25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die
 

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...7138b73bde.jpg


25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

This list is… well… basically exactly what the title says it is: twenty-five really good albums that I think are worth a listen, preferably sooner rather than later what with the lunar situation and all. That's not to say this the definitive list of my favorite twenty-five albums. Not at all. There's a lot I'm leaving off the list because I feel that they've already been discussed to death on MB or elsewhere, because I just don't think I have enough to say about them to warrant a write up, or because for whatever reason they just don't mesh with the whole Moon-crashing-into-the-Earth motif in my mind.

Anyway, on to the first entry...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003L1F.jpg


25. Land of the Loops—Bundle of Joy (1996)

When you first hear the news that the Earth-Moon collision is imminent this will be a good album for you to turn to for solace. Its warm cocoon of somewhat trippy lo-fi beats will be a comforting thing to wrap yourself up in as you await your impending doom.

Released in 1996 by Boston-area loop dude Alan Sutherland, this little gem of an album has never really received the recognition it deserves in my personal opinion. This is great rainy day music, something fairly uncommon among turntablists and beatmakers in the mid-90s. That's not to say it's a downer by any means—it's actually pretty happy and upbeat—it's just that it's filled with that reassuring nesting feeling you get sitting inside with a cup of hot chocolate when it's crappy outside. And there's something so incredibly innocent about it, that's one of the album's big draws for me. It always seems to conjure up vague childhood memories of summer storms and coloring books.

It's appropriate that the one single released from this album was entitled "Multi-Family Garage Sale" because there's something about the aesthetic of this album that is very garage sale like. A sizable chunk of the samples, for example, seem to be from old children's records or in some cases maybe even actual old toys. And when Sutherland isn't kicking it pre-school he's grabbing some pretty random samples from all over the place—retro sci-fi sound effects, a snippet of Motorhead, wobbly old answering machine messages, you name it. All of this is mixed together with a decidedly indie sensibility that was very much at odds with other beat-oriented music of the same era.

While I was writing this review, what started off as sunny late spring morning has gotten dark and cloudy, threatening rain. I think that's my cue to put on Bundle of Joy and get out the coloring books.

Edit: Whoops, I meant to add this video too.

really good review, i'll be looking forward to this thread.

Thanks man! I just added a video too. :)

I really, really liked that Land of the Loops vid.
Keep up this thread man, this is a promising start. :D

Nice way of putting it. Wish I'd thought of that before I started my albums list :D

Good start to the list too. Never heard of them before, but Land Of the Loops there seem pretty intriguing. Consider them added to my rapidly-growing list of sounds to check out as soon as get all my assignments for uni in the can.

So, yeah, good stuff. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

Why do I have a feeling the number one slot is going to be the song "Ode to Order"...

^lol
Majora's Mask came to my mind too.

Lee is such a bastard. No doubt his choices will mean that I will have to download more stuff as his tastes are far too good and I won't have heard of half of them.

^Well good luck downloading the Land of the Loops album. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it.

I found one if you're interested.

omgahwdaldjfkdsj yes.
PM me plz. :love:

EDIT: link was dead. :(

With that kind of start I really am curious for what is coming up. Write more!

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback! Here's the next one...

http://img.snowrecords.com/lp/3/27028.jpg


24. Alien Sex Fiend—Too Much Acid? (1989)

Denial can be a heady thing. While news of the decaying lunar orbit may cause some to retreat into the comfort of childhood memories, others will no doubt want to party like mad. To party like there's no tomorrow if you will.

During the inevitable maelstrom of sweat and mind-altering chemicals you'll want something fantastic to cut loose to and this live album is the way to go. This is your brain on drugs. Rarely have cheap synths and raw punk rock guitars come together with such furious and fucked up energy. Rarely has a man screamed "Sample my sausage!" with such conviction.

If you've never heard Alien Sex Fiend before, imagine a dash of Hawkwind and a dash of the Cramps filtered through layer upon layer of noisy post-punk jaggedness and gothy new wave camp. If you have heard Alien Sex Fiend before, imagine their best possible concert because I swear that's exactly what this album sounds like—even though, in reality, the songs were culled from multiple shows.

