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Underground > Radio & Music >

Classic albums of the Nineties

  
 
Seth
07:42 / 05.05.05
Along the same lines as the Noughties thread, what were the albums that changed your life in the Nineties?

Go with whatever definition of classic you like: attempt objectivity (good luck!) or talk about the records that influenced you most.

Does your definition of classic include longevity, or is it just significant that it was of its time? As ever, give reasons.

On a sidenote, I'm really interested to see how this compares with the Noughties thread...
 
 
Benny the Ball
09:23 / 05.05.05
Massive Attack - Mezzannine. Yeah Blue Lines was everyones favourite, and Protection was more middle-class accessable (I'm not a fan save for Karmacoma and Eurochild - thought it was a lazy album) but Mezzanine seemed to capture a certain mood that prevailed through the 90's, it was dark, heavy, suspicious, isolated. Shame it's been snapped up by every ad agency in the world to sell anything, but Angel is still one of the most powerful openings to an album ever.

More to follow.
 
 
uncle retrospective
09:51 / 05.05.05
The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails.
Not much that can be said about it that hasn't been said. The best mainstream industrial album of all time.

Tool Aenima.
One of the best albums ever. Dark, moody, and fucking brilliant.

Ministry Psalm 69. How many bored metal fans turned over to this. As metal died this gave people one last kick in the ass.

Metallica the Black Album. Now I hate this dull fucking album, it's the sound of a band losing their way, but there is no denying how big this album is. This is metal for people who don't like metal and helped spawn Nu Metal.

This is metal heavy but I went to see Anthrax last night and I'm born again METAL.
 
 
eye landed
10:03 / 05.05.05
tools ænima (1996) represented a particular counterculture both in its ubiquity and its complexity. you could find a tool fan in any high school, probably reading, writing, or drawing alone--and (unwittingly) plotting the downfall of western civilization through ontological anarchy. maynard, the cultural touchstone, shamelessly wails about the mythical evolution of humanity amidst aggressive, distorted atmospheres of a progressive rock that seems to draw equally from numetal and triphop.

and a bunch of the songs are about deviant sexual acts. the title itself demonstrates this weird juxtaposition: its an attempt to merge carl jungs term for 'the other', anima, with the act of cleaning out ones rectum, enema. its complex and a bit frightening, but dead serious and well thought out. the issue of individuation through deviance is intelligently explored throughout the lyrics.

some of the albums jokes dont age well--for example, recitation of violent threats and portugese insults over piano and seagull cries, or the straightfaced use of the word 'dipshit' in an otherwise venomous rant. the nazi speech about cookies is still brilliant though. the fact remains that nearly any fans of this album can get along--ive bonded over tool with angry bodybuilders, shy nerds, heavily pierced punks, girls in pushup bras, hiphoppers, hippies and more.

this album inspired a lot of worse music.

perhaps the best proof of tools appropriateness to the 90s is how boring they are now. their 2001 album was comparatively dull, and now theyve all split up into far less memetic side projects.

recommended tracks: eulogy, jimmy, third eye
 
 
All Acting Regiment
10:06 / 05.05.05
I suppose somebody has to mention Nevermind, and I suppose it'll have to be me. It's been pretty influential on a lot of bands, though whether in a good or bad way is controversial. Did it bring the extreme-underground-screaming-melody-of-truth into the public light, or did it just give a bunch of college kids an excuse to feel miserable?

I'm one of the more wet-behind-the-ears members of Barbelith (as some as my fuckinawful early threads will prove), and as I write this I have many friends with long, moping haircuts who spend a lot of time just sitting around miserabling. "To miserable" becomes a verb around these people, you really have to see it.

Point is, I think I'd have more respect for them if they were doing this whilst listening to Nirvana than I do for the fact that their angst aesthetic is based on Puddle of Mudd, you see?
 
