what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

right now the answer to this is Van Morrison's "Poetic Champions Compose" - much more loose and spacey than I expected

Youth of America has always been my fave Wipers album. The quintessential Wipers song is When It's Over which is about the most transcendental piece of music I have ever listened to in my life. I wrote about it in my blog a while ago.

Link Wray's S/T 1971, mentioned up thread and covered extensively in Oxford American. Like Exile on Main St, and unlike a lot of other early 70s soul-rock, it brings the riffs, not just the depleted gaze and world-weary hooks.

I was knocked out by this one too when I first heard it almost 10 years ago. I had no idea Wray had made music that sounded like that.

Coming out of a five year relationship, discovering Hats by the Blue Nile makes a lot of sense.

https://www.discogs.com/Natural-Essence-In-Search-Of-Happiness/master/233493"">guys

fuck.

album's an absolute spewing volcano of pure heat tho

Another for Kleenex/LiLiPUT. Only had "Madness" on a mix tape, and finally just listened to
a bunch of others. Blows me away how good they were for early 80s.

Drexciya and side projects, Der Zyklus II in particular

rajie - espresso

another mid-'80s record along the lines of akina nakamori's "fushigi", who knew there was more than one great cocteau twins-influenced j-pop record from the mid-80s?

sry, this is the album i was trying to link before i opened up a wormhole: https://www.discogs.com/Natural-Essence-In-Search-Of-Happiness/master/233493

it's a david axelrod / cannonball Adderley affiliated jazz / soul album

Kleenex First Songs 2LP on Mississippi/Kill Rock Stars sounds fantastic, for some reason much bigger than the 2CD version represented on Spotify. Definitely a favorite discovery of recent years.

The Residents Fingerprince.
Probably about tiime i was familiar with all that early run though.
NIce weird stuff like I've been looking for for years. I have meet The , & Not Available not sure why I never really got into the band massively. Also used to have Third Reich & Roll and Commercial lp but not sure what I listened to heavily. I think bits of Commercial stuck in my head for years though.

i liked "leapmus" on the fingerprince preserved edition, overall the bonus tracks have been hit and miss but man i've never heard a version of "diskomo" i didn't like

the 180 gs just did a cover of the commercial album, i think overall the commercial album doesn't quite work as a conceit for me, particularly since "ups and downs" is way better as a proper _song_, but i'm still a little curious

Looks like the choice of bonus on a lot of these come from very different periods seeing a lot of 82 and 201-s. Would hope they'd keep things contemporary. Are things being released to the exclusion of things from the time or is there just little secretly stashed.
Like this preserved edition otherwise though so may pick up the rest up to Eskimo. Really don't know after that.

they're releasing what they have, stevolende - a lot of it is later versions of the original songs on the album. you're not going to go wrong with '82 diskomo though, and some of the outtakes "contemporary" to the recordings are stuff that mostly deserves to be on the cutting room floor

was really enjoying what i heard of that 180 gs album, liked it better than the residents' version, i guess that's common for me though, i like the residents better as songwriters than as performers

side a of Tarkus totally blew me away recently. I mean, damn!!!

in a very good way

side a of tarkus is phenomenal (and i really dislike all other elp)

not sure it actually _needed_ to be a side-long epic but "eruption" bangs hard

along the lines of akina nakamori's "fushigi"

thank you for bringing this album to my attention... what a remarkable pop record.

so a thing i like to do is go record shopping and buy classic albums / highly repsected cult classics i've never heard, load them up on my ipod and then hit shuffle and try to guess what i'm hearing.

on my last trip to amoeba, i picked up a couple glenn branca and cluster albums. when 'the acsension' came on i legitimately thought it was a deep cut off this comp. when a cluster track off sowiesoso came up, i was expecting adrian borland to start singing.

went back and listened to sowiesoso and zuckerzeit in full after being so awesomely stumped and, good god damn, those records are outstanding!

Yeah, I only picked up those Cluster albums a couple of years ago and they still sound completely fresh to me, albeit you can tell how influential they were to our favorite post-punkers.

Speaking of which, the last classic album that knocked me out was listening to Neu!'s "1975", driving with the top down at night, coming back from a record run in Portland, ME. Utterly perfect.

roman candle by elliott smith. that ringing acoustic guitar, his voice which sounds like a whole choir. the small guitar distortions. and those harmonies. divine.

I'm going to pick Brian Eno's Ambient 4: On Land, which came out in 1982. I've heard bits of it on ambient mixtapes, but never the whole thing until I bought it recently - it has aged extremely well. It's creepy, nocturnal, and sounds a lot more diverse than his earlier ambient records.

After 1982 he discovered the "shimmer" sound that's plastered all over Apollo, the Dune soundtrack, his work with U2 etc, so it's not like his later records either. It really doesn't sound as I would expect an ambient record from the early 1980s to sound.