This truly is an amazing album that makes me want to throw down and party every time I hear it. And—most amazingly for such a raw, wild and wooly kind of an album—it really rewards multiple listens.

Very underrated band are the Sex Fiend, so nice pick there. I don't have so much of their stuff myself, but this here's probably my pick of the litter;

Nice review for Alien Sex Fiend. I'd never checked them out before seeing this thread and I like what I'm hearing :thumb:

They're a great band for sure. Been a favorite of mine since I was a young'un.

Damn, Janszoon, you gots mad writing skillz. And, of course, exquisite taste in music. I'm actually excited for what you'll put up next.
If I'm ever in Philadelphia I'm going to find you and make you listen to that ASF record so I can see you throw down and party.

Thanks homes! :) I should be posting a new review tonight actually. It's done, I just have to set up the video.

And, yeah, if you're ever in Philly beer and ASF are on me. :beer:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA280_.jpg


23. The YMD—Excuse Me, This Is The Yah Mos Def (2008)

Speaking of party music, Excuse Me, This Is The Yah Mos Def is another great throw down album. Probably minus the drugs though since these two guys are straightedge-type vegans who most likely abstain. Irregardless, this is the the kind of cathartic, yell-at-the-top-of-your-lungs album that will probably become a staple of your music collection as we approach the apocalypse.

The YMD are from my adoptive home city of Philadelphia and Philly's whole messy freak out musical aesthetic really seeps into this album despite the fact that it's of a genre—hip hop—that's normally unaffected by these things. But then this is a different kind of hip hop album. For one thing, the samples and name-dropping mostly reference hardcore. And the flow is intentionally off the beat. And the production sounds like your friend's basement. Hell even the album's running time, clocking in at a lean 27 minutes, is not the hip hop standard.

In some ways the group The YMD most remind me of are early Beastie Boys. Not so much the Beastie Boys we all know, but some alternate "what if" version of Beastie Boys that came into existence twenty years later than the actual Beastie Boys. The hardcore pedigree and bratty attitude are there, but the rawness has been taken up a few notches. And that's not bad thing.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kWYWEX33PB...00/unsane.jpeg


22. Unsane—Occupational Hazard (1998)

There are some people in this world who just can't handle bad news. When the announcement is made that everyone on Earth is doomed, these are the people who are going to snap, chug a gallon of whiskey and go for a joyride downtown, randomly firing a machine gun out the window of the car as they swerve all over the the sidewalk at ninety miles an hour. This album is for them.

Unsane have made a career out of making music that sounds like distilled violence, and this album is that in it's purest form. Sure there are heavier bands out there—noisier bands, faster bands, whatever—but there's something about Unsane that just makes them sound so… aggressive. It could be the factory-like pounding of the drums. It could be the locomotive chugging of the bass. It could be the circular saw grinding of the guitar. But I'm pretty sure it's Chris Spencer's voice that's the most essential part of the equation. His barked, distorted vocals are the perfect thing for this music and I cannot imagine a single way in which they could be improved, their throat-ripping intensity sounds like it's coming straight from the very heart of anger.

Violence might make for a poor solution to the inequities of an existence tied to a dying planet, but for 38 minutes Occupational Hazard somehow manages to make the case in it's favor. For a moment it makes you wonder, in a universe capable of snuffing out so much life in such an arbitrary way, maybe violence is simply the most natural expression of the state of things.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr9...life_cover.jpg


21. Swans—Love of Life (1992)

Let's face it: this whole Moon-crashing-into-the-Earth situation I've come up with here isn't exactly uplifting. It's a bummer to a degree far above and beyond some guy at a party cornering you and telling you all about his divorce. It's the downer of all downers when it comes down to it. That being the case, how could I make this list and not have Swans represented somewhere?

For reasons that are unclear to me, this seems to one of M. Gira and company's least well-known albums. It's strange because this is probably my favorite by them. There's just so much going on here that I find myself totally immersed every time I listen to it. Some songs, like the title track, have the kind of pounding industrial beats that many people seem to associate with Swans, while other tracks are quite folky and reminiscent of their album The Burning World. Experimental interludes and snippets of found-sounds crop up frequently but then just as often bleed into tracks which have almost a pop structure to them. Not surprisingly there's the requisite brutality here but there is also sweetness, like memories of better times that have been cruelly torn away—even more so than on their other albums this is played up with Jarboe's etherial singing as a counterpoint to Gira's Johnny-Cash-on-suicide-watch vocalization.