 
Bruno
11:20 / 05.05.05
The nineties were the best period so far for hiphop. 90-95 had at least 10 solid albums dropping every year. I could write a book about this period but instead I will do free advertizing for the first PSYCHO REALM album which dropped in 97 (a fairly bad year in general(hiphop is like wine)) as i have been listening to it all morning.

Its 3 LA MCs kicking the least positive lyrics possible, dark dark stuff. No sufi moorish sun-god stuff, it is all about manifesting demons. The 3 mcs are:

*the yelling guy who sounds like he is 60(he got shot a few years later RIP) with an insanely offbeat flow only ODB can compare to. One of the most original mcs ever.

*B-Real, who I generally dont like but he works very well as part of a group rather than solo, and both his lyrics and flow are much better than the earlier CH albums.

*The other nasal guy who sounds like he is an alien mafioso who learnt english from a robot.

All the lyrics are raw, blunted, poetic without being pretentious, twisted messages from hell. The drums are heavy, played pad by pad rather than 1-bar loops (ie it is more new school). The production is handled by different people (not Muggs). Its probably computer rather than sampler&reel2reel based but it sounds raw. Around half the sounds are played on keyboards and around half are sampled. A lot of classical european sounds, also latin percussion. The beats are effective and some pump a lot of energy. It causes shifts in the concentration point towards a kind of tragic self-sufficient warrior POV, something like that. If you listen to it too much it can fuck you up so balance it with some public enemy.

Its easy to find both online and in shops.

-bruno-
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:16 / 05.05.05
Screamadelica, by Primal Scream.

Over-burdened a bit by cliche these days a bit, perhaps, and they were arguably a bunch of unprincipled Scottish junkies, but on all kinds of levels the Nineties might have turned out otherwise if they hadn't recorded it. They set out to be as good as Love, Sly Stone, Phuture and King Tubby, and if they didn't quite manage it, they came pretty close.

Still sounds excellent now, also.

( For anyone who's not heard it, you really should - it's the sound of pale indie kid wannabes realising that they are in fact... superhuman... All of a sudden they were pretty much everything they'd ever aspired to be, no longer a Byrds/Stooges tribute band, they'd drugged themselves beyond all rational influence, and while I'm not trying to say it always works out, that kind of approach, in this case, it did.
 
 
Mike Modular
00:09 / 06.05.05
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

This was one of the first albums I bought when I was getting into 'indie' music, and in the 13 or so years that I've owned this it's one of the few things since then that just seems to get better and better with every listen, and a band that I've learnt to appreciate more and more. (Though I still have a fondness for Cud...)

For me, the cover sums up the music perfectly: a blurred electric guitar being strummed (in red). The sounds are just out of focus enough that they create an element of mystery (and you can't make out what they're singing about). There's some pioneering (for an indie band) use of samplers, too, where I believe all the sounds originated from guitars (correct me if I'm wrong) but have been transformed into otherworldly drones and tones.

Essentially, it's a dreamy, swooning, enigmatic masterpiece. Quite indie-rock in places, but distorted through Kevin Sheilds' experimental lens (can I get away with saying that...?). My only real criticism is that the drums are a bit tinny in places... (even 16 producers couldn't sort that out..?).

Best bits: 'To Here Knows When' is just gorgeous; 'I Only Said', with its trance-like refrain, captivated me when I was (I now realise) fortunate enough to see them live and 'Soon' is the dancefloor epic I would happily die grooving to.

Nothing else has quite matched it's sonic vision, but it's influence shows on many a modern electronica type (eg. Caribou/Manitoba, Tim Hecker). Plenty of guitar bands owed their fuzz to MBV back then (Boo Radleys, Ride etc), but who's doing it now? Maybe the Notwist, a bit (I really can't think of any others right now, but I know there must be some...). This album still seems pretty modern to me. Perhaps more of-the-time than ahead of it now, but those sounds: they're just...beautiful.
 
