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	1 xtrmntr primal scream Back in January, we all knew this was LP of the year. Paranoid, edgy, jagged, ugly, filthy ragged lo fi FUCK music. Between the skull crunching beats, the Y Front soiling bass, Gillespie's best "yeah yeah"s in ages, the best song titles of any record this year ('Shoot Speed Kill Light', 'Kill All Hippies' etc), the hottest artwork, no vowels and a collective age of about 930, PRML SCRM kicked every last jam out of every last ass in the country, made lesser bands weep on sight, and made the ALBUM OF THE FUCKING YEAR by a mile. We salute them.
	2 The Hour Of Bewilderbeast Badly Drawn Boy Didn't he do well? More than fulfilling the promise of 'EP 1', Damon Gough took an acoustic guitar and shoved it right up the music industry's arse. The Manc Hobbit, the short-arse with the tea cosy, Badly Drawn Boy won the Mercury Prize and our hearts. And lest anyone forget, '...Bewilderbeast' was a gorgeous record, and a Real Album, as in, you know, start to finish, cor it's ace. And 'Pissing In The Wind' made us cry.
	3 Kid A Radiohead They were doomed from the off, of course. Having created an album voted The Best Of All Time, how the hell does a band even think about following it up? Well, they row, split up, regroup, record hundreds of hours of music, edit it to something useable, call it 'Kid A', release it, get slagged, moan, and say there's another one in March anyway. Then LAUGH at everybody because 'Kid A' is, away from the hype, a landscape of terror and loneliness, a bleak, wounded beast and a fine, fine record. Thom took Warp's bleeps and made them his miserable own, and It Was Good.
	4 the great eastern delgados After years in the shadows of their bigger-name discoveries the kings and queen of the Scotpop scene finally came of age this year, and how. 'The Great Eastern' was an almost unbearably lush collection of tales from some lives less ordinary, all hung on tunes whose defiant ambition bordered on the mountainous. Truly magical at its many peaks, this was the sort of record that demanded to be taken home and given a big hug on a daily basis. How could we say no?
	5 the marshall mathers lp eminem After the kick in the moral majority's bollocks that was 'The Slim Shady LP', came this - a sprawling, angry "FUCK YOU", and an even better album than the last. While idiots complained about the album's lyrical content, misogyny etc, Eminem could but laugh, having already answered every criticism that could be thrown his way by the end of the first track. Lyrically brilliant, stylistically faultless, Marshall Mathers III rapped circles around everybody this year, and we loved him for it.