Diaries
Everything
Who's Online?
FAQ / Help

Print Story Music rambling
Music
By aphrael (Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 12:37:39 AM EST) (all tags)
Sitting in channel last night, r343l mentioned that she should talk to her roommate A and get his list of the top 100 albums of all time (A has a very ... strange ... sense of music; much of what he likes I find bizarre and inpenetrable). This got me wondering, what are the albums which have moved me the most? Not the ones that I love, or the ones that I think are technically the best or historically the most important or anything, but the ones which, the very first time I heard them, made me sit back and go 'wow'?

So here they are, in no particular order:



  • Endtroducing, by DJ Shadow. When I was young, I listened to music for the poetry, for the way the music helped make the mood of the words come alive. This album taught me to love music.

  • Joshua Tree, by U2. Hands down the best use of music to make the mood of lyrics come alive.

  • The Mask and the Mirror, by Loreena McKennit. Ethereal and trancy celtic music, justthe thing to make the morning after surreal.

  • MCMXC a.D, by Enigma. In retrospect, overlaying Gregorian Chant and dance tracks seems obvious, but at the time it was incredible.

  • Graceland, by Paul Simon. I'd long been familiar with Simon and Garfunkel's work (they had been my favorite band in middle school), but this was something completely different.

  • Urubamba, by Urubamba. The absolute height of Peruvian pan-pipe music.

  • Pretaluz, by Waldemar Bastos. I ran into this Angolan expat when he opened for a really boring performance by Grupo Cultural Olodum; the power of his voice and the versatility of his instruments was amazing.

  • Buena Vista Social Club. An unbelievable album full of people making great music for the sheer joy of it.

  • Cuban Hip-Hop All-Stars, vol. 1. The modern version of Buena Vista Social Club.

  • O Brother, Where Art Thou. All my life I've hated country music; this loving exploration of the roots of country music suggested maybe I've been wrong.

  • Nickel Creek, by Nickel Creek. I went to see these guys live, because they were touring with one of my favorite lyricists; against my will, I was mesmerized.


Some others might come to mind; this isn't exhaustive. But there's a line between stuff I really like (Everyone Deserves Music), and stuff that completely revolutionized how I think about music; nothing else is coming to mind right now that falls into the latter category.
< This is | BBC White season: 'Rivers of Blood' >

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:
Related Links
- aphrael's Diary
Google

Comment Controls
View: Display: Sort:
Music rambling | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
My tops for the moment by 606 (2.00 / 0) #1 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 02:26:34 AM EST
Not an exhaustive list, but what comes to mind right now. For many of these albums the first listen was nothing special but over the course of five to ten listens the true wow-ness opened up.

Radiohead - OK Computer: I bought it when it came out and I hated it. I hated every song. But I was moving to Calgary at the time and it was one of only two CDs I had unpacked. So I listened more... then I started to like Karma Police. Then I started to like Lucky and No Surprises. And after a time I came to love every song. And to this day every time I listen to it I hear things mixed in I'd never heard before. It's the most dense album I've ever heard.

Constantines - Constantines: It's like he's playing a guitar but the amp is dying and sputtering and so he plays faster. The drums sound thin so they hit them harder. The vocal mics seems to be on the other side of the room so they shout at them and if you listen close you can hear the natural reverb of the small concrete basement where they recorded the album. Rock has never felt so desperate and raw.

Squarepusher - Hard Normal Daddy: What... is this a drum machine? No, it sounds like real drums... but it's too mechanical. I think it's real drums being sampled and resequenced on a drum machine. Is this... jazz? There's slap bass and crazy rhodes chords but it's playing at 160 bpm. Dear God this is so complicated, how do I even approach this? (After a hundred-odd listens I know every note... and believe me there are a lot of notes.)

Speedy J - Loudboxer++: A sixty-minute continuous atonal electronic/dance album based on sonic texture, auditory space, and rhythmic phasing? Of course. If I close my eyes I can see the music in my head and it puts on a beautiful light show.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea: Sometimes I listen to this in my car and I am compelled to sing along at the top of my voice and when I get to where I'm going my throat is raw. Hearing Jeff Magnum's voice strain as he reaches for the high notes in Two Headed Boy and lands just slightly off key makes the album feel so absurdly heartfelt. The album's final line: "...don't hate her when she gets up to leave" followed by Jeff's footsteps walking away from the mic and closing the door is underscored by the fact that he hasn't recorded any more songs to this day.

-----
imagine dancing banana here


Squarepusher by yicky yacky (4.00 / 1) #2 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 10:49:44 AM EST

I read an interview with him in the relatively early days where he said he got most of those drum patterns by drawing pictures in the MIDI editor and quantizing them.


----
A cynical, mercenary, demagogic, corrupt press will produce in time a people as base as itself - Joseph Pulitzer
[ Parent ]

(Comment Deleted) by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #3 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 12:45:37 PM EST

This comment has been deleted by yicky yacky





What does your soul look like? by aphrael (2.00 / 0) #4 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 01:04:56 PM EST
I don't have that EP. (I've got a lot of shadow stuff in my library, but i've missed that one).

Psyence Fiction was also phenomenal. The later UNKLE stuff is still good, but it doesn't have the same power and energy.

Thank you; my secret desire with this diary was to find all sorts of new things that I should try out. :)

If television is a babysitter, the internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.
[ Parent ]

If you want, by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #5 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 01:11:06 PM EST

I can arrange .. ermm ... procurement of said item. Unless you're an inveterate crate-digger, it may not be worth looking explicitly for it, as two of the tracks are on Endtroducing. I've got a few other bits and bobs as well, including the 'Lost and Found' track he did as a double-A-side with Krush, and the stonking 'Duality' collab he did on Krush's "Meiso". Both from the same period; lots of goodness. You may have those, though. I'll catch you on the webs at some point, if you're interested. I really would look up that Fela Kuti track, too ;)


----
A cynical, mercenary, demagogic, corrupt press will produce in time a people as base as itself - Joseph Pulitzer
[ Parent ]

I like your list. The one I'll post here is by greyrat (2.00 / 0) #6 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 02:37:02 PM EST
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis. It was probably the peak of the fivesomes performances. Although I never saw it, the live concert performance was supposed to be unbelievable for the time period.
~
There is absolutely no correlation or causation amongst intelligence, power, talent and wealth.
Kha-Nyou


Great list. by Christopher Robin was Murdered (2.00 / 0) #7 Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 03:33:51 PM EST
I don't have anything to add. I was just impressed.



Music rambling | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

Powered by Scoop   
 
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments and Stories are owned by the Poster and Licensed to "Hulver's site". See our Copyright page for more information.
faq | help | accounts