 
40%
19:30 / 07.05.05
Manic Street Preachers – Generation Terrorists (1992)


This was the first band I ever got into. I was instantly hooked on the Manics, and felt that this was how music was supposed to be. Shredding guitar riffs, wailing vocals, full of noise and energy, and yet with a purity of vision that sets them oceans apart from a band like Guns n Roses that might have offered similar. This was a band that loved and hated in equal measure, brutal and cutting in its critique of pretty much everything, but with a sense of desparate lust for life. Like most of the Manics’ work, it never fully allows you to make peace with it, and always remains challenging. They’ve done some great stuff since, but this was the one that captured my heart. Still gives me a glorious headache!

(As to this album being a classic, well it always will be to me, although I’m not sure it should be described as such on its merits. There is very little variation between the tone of the songs, it’s arguably too long and lacks focus. It’s just one of those albums that compels you to love it on its own terms, because it introduced a unique and essential band to the world, and because their hearts were so entirely in the right place from the very beginning)
 
 
diz
16:12 / 09.05.05
Bjork: Homogenic

I don't think I've ever heard an album that so successfully merges this kind of cool, crisp electronic ambience with such revelatory, deeply emotional vocals and strong songwriting. It's simultaneously pop and avant-garde, experimental and intriguingly straightforward. OK Computer is a pale shadow of this album. It's like Edith Piaf for the post-rave generation.
 
 
Shrug
18:00 / 09.05.05
It seems unfair to have to pick just one Bjork album though, eh?

Modern Life is Rubbish-Blur
This is both a brilliant Blur album and the only Blur album that I can completely stomach for some reason. It's pop, wistful,apathetic, and always bang on the money. It's generally all about (well) modern life being rubbish although it also evokes the sad magic of it all centering sometimes on the sometimes scary equation of work+commute=∞.
And it has this verse,
Only the magical transit children, sing sing a lullaby bah, bah, bah
Sitting on a pavement sucking on a long straw
It's colourful, It's colourful, but it washes you out
Although it's all similarily quotable.
Love it.
 
 
Captain Zoom
22:46 / 09.05.05
Pearl Jam - Ten

Alive was the anthem of my "God I'm a depressed teen years". Not that I had much to be depressed about, but there you go.

Dave Stewart and the Spiritual Cowboys - S/T & Honest

Two of the most musically influential albums for me, at least. And judging by the fact that the group broke up shortly after the second ablum, I think I'm the only one. Nice mix of pop and psychedelia, definitely showed off Stewart's talent a lot better than that other band he was in.

Oh, and anything Ween produced in the 90's. Because Ween are gods of rock music and should be followed like the messiahs that they are.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
20:06 / 10.05.05
Nas -Illmatic

One of the best hip-hop albums of all time. Nasir doesn't put a verbal foot wrong throughout, and the production rosta (Pete Rock, Large Professor, Premiere, Q-Tip all at the top of their respective games) is a dream.
At 11 tracks with no skits it's a rarity - a hip-hop album that's lean and absolutely essential from start to finish. No filler tracks here, each could be the high point of a lesser album.
The first proper track, NY State of Mind is a slow burning grinding beast of a track, with a drum snap that cuts through you, over which Nas spits some of the bleakest 'thug' verses. Other highpoints - Pete Rock's 'World Is Yours' has an exemplary mid 90's Jazz break at it's core, as well as Pete's own soulful hook. Halftime is the standout track, one of the sickest battle rhymes ever, over a pounding beat. Nas puts forward a damn good claim for being the world's best MC on the quality of this track alone.
Other killer tracks - the moving One Love, a track in the form of a correspondance from someone in jail to a friend on the outside, over a bouncy Q-Tip beat
- Represent, my personal favourite beat on the album, and the final cheeky Jacko-sampling It ain't Hard to Tell'.
Fuck it. They're all fantastic. One of those albums that you return to again and again, and each time a different track shines. It came at the end of what many view as the 'golden Age' of US hip-hop (88-92) and if that's the case it's a fitting final chapter. Seriously any hip-hop fan, or indeed any music fan cannot afford not to own a copy. It fucking rules.
 
 
johnnymonolith
09:30 / 11.05.05
In no particular order:

-Nine Inch Nails- The Downward Spiral
Because when you are a teenager and you are very angry, only Trent Reznor seems to know what you are going through.

