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

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

R.E.M. - Murmur
Saccharine Trust - PaganIcons
The dB's - Stands For Decibels
The Dream Syndicate - The Days Of Wine And Roses
ZZ Top - Tejas (already knew Tres Hombres)

(and definite co-sign on Eno's On Land xp
first heard yrs ago but didn't sit with it enough for it to sink in at the time
gave a recent re-listen and yeah, great spooky sound design)

T Rex - Electric Wizard
The Ethiopians - Woman Capture Man

the gun club - fire of love
duke ellington (with charles mingus and max roach) - money jungle

I'd never heard Straight, No Chaser until today and I am loving it

Been listening to a bunch of Haroumi Hosono for the first time and have been absolutely floored by Cochin Moon, Philharmony, and S-F-X

yessir

cochin moon and philharmony are definitely in my top 3 hosono atm. i'm not sure what the third is but it keeps rotating. S-F-X rules, though

the middle stretches of cochin moon are contemporary. i refuse to believe it was made 40+ years ago

Been truly loving Francis Monkman's soundtrack to The Long Good Friday. I'm baffled as to why he didn't have a long career afterwards, but he seemed to disappear from soundtrack work afterwards.

I was digging into an interview I conducted in 2019 with South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and he mentioned an album by saxophonist Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi, and I realized I'd never heard it, so I pulled it up on Spotify. It's called Yakhal' Inkomo, from 1968, and it's short — four tracks, 32 minutes — but a really great bridge between South African jazz and what was going on in America (one track is called "Dedication (to Daddy Trane and Brother Shorter)"). The most recent CD edition is out of print and hard to find, but it's on streaming services. Highly recommended.

I hate to be that guy but this is just a thread for good albums you've heard recently isn't it?

Here, I'll set things aright.

For reasons I couldn't possibly understand or explain, I've been exceedingly familiar with all the classic Sly albums except for Stand!, which I somehow failed to hear to until a couple weeks ago. I guess I just wanted to save myself a treat for a rainy day.

washing machine!

I'm trying to imagine hearing Murmur and Days of Wine and Roses for the first time ever within a short span of time. That must have been great!

discovered DOWAR about ten years ago, and it was special

One good thing about WFH is that I can listen to more music like hearing Swell Maps fucking incredible 2nd album, "Jane from Occupied Europe"

I picked that up on vinyl very recently, it is indeed great. The other one I got not so long ago was Fear & Whiskey by The Mekons, also amazing

There's a Secretly Canadian remaster of a couple of the Swell Maps lps that I have meant to get for years but seems a bit hard to find. I wound up picking up the Rough Trade version of Trip To Marineville a couple of years ago since it was cheap.
Not sure why nobody's done an upgrade on that stuff since it seems to be done to most other bands from the era. Rights remaining with Mute instead of Cherry Red or something?

Secretly Canadian thing being 10 or 15 years old by now.

Mingus Ah Um. no idea why I'd missed it before despite loving other Mingus and this always being in top 10 lists. but it's great obviously.

Yeah, heard that and thought I was hearing echoes in some of the better English Beat/Mod scene stuff Pretty Things, Who etc etc.
Great, great lp and one of several he put out at roughly that time.