RA begins its week-long look back at the past decade with our list of the finest long players.

There was a lot of hand-wringing in the ’00s about whether the album still mattered in the rock world. In our sphere, though, it’s hard to say that appeal has ever waned. Ask any artist that has spent their career releasing a crush of 12-inch singles and digital EPs, and they’ll tell you that it’s the only place to stretch out, the format in which they can truly showcase everything they have to say. The best albums, though, transcend context. And that’s largely what our top 100 records of the decade reflect. Whether it be house, techno, disco, drum & bass, jazz, trip-hop, ambient or all of it at once, these were the many sounds that made up the past decade for us.
(continue reading…)