-The Flaming Lips- The Soft Bulletin
Because the Lips' 1999 opus showed me how perfect music about scientists and death can really be; an album that would have been WS Burroughs' guilty pleasure.

-Bjork- Post/Telegram
The experimental pop album approached as a delicatessen of sounds and melodies and mad ideas; plus Mika Vainio's (off Pan[a]Sonic) remix of "Headphones" gives me chills everytime i hear it.

-Fugees- The Score
Perfect melodies, fantastic production, wicked samples, and Lauryn Hill's voice.

-Julee Cruise- Floating into the Night
David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti take you on a joyride through the night; essential night-time listening just after you had that one extra drink you should not have had and just after you made that one move you should not have made.

-Orbital- In-Sides
The most perfectly realised piece of music Orbital ever conceived as an entire album.

-Plastikman- Consumed
This is like being alone in the middle of the night in a forest a few miles away from a power plant. I remember waking up to "Converge" off this album on a late May afternoon just as the late John Peel had started playing this in his radio show. Creepy.

-PJ Harvey- To bring you my love
Amazing songwriting amazing voice amazing production values. Every song is a gem.

-Aphex Twin- Selected Ambient Works 1992-1994
You listen to this record and you feel like Alice in Wonderland. It feels alien and familiar simultaneously.

-Michael Nyman- Wonderland OST
Loved the movie. The music only added more to the tone of isolation pulsing through the movie.

-Photek- Modus Operandi
Programming as a zen practice; no-one has managed to come up with microbeats so sharp and precise.

-BT- Ima & ESCM
Two really great house records.

-Tori Amos- Boys for Pele
When it comes to this record, words fail me: i just love it. The songwriting is all over the place but also extremely focused, the production is crystal clear and the best thing about is that this is a pop record which uses as its main instrument the harpsichord.

Jeff Buckley- Grace
I think this and "Boys for Pele" are my favourite 90s records. Outstanding.

Bill Laswell- Panthalassa
Laswell remixes/rearranges Miles Davis. Nuff said.

DJ Shadow- Endtroducing
The DJ as a processor of sounds.

4 Hero- Two Pages
This is where Sun Ra meets Stevie Wonder and poetry nights.
 
 
lonely as a cloud...
10:09 / 11.05.05
I'd have to go for Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible. I think all 40% said about Generation Terrorists applies, only it's a much more focused album. It's stark, beautiful and terrible. And it's the first time the manics lyrics and music really both had the same intensity. And also James Dean Bradfield looked quite cute in the sailor suit he used to wear back then...
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
13:10 / 11.05.05
Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

Basically revitalized a "left-field" look at hip-hop, and introduced the idea of live instrumentation...I can't really think of another band that used live instruments before this album came about.

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Hands down scariest album ever. Made "grindcore" a huge movement in music, sparking Scorn, Pitchshifter, and all their descendents.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:50 / 11.05.05
Most of my faves have been mentioned: Downward Spiral, Holy Bible, Grace, Screamadelica...

(sorry to be pedantic, but wasn't Godflesh's "Headcleaner" released in the '80s? Great album, mind.)

I've been wracking my brains about this, trying to narrow it down, and I have to add:

Let Love In: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds- still one of Cave's best. From the heartbreaking ("I Let Love In"), to the FUCK YEAH FULL-ON BAD SEEDSness of "Do You Love Me?" to the hilarious ("Loverman" with its Jim Jones Does Barry White spoken sections)... then of course there's "Red Right Hand" which is just a triumph whichever way you look at it... (It was a tossup between this and Murder Ballads... I think this just scrapes in by the skin of its sharp and dripping teeth, but they're both great albums).