Also, Youtube's recommendations keep throwing up excellent albums from the 1970s and 1980s - Japanese jazz music, city pop, German funk, Lebanese psychedelic folk etc - but although individually some of the records are impressive, collectively they've started to wash over me. I'm worried that my brain has been subjected to so much stimulation it's no longer capable of extreme reactions to unexpected inputs.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Braziliana_(Luiz_Bonfá_album).jpg

as a hiphop head in the 90s, i always loved 'saudade vem correndo' but i never knew that bonfa and his wife had released their own album. it's obviously trying to cash in on the success of astrud gilberto, but i don't know, it's a much different kind of album. it alternates between luiz's instrumentals and orchestrated vocal numbers by maria. i love bonfa's guitar playing. he has a very "flat" style (if that makes any sense) in comparison to similar folks like charlie byrd, ac jobim, and laurindo almeida. and maria's breathy tenor range is the perfect match for it. braziliana is haunting and beautiful. it feels like the less schmaltzy counterpart to the albums astrud gilberto was releasing at the time. it's very quiet and subdued. absolutely perfect fall music.

Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny - I don't know if I've ever given this the time of day before, but it's sounding very good now. There are definitely some shades of other '70s boogie-metal acts like Blue Oyster Cult and Alice Cooper here, but the tight high operatic vocals and heaviness of the riffs set this apart.

Gong Flying Teapot in its latest remaster.
Not sure when I last heard the lp anyway but sound is now great.& 8ts otherness shines through beautifully.

Before that would probably be one of the Numero label releases.
Probably the Willie Wright lp which is sublime and probably a bit anachronistic. Sounds like it should be about 72 not disco era.
The Happy Rhodes compo I got is also lovely. Got some great great tracks on it far better than ersatz Kate Bush.

I've heard it lots of times before but I put 'Avalon' by Roxy Music on last night after a long autumn walk and it was the perfect thing for a Sunday evening

black rose: a rock legend by thin lizzy. absurd chord progressions on 'waiting for an alibi'.

I'd never heard Tubular Bells, except for the intro theme, until recently. Good stuff, a lot more varied than I'd expected somehow.

Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra

Son House – Father of Folk Blues

Which is very very beautiful

I'd never heard Tubular Bells, except for the intro theme, until recently. Good stuff, a lot more varied than I'd expected somehow.

― the grateful dead can dance (anagram), Saturday, May 30, 2020 11:58 AM

listen to oldfield's other albums from the era, too! they rule!

as for me, maybe not an all out across the board classic, but definitely a rare groove classic: marc moulin's mid-70s eurofunk masterpiece sam' suffy really knocked my socks off. it's an album i was certainly aware of, but never looked into, even with the reissue some years back. glad i did. what a unique and great record.

Steve Hillage Fish Rising.
Part of the Gong continuum as the guitarist went solo backed by the just post Allen and Smyth version plus Linda Cooper pre Henry Cow.
Nice swirly stuff.
Picked up after reading Mike Barnes A New Day Yesterday. Might grab a few more things from there. Still don't have any Egg for one. & may need to upgrade my Hatfield and the North.

No Pussyfooting (Fripp/Eno collab) has been getting a lot of play lately. It's pretty & ominous, and listening to it while out for a walk gives everything a surreal sheen.

Son House – Father of Folk Blues

― pomenitul, Saturday, May 30, 2020 2:27 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

fuck yes to this, i listened for the first time last week and it feels like he's in the room with you.

Yeah, it's just incredible. I need to hear his early recordings next, although I'm a complete sucker for those huskier vocals that old age brings.

And while it's not (yet) a 'classic' album per se, Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes's Cypress Grove from last year really made me want to do something about my all-too limited knowledge of blues history.

you should try Mississippi Fred McDowell's I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll as well if you already haven't!

I haven't, so thanks for the tip!

If we're on a blues tip, I'll add 'Folk Singer' by Muddy Waters.

Incredible acoustics to give your hifi a workout if that's your kind of thing.

yeah never thought of that angle before because I have the hundred quid Edifier speakers not worth a shit blues! But love that album as well.

If we're on a blues tip, I'll add 'Folk Singer' by Muddy Waters.

Incredible acoustics to give your hifi a workout if that's your kind of thing.

― Dan Worsley, Monday, June 1, 2020 5:39 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this one i know, second this whole-heartedly

There was a version of the 1930s Son House material in the Proper Introduction series came out about 10 years ago. I know it had decent sound for material of that vintage.
Trying to remember if it was him that was the artist refered to in the quote I'm half remembering about not being able to find his material in good shape cos the discs would be worn out from people partying to them.

The Damned Machine Gun Etiquette. "Love Song" --> the title track = easily one of the best 1-2 album openers I've ever heard.

‘no pussyfooting’ is on streaming now! that has made my day. i played the living shit out of this record back when i had records.

you should try Mississippi Fred McDowell's I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll as well if you already haven't!

Just listened to it now, actually. Phenomenal stuff, thanks again for the heads up!

Muddy Waters's Folk Singer is next.

Listening to The Folk Singer, it's great of course, but I also think a big part of the appeal is the beauty of plate reverb in a very spare environment.

another 1920s bluesman still going strong in 1961:

Furry Lewis, Shake 'Em On Down