NYTimes Article About 2001 Albums/groups you may have missed
by handlesofloveBest of the Obscure Among 2001's Albums
By JON PARELES
Now that every computer and every apartment is a potential recording studio and every musician could be a do-it-yourself independent label, more than 20,000 albums are released each year, more than any single fan, radio station or critic could possibly assess fully. That means that richly deserving music can go unnoticed, drowned out by better-promoted albums or rendered inaccessible because it eludes the easy categorization that could make it marketable. Top 10 lists and end-of-the-year surveys invariably leave music critics dissatisfied, since so many other worthwhile albums linger largely unnoticed: albums on independent labels and, now and then, albums on major labels that were never treated as high priorities