This isn't simply another depressing album in the long line of depressing albums out there. It's so much more complex than that and so full of life in a strange way. It's filled with loss and regret and pain, but also tiny little glimpses of hope and triumph. It's an album that leaves you with a strange sense of longing for some kind of past that doesn't necessarily even belong to you. And those handful of sunlit peaks are what make the inevitable plunge back down into the abyss all the more harrowing.

Below is "Her", one of my favorite songs on Love of Life. I don't know why but there's something I find incredibly haunting about the combination of the music and long sample of the woman's voice at the end.

I just checked out some other songs from this album. I like it. Kind of like Death in June, only better. =)
Oh, and the heavy part of 'Her' made me jump in my seat. I'll definately have to check this band out.

Janszoon -- your # 21 and 22 are kind of blowing my mind.

I've been meaning to check out the Unsane album for a long time but I haven't heard the thing. your review is confirmation that I need to.

On the Swans album you wrote about: it's just fu@king uncanny because that is my favorite Swans album (that I know of: I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of thier music) and I have been half-assed searching for a used copy of that CD for years. I know that it's something I need to have a physical copy of.

Oh Swans are much better than Death in June. One of my all time favorite bands. From this 90's period I would also recommend The Great Annihilator (1995) and especially Soundtracks for the Blind (1996/97) their final album.

Heh. Yeah, I love how that part just kind of jumps out like that.

Death in June are one of those bands I've always heard of but never actually listened to. Sounds like I should check them out.

That's funny. Great minds, you know.

Not only is that Unsane album good but really all their stuff is worth checking out—their 90s output at least, I still haven't gotten around to giving either of their albums from the 00s a listen.

As far as Love of Life goes, it's unfortunately really hard to track down because it's out of print. I had the cassette for years and years but was never able to track down the CD until an ex-girlfriend of mine somehow managed to find it for me for Christmas.

I love both of those albums. White Light From the Mouth of Infinity and Die Tur Ist Zu are amazing as well.

I just checked Amazon and I can get a used CD for about $40.
That'll probably have to wait. Maybe I'll survive long enough after the moon hits the Earth to do some serious looting in search of a copy. MP3s will have to do for now

I'm still trying to get into Love of Life due to your previous recommendation. I definitely think it'll grow on me, but it's taking its time.

I'm kind of surprised to hear that. It was an instant love affair for me. That was almost exactly 15 years ago to the month and the love hasn't faded yet. :)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GKFCuF7Yeg...400/folder.jpg


20. Boris Kovač & LaDaABa Orchest—Ballads at the End of Time (2003)

On the reverse side of the coin from Love of Life is this album by Serbian composer and bandleader Boris Kovač. Returning home after years spent living abroad in various parts of Europe during the civil war, he formed La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica (LaDaABa) Orchest and wrote this album "to exorcise the madness of war". If ever there was an album you'd expect to be weighty and depressing it's this one, but surprisingly it really isn't. There are some shadowy valleys here but mostly it's warmth and sunlight.

The style of music is pretty unique, yet somehow also as pleasantly familiar as an old winter coat. It's fairly jazzy, with a very noticeable presence of tango and a whiff of classical, but hovering over everything is a sensibility that I would describe as distinctly Balkan. It has that great minor-key yet upbeat thing going on that makes a lot of music I've heard from this region seem so very bittersweet. And though this is essentially instrumental music, when voices do occasionally make themselves known, they merge so seamlessly with the other instruments that the whole thing feels like one big organic mass.

As I've mentioned in my previous reviews, different people will react to the end of the world differently. Some with anger or despair, many with aggressive denial. What this album seems to be saying though, is maybe there's another way to look at things: Maybe you can face reality as it is—acknowledging the horror and tragedy—but also, at the same time, recognizing that this universe is still a place of wonder and of beauty.

