Amber Gray wrote:
Ramleh - Be Careful What You Wish For and Hole in the Heart
Both are 10s for me and both are fairly distinct. The former is a laid back noise, psychedelic style with sounds akin to krautrock and other stuff like that, whereas Hole in the Heart focuses more on direct and abrasive rock filtered through massive walls of noise, textural overkill. Both are just huge too.
Stereolab's four consecutive and most recognized albums
Yeah, honestly each of them is a 10. Stereolab is just so great at crafting very hypnotic and mesmerizing music littered with nuance, and all of these albums are equal in my opinion. They are unparalleled.
Slint - Spiderland
This album is like if life was music. The feelings evoked are all 100% true to their nature. I connect with it in a strange and cryptic way, the lyrics aren't outright saying anything blatantly, but I still feel the connection. It's like a wrapping up of angst in a blanket. This is when we start the downward tread. It's very mundane. Let all the anger out little by little until it's gone, and it's quiet. A perfect display of dynamics, visceral and noisy rock counterbalanced with soft jams
Sonic Youth - Murray Street
It's pretty hard to choose a favorite Sonic Youth album, but I wouldn't hesitate to choose this one. I think it is the most realized go at their noisy, feedback 4ever distortion riddled post-rock style. It's also an easy and relatively short listen in their discog at 45 minutes. There's never a dull moment, in my opinion, and it is recommended for people getting into them. I might also add that I find this to be one of the best showcases of their musicianship, specifically guitar, there is some shredding all over this album to make anyone jealous of these chops. And, it's just all around pleasant.
Planning For Burial - Leaving
This is a dreary and gloomy album, musically and emotionally. It is very personal with it's sparse delivery of depressive lyrics and harsh guitar squealing. It takes from shoegaze, post-rock, some kinda extreme metal, drone and ambient, indie stuff. This album is smeared front to back with a plethora of feedback drenched guitar tracks, all played by it's sole member. It has some of the most amazing moments in this world of music, I think, specifically the two best tracks "Being a Teenager and the Awkwardness of Backseat Sex" and "Verse/Chorus/Verse". A simple and somber guitar motif is repeated through to the end, along with some dismal piano. When that track is over, the piano subsides softly as the title track takes you away. It is the end now. It is a peaceful ending. It is your funeral. And you are happy.
Lowercase - Kill the Lights
This is a masterpiece of indie rock, a true 10/10 in my eyes. It features a strong loud-soft dynamic, subtle musical shifts awash in repetition, and the most important part, building catharsis. The last track here "You're a King" (played with sludge metal band Toadliquor) builds into some of the most utterly heart jerkingly powerful vocals I've ever heard regardless of genre. Listening to the whole album gives this finale more meaning, more emotion, more appreciation for the delivery. This album is one I'd call perfect. Also a shoutout to the second track "Slightly Dazed", which is amazingly mesmerizing and has an undeniable black metal influence. That simple drum pattern is basically the epitome of depressive black metal.
Circle Takes the Square - As the Roots Undo
First screamo album I listened to and it remains number one. It was no doubt that I would fall in love after the 15 second blast 1:30 into "Interview at the Ruins". to this day that is one of the absolute best and most epic segments of music I've ever heard. They pack so so many ideas into these songs, it's almost unrealistic how someone can craft this music. They also succeed in showing that chaos in music can be as beautiful as anything else.
Lovage - Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By
I think this could be a great album to listen to to start getting into electronic music, it's just a super smooth glass of fine jams and sensuality. It's tongue in cheek but still as sexy and steamy as music can get, featuring downtempo hip hop virtuosity and radical turntablism from Dan the Automator, and some amazing vocals/narratives from two of the best and most diverse singers out there (Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles). This album is rampant with double entendres and amazingly magical melodies.
