stars" (Loungin')