1/Outside: David Bowie- even though I'd technically class this as an album by Eno where he got Bowie in to write lyrics and provide vocals. This is ace. Ridiculously pretentious without being twee, chunky like NIN and featuting "Hello Spaceboy", which sounds like Bowie fronting the Young Gods- and what could possibly be wrong with that?

This one probably won't be so popular, and it IS a highly personal choice- Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre: Current 93- It's glorious, in every sense of the word. HAS to be listened to from start to finish... "God is not dead for all of us..."... it's uttelry beautiful, and I find it impossible not to be reduced to tears by it, whether on public transport or not.

And, of course:

Love's Secret Domain: Coil- I once read a description of this album that had Balance (RIP) and Christopherson as a psychedelic Rimbaud and Verlaine, and that suits it perfectly. "Windowpane" soundtracked FAR too many acid trips for me, and even the guests (Annie Anxiety on "Things Happen" and Marc Almond on "Titan Arch" sound SO perfectly placed you forget they aren't actually regular band members)... and the title track is the perfect accompaniment for when those trips land you up on the wrong side... "give sanity a longer leash- but some of us have sharper teeth" indeed.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:54 / 11.05.05
Oh, and Feelings: David Byrne- World music for survivalists. "Dance On Vaseline" is truly ace, and the single, "Miss America", is WAY more acerbic than the jaunty music lets on... "I miss America, and sometimes she does too... and sometime I think of her when she is fucking you... oh supergirl, you'll be my supermodel, although your pants are round your ankles... don't back away, I'll be your Dirty Harry, it will be just like in the movies."

Was TV Sky by The Young Gods 89 or 90? I think it was 90. In which case, that too. "I can fire... but I can't forget". One for the Skinflowers, and no mistake.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:56 / 11.05.05
I can't really think of another band that used live instruments before this album came about.

Music world stunned as historians reveal that Beastie Boys invented live music!
 
 
alejandrodelloco
23:57 / 11.05.05
Beck: Odelay

It's just... catchy.
 
 
Totem Polish
14:56 / 12.05.05
I'm young enough to have been largely musically ignorant of the nineties as they happened, but one album that can't be ignored is

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Simply the most raw and positive hiphop album I've ever heard. From that period for definite, Q-Tip and Phife Di-Dawg are so on point that their rhymes avoid your ears and just go streight for the sub-conscious. Oh yeah, and they've got Ron Carter on the bass, the Miles Davis dude, now that's slick.
 
 
Bruno
15:58 / 12.05.05
Leaders of the New School - T.I.M.E (The Inner Mind's Eye) 1993

All the components of classic NYC hip-hop:
rough bass-heavy beats
ridiculous all-over-the-place flows
meaningless wordplay
mystical truths
and encoded five-percenter doctrines.

Check out spontaneous (13 mcs deep), the SICK zearocks instrumental track, fuck it the whole album. Busta rhymes used to be so good. Time.... one of the deepest mysteries known to man.
 
 
Spaniel
17:55 / 12.05.05
Woah, that is deep.
 
 
diz
20:19 / 13.05.05
This one probably won't be so popular, and it IS a highly personal choice- Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre: Current 93

i would take Thunder Perfect Mind over Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre, personally, especially if you do the whole thing with playing the Nurse With Wound Thunder Perfect Mind simulataneously. good choices all around, though.

----

i'm sorry, i kind of have to leave, so this will be quick, but i wanted to throw in a vote for the often-imitated, never-duplicated: The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die.

Biggie is thuggish, sensitive, defiant, depressed, funny, introspective, conflicted by turns, and yet he manages to pull it all together with the amazing gift for storytelling he displays in his lyrics. he talks about selling crack and shooting people and gets nostalgic for simpler times in his life, he brags about his big dick and worries about his relationship with his mom, and he manages to make it all flow, make it almost totally seamless.
 