Cop Shoot Cop - Ask Questions Later
I have such a strong admiration for this album, I've learned a lot from it, sarcastic or otherwise. Musically it is top tier industrial/noise rock, with dual bass clanging and mechanical drum clanks. It dips into experimental stuff on occasion as well. Tod A is one of my all time heroes and voices, and a simply amazing songwriter. He does satire and that stuff at pretty much the highest level, but also can prove to be poignant. The lyrics are always beautiful either way. I feel like calling his songwriting "life changing" might be a bold statement, but if any lyrics ever were, these would at least be among them
Aphex Twin - Drukqs
This is pretty big album packing some pretty big music. Amazingly glitchy and original, super technical and inventive stuff. IDM is a pretty interesting style when you consider this and all the other main stuff like Autechre and Squarepusher. It's very very complicated, intricate, and I'd wager total spastic nonsense for some people hearing it for the first time. I never exactly knew what to make of the tag "intelligent dance music", but whatever. Calling this dance music is kind of a stretch IMO, the dancers must have some interesting moves. Some of it, like this here, is often a barrage of angular electronic and atonal melodies, highly complex drum patterns that are probably incredibly tedious to produce, and a variety of outside/experimental elements, classical music seems to be prevalent. The arrangements on this album come straight from the deepest and most inaccessible caverns of human imagination. No ideas are ever repeated, just total bleepy jackhammering, combined with classical like string/piano/whatever arrangements. Very interesting music, but it always had me wanting more, wanting to hear everything you can possibly do with it. With these impossible blasts of eccentricity, pretty much never sounding like the last, the possibilities do stretch far
Solid Space - Space Museum
Couldn't imagine life without this album, probably wouldn't even wanna try. It makes me feel great in so many ways. A relative obscurity in the world of music, this is a perfect little expression of various waves if the 80s. You know, synthwave, cold wave, minimal wave, new wave. It carries a cold and oddly isolated feeling, probably from the whole space theme. It's quite a unique record honestly, there's odd folk elements here and there, and overall it's just very esoteric and meaningful. Every song is a classic in my mind and I couldn't rightfully name any standouts. It's short and oh so sweet, I wish I could thank Solid Space personally for their sole album, because I know it's had a big impact on my life.
Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness
Though not a love at first listen, I can say with truth that it is now one of my most beloved albums, and easily one of the best of its time. It is a difficult album in a bunch of different ways. Difficult to categorize, being a shoegaze/post punk blueprint dripping with noise/drone, post rock, and even black metal guitar. Difficult to digest, being a majorly long double album. Difficult to digest... again, but musically this time, a very demanding work. And emotionally, it's a heart wrencher. But once I felt it all, this album definitely showed itself as an awe inspiring work. You can hear just how much soul was poured into this. The piano motif right before that extreme dynamic blast some halfway or whatever into "Earthmover" is hands down one of music's crowning achievements
SPK - Zamia Lehmanni: Songs of Byzantine Flowers
I love SPK for their abrasive industrial noise terror and I love them for their more dancey electro-industrial, but more than both of those, I love SPK fir this album. It's a softer album, but so graceful and magic and esoteric and all kinds of adjective salad. A blend of neoclassical ambient style orchestrations and ritual-ish darkwave coolness from some of industrial music's most important players.
Biosphere - Shenzhou
This one is very minimal and very sparse ambient music, with just a slight neoclassical infusion. There's not much going on dynamically, instead very distant and sometimes haunting string melodies and yhe like are passed over to your brain. It's a super quiet album, but it's real deep, like ultra contemplative
The United States of America - The United States of America
I think that's my favorite psych rock album. It's a gem of the 60s to behold from a band that could possibly be underrated, I dunno. But with this full length they brought in avant-garde electronic stylings. The sound and quality are really amazing and do a justice for these tracks and ideas. It is one I'll forever love, I could say I've listened to it more than any other album of that ilk. Been a fan for a long time and just gave me the willies with their abstract texture
hey there are lots of great albums here! spiderland is one of my all time favorites as well, and i love hole in the heart. just started getting into stereolab recently, "dots and loops" is great but i heard the previous albums before it are even better. i'm assuming you've listened to skullflower if you've listened to ramleh.
also cop shoot cop are fantastic. ask questions later was my first so i hold it dearly to my heart, but i think consumer revolt is my favorite.
anyway, here's a list of full length albums which pretty much get a 100% from me
beastie boys, paul's boutique
black flag, damaged
brainbombs, burning hell
leonard cohen, songs of love & hate
coil, horse rotorvator & musick to play in the dark volume 1
crass, feeding the 5000
crime, san francisco's still doomed (this is a comp but they never had a full length so, fuck it)
the damned, machine gun etiquette
devo, q: are we not men? a: we are devo!
discharge, hear nothing see nothing say nothing
einsturzende neubauten, zeichnungen des patienten OT
brian eno, here come the warm jets
flipper, album: generic flipper
fugazi, red medicine
the gun club, fire of love
husker du, zen arcade
joy division, unknown pleasures
king crimson, red
MC5, kick out the jams
negativland, escape from noise
public image ltd., metal box
pink floyd, animals
pixies, trompe le monde
queens of the stone age, rated r
radio birdman, radios appear
radiohead, kid a
shellac, at action park
siouxsie & the banshees, juju
slint, spiderland
sonic youth, evol
stooges, funhouse
swans, cop & soundtracks for the blind
throbbing gristle, second annual report
a tribe called quest, low end theory
wire, 154
X, los angeles
neil young, tonight's the night