At least 27,000 recordings were released last year around the world. Somewhere within them was one CD that was just right for you: it was filled with the kind of music that speaks to you most, that sets your heart on fire with the selfless, nameless excitement that only art and love can inspire. It was a recording you would play day and night, and for every friend and relative within earshot. But sadly you never heard it. How could you? The odds were against you: 27,000 to 1.
Every year the pop and jazz critics of The New York Times try to lower those odds with the alternative Top 10, a list of high-quality recordings that almost got away in the preceding year. These are not by the bands you were assaulted with all year long on the radio but CD's that lay tucked away in an obscure corner of the globe, in a tiny one-room record store selling independent recordings or lost in the racks underneath life-size Backstreet Boys cutouts at chain stores.
No two critics envision this list the same way: among other things, it is an opportunity to spot up-and-coming talent, to cite favorites that just missed the cut in the traditional year-end Top 10 list or to come to the rescue of a critically or commercially maligned mainstream recording.
If employees at your local record store call security to eject you from the premises when you return week after week trying to find some of these records, try searching online. Mainstream record retailers include CD Now (www.cdnow.com) as well as Gemm (www.gemm.com).
Descarga (www.descarga.com) specializes in Latin music. For independent recordings there is Other Music (www.othermusic.com) and Forced Exposure (www.forcedexposure.com).
Continue reading the main storyJon Pareles
1. Mestre Ambrosio: ''Fuana Casa de Cabral'' (Chaos/Sony Brasil). Driven by drum beats and raw fiddle phrases from northeastern Brazil's traditional music, with guitars that ripple and shove, Mestre Ambrosio's rock songs consider roots, history and possibilities. But the songs jump with all the vitality of the present.
2. Dirty Dozen Brass Band: ''Buck Jump'' (Mammoth). More than a century of New Orleans music -- parades, funk, R-and-B, jazz, even a little calypso -- courses through the Dirty Dozen's songs, which can turn themselves inside out with improvisation while the dancing never stops.
3. Asie Payton: ''Worried'' (Fat Possum/ Epitaph). Asie Payton, a Mississippi farmer who died in 1997, left these demo tapes of primal blues: mostly just distorted electric guitar, rudimentary drums and a voice quivering with fury and disbelief at all the ways he'd been done wrong.
4. Los Zafiros: ''Bossa Cubana'' (World Circuit/Nonesuch). One of Havana's top 1960's rock bands, Los Zafiros pulled together doo-wop harmonies, sultry Afro-Cuban rhythms and stinging quasi-surf guitar. Now their songs from 1963-67 sound like suave excursions into surrealism.
5. Shivaree: ''I Oughta Give You a Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in This Dump'' (Odeon/Capitol). In a breathy, knowing voice, Ambrosia Parsley sings about back-stabbing and love gone awry. Meanwhile her band slouches along the alleyways that lead to blues, country and torch songs.
6. Eliades Ochoa: ''Sublime Illusion'' (Higher Octave). The guitarist who sang the Buena Vista Social Club's ''Chan Chan'' leads a group that's older than he is, the Cuarteto Patria. With taut lattices of acoustic-guitar lines, they add virtuosity to rural Cuban music.
7. Stacey Earle: ''Simple Gearle'' (Gearle/ E-Squared). On an album completed in four days, Stacey Earle's songs came out homespun and pristine. She examines marriage, divorce and starting over in quiet, folky vignettes full of tears and determination.
8. Various Artists: ''Music of Indonesia 20: Indonesian Guitars'' (Smithsonian Folkways). This final volume of an extraordinary series surveys Indonesia from behind the fretboard. Stark, largely meditative solos and duets reveal Islamic, Indian, Hawaiian and pop influences; they're full of spiky little phrases and serenely heartfelt voices.
9. Johnny Dowd: ''Pictures From Life's Other Side'' (Koch). If Willie Nelson turned into Mr. Hyde, he'd be Johnny Dowd. Backwoods Gothic tales of love, death and a perverse God arrive with a twang and a junkyard clatter, reaching for laughs that grow uneasy.
10. Angus MacLise: ''The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda'' (Siltbreeze). Angus MacLise, a founding member of the Velvet Underground who died in Katmandu in 1979, left proof that the 1960's were even wilder than they're remembered: improvised East-meets-West melees of hand drums, minimalistic repetition, heavy breathing, tinkling bells and psychedelic echoes, all on a quest for ecstasy.
Neil Strauss
1. ''Celebrities at Their Worst, Vol. II'' (Mad Deadly Worldwide). Elvis Presley singing lewd rhymes in the studio, Hank Williams Jr. raving drunk onstage, Linda McCartney caterwauling ''Hey Jude,'' Barbra Streisand throwing a fit, and a concert by the heavy-metal band Venom reduced to only the inane patter between songs. It's all here on Nick Bougas's second two-CD compilation of classic gaffes.