 
Bruno
19:17 / 15.05.05
Since nobody has mentioned them yet (blasphemy!)
The masters of musical expression in our time period,
the band that is so infinite that none have comprehended them yet,
the alchemists of noise and music,
the slayer-sampling imperial grand ministers of funk,
Public Enemy, the many-faced liberators of consciousness blessed be their name.

Do not be fooled - While most hip-hop heads keep big-upping them, very few listen to them. Few can stand the raw power and funk.
Nothing has ever been close.
Listen to them with headphones, I challenge you, and see if any musical experience is remotely similar in positive upliftingness and chaotic noise mind-expansion (regardless of your so-called race).
The 90s albums are: Fear of a Black Planet, Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, Greatest Misses, Muse-Sick-N-Hour-Mess-Age (A hugely underrated album, listen to this one with headphones) (UP TILL NOW EVERY ALBUM IS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, thanks to Flav, Chuck, the scratch DJs, and the least-influential producers in hip-hop, the BOMB SQUAD, whose creations are manifestations of The Funk in its purest and most hardcore form in our universe)
Then we also have: He Got Game (the beats are a bit weak on this one but Chuck D proves his adaptability both as lyricist and flow-er), There's a Poison Goin On (the strongest hip-hop album of 99), plus a lot of mix-tape style albums and lives and b-sides (http://www.shutemdown.com/pebtn2000.htm).
Let us not be silly. Public Enemy are Public Enemy.
 
 
Chiropteran
12:26 / 16.05.05
But you missed out giving a special mention to one of the hottest musical moments of the 90's: Public Enemy's "Bring tha Noize" featuring Anthrax (as heard on PE's Apocalypse '91 and Anthrax's Attack of the Killer B's)!

Words cannot express. I still keep one or the other of the albums in my car at all times (the song clears traffic jams, I'm not kidding). This song is what convinced me, back in highschool, that there just might be something to hip-hop. I know it's not an album as such, but since Bruno brought up PE, it needed saying.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
17:33 / 17.05.05
i'm curious about what people might say are the general qualities about music in the 90s -- and to what degree a classic album should be related to its time. What is 90s music? Certainly there is a sense of hiphop coming into its own and going ultra-popular. This is heard in the music and seen in the videos and reflected in the culture as a whole. But is there a more general relation between what happened with hiphop and the rest of pop music in general? Is there a way this ascendency is related to the decade as a whole?

There was also the brief moment of, i'd guess you call it, punk rock popularity that happened with the whole Nirvana thing. Who does the rock of the time relate to the decade, and how is it positioned against decades before and after? One thing we can see is a dramatic shift from guitar based rock in the first half of the decade to the electronic records in the second, and this coincides exactly with the rise of an electronic or digital culture that came with the internet. Should the albums of the decade reflect this?

What about milleniun anxiety? People really sorta-thought that the world was going to go kerplunk for 2000. Is the sound of apoclypse something we'd want to find in the classic albums of the time?
 
 
Spaniel
07:52 / 18.05.05
What's interesting is the lack of dance* albums recommended on this thread. Now, that could be to do with the taste of the posters, or it could be to do with the fact that the dance music scene was buoyed up by the 12 inch record and not albums. That's not to say that there weren't phenomenally successful dance albums (the Prodigy, Orbital, etc...) just that the scene itself was built around singles.

Today dance is everywhere: on every advert, in every interstitial, over every ident. The beat structures have intfiltrated rock and punk, and every other club night. It seems to me that particular state of affairs came about in the Nineties.

