Embryonic – The Flaming Lips
I'm such a fan of this album. It's raw and threadbare. The production is so very analog. It's as though they sent everything through as much analog...
Split your lungs with blood and thunder – Mastadon
Take Herman Melville's tale about Captain Ahab's maniacal quest for vengeance against the giant white fish; a text that is brutal in tone and structure, and put that to modern...
Tall and tan and young and lovely – Getz / Gilberto
Sure. Everyone knows "Girl From Ipanema." It's the track that launched Astrud Gilberto's career, but it's the entirety of the album that has you sipping your whisky sour and...
Leave Kanye out of this – Black Country, New Road
It's experimental and post-rock and Slint with klezmer and pushes back at the rock-band format. The band gained notoriety from their first two singles, "Athens, France" and "Sunglasses." For their...
Kikagaku Moyo – Kumoyo Island
I was chilling one evening surfing chaotically through the youtubes as one does when the track "Decending Blue" popped up. Its intro starts with an odd cello line that's quickly...
Film Score Minus The Film – Kaada/Patton
From the very first notes of the album, it becomes evident that Kaada and Patton have a unique creative synergy. "Bacteria Cult" is a mosaic of genres, blending elements of...
Can’t Believe How Strange It Is To Be Anything At All – Neutral Milk Hotel
While I've always been an instrumentally-heavy music fan, there's something addictive about the lyrics built on the beautiful and out-of-the-norm vocal melodies Jeff Mangum created. This 1998 album is intoxicating...
Three Girls on Roller Skates – Chet Faker
"…think calm and cool with purpose, and then get hip to the restrained and resonating sound of Faker."...
Can’t sleep. Beds on fire. – Talking Heads
My awakening to David Byrne and Talking Heads' brilliance happened far later in my adulthood than I'd like to admit....
The Japanese Surf Rock God – Takeshi Terauchi
While California had Dick Dale, The Ventures, and The Beach Boys to develop those reverb heavy guitars and vocal surf, Japan had its own master bringing in a taste of...
California Deserves Whatever It Gets – Milk Cult
Elements of rock, jazz, hip-hop, metal, surf rock, and 90s industrial keep you guessing where this quite palatable mix will go next. The one thing it does stick to is...
Nonagon Infinity Opens the Door
Psychedelic, garage, progressive rock, jazz fusion, and heavy metal all fit as descriptors with this non-stop jam. The album was built from nine songs to be able to be...
Night Verses
The album starts out with a somewhat chaotic-sounding drum fill with background noise and a vocal sample. Then it's straight into this blistering prog-metal riff designed to give you a...
Hard Bop with Legends – ‘Round About Midnight
It was his solo on Monk's track Round Midnight at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 where Mike Davis was spotted and signed to Columbia Records. And what a debut...
The Book of Knots
The album is grand in size at times and introspective without being overbearing or brutal. Dark and brooding, peculiar atmosphere and artistry....
TesseracT – djent, djent, djent-djent
I’ve become addicted to this album over the past several months. This album combines some of my favorite bits of musical stylings. First of all, it’s a progressive metal album....
WEEEEEEN!!!! The Mollusk
What can one say about the ‘97 Ween release, The Mullusk. I know I get a huge grin whenever this album comes up. This album is all over...
Black Sabbath Riffs and D&D lyrics? Yes, Please!
The Sword’s debut album Age of Winters has to be the direct offspring of Ozzy-era Black Sabbath. Tony Iomi’s guitar riff-age is all over this album....
Hey! The Ice of Boston is muddy.
Coming out of the late 90s, we have a straight-up indie rock band the likes of Slint, Jawbox, or Fugazi. This EP was my entry into their infectious sound....
Lounging in 60’s Cuba
I picture lounging around in a fedora and white, short-sleeved button-up while sipping mojitos from a hotel balcony and watching Havana on the streets below with this music wafting in....
Lantlôs
Melting Sun is a post-rock concept album that’s just really well written throughout. Big, thick, vibrant. It’s paced very well with some fantastic atmospheric room to breath between the walls...
The Bug!!
This album by The Bug (Kevin Martin, a longtime collaborator of Justin Broadrick’s) is just dirty, dirty dancehall/dubstep. Truly grimy, subwoofer pounding dancehall....
U.N.K. … U.N.K.L.E.
DJ Shadow and James Lavelle. This late 90s album had Shadow at his prime a couple of years after his Endtroducing… album. It features a pretty amazing number of guest...
Anup Sastry
Anup Sastry is a monster. An utter monster. As you can read below, he creates in opposite the way many sequenced music creators work. The drums are real and tracked...
Isis/Aereogramme
This 3-track EP is a really interesting collaboration. On this EP, Konkurrent took a Scottish pop band and paired them with post-metal rockers. The result was actually pretty amazing....
Nick Drake
When I found this album, I’d never heard anything quite like it. Nick Drake was a tortured soul and his masterpiece was his last. It’s a stripped-down songwriter’s album. Beautiful...
Enders of Ozone
Back in 2002, I was working as a door guy at the Abby Pub in Chicago. I came in one night for a shift. And this band was...