2. Chicks on Speed with Christopher Just, ''Glamour Girl'' (Go). The members of the post-riot grrrl Munich trio Chicks on Speed are visual artists, label executives, clothing designers, television producers, comic-book writers and so much more. On this disco record they make punk rock that knows no stylistic boundaries.
3. Comas, ''Wave to Make Friends'' (Plastique) and ''Two Dollar Pistols With Tift Merritt'' (Yep Roc). Proof that the underground continues to thrive in Chapel Hill, N.C., are these two beautiful albums: the Comas write slow, haunting pop reminiscent of Yo La Tengo, and the Two Dollar Pistols pay tribute to the country duet with the ache and twang of the Carbines singer Ms. Merritt.
4. Cubismo Graphico, ''Tout!'' (Sound for Escape). At its best the Japanese one-man band Cubismo Graphico provides a high-density easy-listening pastiche with samples and vocals mostly in French and fast, quirky rhythms that sound like a television being flipped from a soccer match, to a Spanish soap opera, to a French newscast, to a 50's game show.
5. Dauerfisch, ''Crime of the Century'' (Bungalow). A sample-savvy German duo, Dauerfisch hops from new wave to spaghetti western to sculpture seemingly random sounds into pop so beautiful that even the last track on this CD, a computer voice reading the recording credits, is catchy.
6. D.J. Assault, ''Mr. Mutha . . .'' (Electrofunk). Though not as satisfying as D.J. Assault's fast-paced mix records, this compilation contains their highlights, namely the greatest fast, jiggling ghetto-tech anthems of this D.J., who has fused salacious Miami bass, minimalist techno and frenetic drum-and-bass into a new extreme.
7. Icebreaker, ''Distant Early Warning'' (Aesthetics). Though the concept seems unwieldy -- a set of droning rock instrumentals inspired by a NATO nuclear-strike warning system in the Arctic -- the execution is entrancing. With a strong sense of composition and forward motion, this duo creates an electro-acoustic polar soundscape that is anything but frigid.
8. Interadio (at www.shoutcast.com). Last year I put the Internet radio site Shoutcast on this list for its variety of programming. This year I've zeroed in on favorite broadcasters, one of which is Interadio, a rock en espanol station that plays Cafi Tacuba, Actitud Maria Marta and Titan, a Mexico City act whose playful, genre-bending ''Elevator'' (Tombola!) was another 1999 highlight.
9. Sidestepper, ''Logoza'' (Apartment 22). Music evolves through combination, and some of the most exciting hybrids lately have come from merging electronic dance music with regional styles, as in this minialbum via Bogota, Colombia, on which drum-and-bass, cumbia and dub reggae effortlessly and sensuously fuse.
10. Swollen Members, ''Balance'' (Battle Axe). With powerful rapping and innovative beats, this is one of the funkiest, hardest-hitting recent alternative rap releases. The band's core members are a duo from Vancouver, British Columbia, a city that just might give rap (with hotbeds on the East, West and South coasts) a Northern capital.
Ben Ratliff
1. Ethan Iverson Trio, ''The Minor Passions'' (Fresh Sound). Mr. Iverson, mature beyond his years, puts a serenity into this album with the bassist Reid Anderson and the drummer Billy Hart. Not sentimentality: its semi-sour harmonies come from Monk and Herbie Nichols. Rather, he's created a quiet music that's full of careful tension.
2. Guillermo Klein, ''Los Guachos II'' (Sunnyside). Mr. Klein, an Argentine living in New York, has a talent for large-group jazz composition, combining a mass of choirlike horns, minimalism, swing, voice and a bit of fusion's best intentions.
3. Tony Allen, ''Black Voices'' (Comet). The drummer for Fela's band -- who drove its sound every bit as much as the band leader did -- has made a very contemporary version of Afrobeat, with ideas borrowed from dub reggae. Amid tenebrous murmurs that serve as singing, the sound pans back and forth across the speakers, and the continuous, syncopated trap-set rhythms drop out for stretches as if disappearing into tunnels along the highway.
4. Rod McGaha, ''Preacherman'' (Compass). Mr. McGaha, a Nashville-based trumpeter who's a member of Max Roach's band, delivers streamlined renditions of bop standards as well as originals based in R-and-B and gospel; by track 7 you discover he's a singer. Bonus points for beautiful sound on an independent label.
5. Thirteen Ways, ''Focus'' (Palmetto). In a cooperative jazz trio full of collective improvising, the pianist Fred Hersch, the saxophonist Michael Moore and the drummer Gerry Hemingway create something approximating a modern response to Jimmy Giuffre's beautiful, pliant trio records of the early 60's.