*I'm including a lot of electronica in my definition. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think that distinguishing between the two is pretty tough
 
 
Professor Silly
17:38 / 18.05.05
Faith No More's Angel Dust

dripped with the rage and isolation of the early 90's, and without question influenced the nu-metal boom that came later. The way it builds through side one to "Malpractice", a song about being awake during surgery...then dips into side two before building even more to "Crack Hitler" and "Jizzlobber" before sailing off the edge of the cliff with their beautiful cover of "Midnight Cowboy" holds up against anything coming out today.

__
Radiohead's OK Computer

Even though I was not exposed to this until after the 90's, I still feel it provides a wonderful blend of musicianship and computer-generated sounds to create a feeling of uncontrolled acceleration, perfect for the late 90's.

__
The Melvin's Stag

While not my favorite Melvin's album, it was my introduction and unlike a lot of their other work is filled with a certain giddiness that reminds me of all the acid floating around in that time period. I remember clearly, while listening to this album when it came out with my friend (and huge Melvins fan) Chickenboy his comment: "Shit, I think they've been listening to (Mr.) Bungle!"

__
The Jesus Lizard's Show

Live, raw, the way music was meant to be. One of the things I miss about the early-to-mid 90's is the abundancy of all-age clubs. I didn't turn 21 until 1993, but the years before that I had the pleasure of seeing some great bands from Chicago in all-age clubs. Now that I'm a professional musician myself, I am always discussing my music with my tattoo clients...only to find that a lot of them are too young to see my group play. I think this sucks--we've got a whole generation being raised who's only exposure to "live" music is Britney "I'm not white-trash" Spears.

Finally, and I hope I'm not being redundant with my first choice:

Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante

This album perfectly encapsulates the sheer inventiveness and willingness to experiment that to me defines the 90's. I was of course expecting more insane carnival metal (like their first album) but could not have been less disappointed. Again, with the wonderful quantities of clean acid available at the time, this album provided something to escape into totally unlike the hair metal that defined the late 80's. Today experimentation is largely frowned upon financially--the groups that do experiment must enjoy their accolades from the few enlightened individuals that appreciate "the new."

Finally, I must second the mention of Julee Cruise. Even today listening to this album takes me right back to the lonliness and despiration for love I think a lot of us felt in the mid 90's
 
 
chiaroscuroing
11:33 / 01.07.05
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come. '97


I got a bone to pick with capitalism and few to break.

First line, opening track. And it only gets better from there. For 'New noise' alone this is a landmark, add 90 seconds of Tannhauser and your gob will never have been so smacked.
This is my favourite album of all time, it made me realise how powerful music is. Listening to anything after this just isn't good enough.

Refused, swedish punk band. Formed in '91, put out 4 records (I think), then after 'Shape' split up. Lead singer, Dennis Lyxzen went on to form The (International) Noise Conspiracy.
And they're completely pro-situ. The record drips with it.

Trust me. Go out. Get it.
It's fucking awesome.


So where do we go from here? Just about anywhere. Disorientated but alive. Boredom won't get me tonight.
 
 
grant
15:37 / 01.07.05
From 1990:
sebadoh - the freed weed.

This was probably the most influential album of the decade -- for me, for sure, but I think in a more general way too.

This album (actually two albums released together) marked the first time people got the idea that a couple guys with a cheap 4-track recorder could make an album in their living room. It was pretty much the birth of lo-fi, which I think has changed music -- definitely indie pop, but possibly pop in general -- for good.

OK, so it has that annoying 90s thing with the lyrics that are impenetrably personal, and features a bit much of an obsession with masturbation... but without this album, there might never have been Guided By Voices or Pavement/Steven Malkmus or John Vanderslice or Bonnie "Prince" Billie or any of the Elephant 6 bands or Lambchop or even The Magnetic Fields or Liz Phair. All those folks were home recordists & 4-trackers.

It's not like sebadoh invented the 4-track (heh -- Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska did that as much as anything), but they happened to use it well at the same time it suddenly became affordable for anyone. It was a grassroots revolution like garage rock or punk, only quiet, melodic & introspective... sometimes.
 
  
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