I think this is quickly becoming one of my favorite lists. :D
I really dug what you showed us. Your right, it sounds very Balkan and Eastern European. Wow. This could definitely grow on me a lot.

He he, good ear. That's exactly what it's like here - bitter-sweetness and tragicomedy.

Heh. Thanks! I'm glad I didn't sound like too much of a ignoramus talking about a place I've never been to. :)

Thanks. :)

This reminds me, as much as I like the album I review above, it's the only thing I own by him. I really need to check out more.

No, no. It's always refreshing to see things from some other perspective.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lbum_cover.jpg


19. Cornelius—Point (2001)

One thing you owe it to yourself to do in these dark, stark, terminal times is to go for a nice walk in the woods. Listen to the birds. Inhale the smell of the leaves. Absorb all of the tiniest details. Just enjoy Earth's flora and fauna while it's still around to be enjoyed. On your way home, in your blissful state of nature-induced contemplation, give a listen to Point.

There really is something about this album that's evocative of a peaceful day in the forest. Birdcalls and burbling streams intertwine with soothing, yet often somewhat funky music. In some other context a lot of this stuff would come off as cheesy but Keigo Oyamada, the sole creator of Cornelius' lush musical landscapes, manages to make it work. A lot it comes down to his attention to detail. It's readily apparent listening to his music that he's a guy truly in love with the minutia of sound. Everything is recorded and mixed just so: tight electronic percussion perfectly complimenting precise guitar strumming, beautifully harmonizing vocals bleeding into swirls of guitar noise. Even the album itself hangs together well as a whole, and that's including all of its more dissonant moments in with the consonant ones. Somehow the entire thing winds up leaving you with this peaceful, beautiful feeling.

The song I'm posting below, "Bird Watching at Inner Forest", is an excellent example of Oyamada's attention to detail. Just listen to the way a recording of birds randomly chirping quickly metamorphosizes into a melodic loop that becomes the backbone of the entire song. Listen to how tight the interplay is between the strumming of his guitar and those constantly changing drum patterns. And most amazingly listen to how, at about the 3:30 mark, he actually manages to use the sound of fluttering wings in place of a drum fill.

I have Fantasma and I absolutely adore it. One of the funnest, most eclectic albums I have. You're right, it's great music to walk to and it just has a way of putting the listener in a better mood. I have no idea why I haven't checked some of his other works.
That song definitely convinced me to though. I love how the bird chirping was used almost as a percussive instrument during the verse.

Fantasma is a great album too. I think you'll find Point kind of stylistic departure from it though, it's much more mellow and has more of a singular style than Fantasma has. Both are great albums though, as is Sensuous.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._The_Point.jpg


18. Harry Nilsson—The Point! (1971)

Hey look, this album has almost the exact same title as the last one I reviewed! Mere coincidence? Or am I in fact sneaky enough to have grouped these two albums together in my list intentionally? I'll leave that for you to decide.

What we have here is an outrageously good pop album ostensibly written for children but which is certainly equally appealing to adults. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a concept album that tells the story of a round-headed boy born in a town of people who all have pointy heads; and for the record, yes, Nilsson did once confirm in an interview that he came up with the premise while on acid. Not surprisingly my introduction to it was during early childhood, and no doubt it was one of the first records I actually owned. I loved it as a kid but as I grew older I kind of forgot about it, until one day in my mid-20s I heard it playing in a coffee shop. It's a testament to how well-written it is that shortly thereafter I re-acquired it and promptly fell in love with it all over again.

Nilsson was one of those amazing people who make songwriting and performing sound so easy. His voice was beautifully melodic without ever for a second sounding like he was trying hard at all. His songs—in general from what I know but specifically on this album—always sound spontaneous, like he just picked up an instrument and started playing, though they are in fact often elaborately orchestrated. On top of that, the whole thing hangs together supremely as an album both sonically and in terms of the story, which is quite well crafted itself. And most impressively, even though this fable is a tale of exile and isolation, it is incredibly uplifting, lighthearted and beautiful.

Tough days ahead? The end of the world weighing too heavily on your mind? Give this album a listen. I promise it will make you smile.