6. Bill McHenry Quartet, ''Graphic'' (Fresh Sound). A young saxophonist sets down the new sound coming from music schools and New York's farm-team jazz bars: a hybrid of structure and free improvisation influenced by Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, and possibly even Mr. McHenry's influential contemporary, Mark Turner.
7. Estrellas de Areito: Los Heroes (Nonesuch). The Cuban answer during the late 70's to New York's salsa supergroup the Fania All-Stars, this band combined styles -- charanga, conjunto and jazz -- to create some of the most vibrant jam-session records ever made.
8. Onda Sonora, ''Red Hot and Lisbon' (Bar None). A shrewdly interpretive and often beautiful attempt to combine popular music from the Portuguese-speaking diaspora, it features musicians from Caetano Veloso to the Spanish Gypsy group Ketama.
9. Orrin Evans Trio, ''Grown Folk Bizness'' (Criss Cross). In solos Mr. Evans's piano sound can approximate tuned drums. An aggressive and exciting new pianist, Mr. Evans has still not been recorded to his full potential, but his third disc gets closer.
10. Chicago Underground Trio, ''Possible Cube'' (Delmark). From time to time the basic sound of this hot and earnest young bohemian jazz group has all the newness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago 30 years ago. But there's a resourcefulness here: they use cheap electronics well, they mine a lot of feeling from single vamps, and the disciplined, versatile cornetist Rob Mazurek may yet become the Dave Douglas of the Midwest.
Ann Powers
1. Carl Hancock Rux, ''Rux Revue'' (Sony 550 Music). This literary young lion found the balance between hip-hop cool and the poetry slam's pretensions on his debut collection of funk-powered, soul-searching rants forming a panorama reaching from the neighborhood to the universe.
2. Drive By Truckers, ''Pizza Deliverance'' (Soul Dump/Ghostmeat Records). The son of a Muscle Shoals session man, Patterson Hood was born to mess with the cultural legacy of the redneck rock 'n' roll South. His band plays effortlessly authentic roots punk that's tasty as a pulled-pork sandwich.
3. Toshi Reagon, ''The Righteous Ones'' (Razor & Tie). There is no warmer spirit on the New York music scene than Toshi Reagon, and no fresher album than this came out this year. Unflinchingly political but never preachy, eclectic without stumbling into dilettantism, this is a soul sister's house party.
4. Sally Timms, ''Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos'' (Bloodshot). Ms. Timms expertly walks a tightrope between her native English reserve and country music's bald emotion. The songwriters of bohemian Chicago helped her do it, but this album is all hers: the memoir of a hipster girl grown wise.
5. Rainer Maria, ''Look Now Look Again'' (Polyvinyl Records). When Caithlin De Marrais sings, she goes so wide open that the kid in her soul bursts out. Her mates, the drummer William Keuhn and the guitarist and singer Kyle Fischer, shed all rock 'n' roll affectations to meet her on her post-punk cloud.
6. Odetta, ''Blues Everywhere I Go'' (M.C. Records). The mother goddess of folk blues still has plenty of spice in her, as this long-overdue return proves. Odetta honors Victoria Spivey, Bill Broonzy and Sippie Wallace here, but the real tribute belongs to the 70-year-old singer herself, sharing her extensive knowledge of hardship, good loving and the best way to bend the blues.
7. The Tiger Lilies, ''Shockheaded Peter'' (NVC Arts/Warner Brothers). On a par with ''South Park,'' this cast recording from the hit English ''junk opera'' places 10 gorily hilarious Victorian ''morality tales'' in the hands of the Tiger Lilies. The fates of Fidgety Phil and Cruel Frederick will have children and their parents screaming in delight.
8. John Linnell, ''State Songs'' (Zoe/Rounder). This solo trip by one half of They Might Be Giants explores the strange ways places, and the memories we make in them, invade our psyches. Mr. Linnell searches from Illinois to Nevada and finds bad puns, deep secrets, random associations and the other thrift-store treasures that fill American brains.
9. Angie Stone, ''Black Diamond'' (Arista). More grooves than hooks doomed this album by D'Angelo's onetime collaborator, a writer and arranger with a voice like a slow burn, to a shadowy place in the year's renaissance of female rhythm-and-blues. But for deep funk and heady relaxation, you couldn't spin a more sensual, smarter disc.
10. Mark Lanegan, ''I'll Take Care of You'' (Sub/Pop). The country's three or four remaining grunge loyalists long anticipated this album of favorite cover songs by the voice of the Screaming Trees. Deep blues meets tuxedo soul and mournful punk on this great disc for a cloudy day.
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