FREEFORM 1990's ALTERNATIVE ALBUM POLL - THE RECKONING (TOP TEN COUNTING DOWN NOW)

26= Various Artists - The Music In My Head (1998)
75 points
1 vote
1 first-place vote
Contributor: KMS

http://static.boomkat.com/images/136200/333.jpg

And--duh--The Music in My Head Vols 1 & 2 are the BOMB.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 22 February 2006 03:49 (4 years ago)

Could anyone advise me of any Afropop along the same lines as the borderline genius Mark Hudson 'Music In my Head' compilation (which, for those not in the know, features early Youssou N'Dour, Thione Seck, Gestu de Dakar etc). I'm looking for stuff that genuinely excites and pushes boundaries (trad or electronica), rather than the staid 'World Music' substitutes. All suggestions/links gratefully received........

― baboon, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (8 years ago)

The Music In My Head: made African music appealing to someone whose previous forays into the music of that continent always seemed to end in boredom (I know, I know...).

― baboon2004 (baboon2004), Thursday, 5 May 2005 19:41 (5 years ago)

The Music In My Head compilation was so eye-opening for me because it placed musical ingenuity and plain brilliance ahead of ethnic 'worthiness' or 'suitability' in the choice of tracks.

― baboon, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (8 years ago)

Um, this is my favorite Afropop/rock comp ever. How did I forget it?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 15:54 (2 years ago)

new Bela Fleck semi-successfully unites west African/bluegrass banjo, goes on too long probably. after listening to The Music in My Head, Bela, forgeddabout it.

― whisperineddhurt, Monday, 2 March 2009 20:59 (1 year ago)

thanks KMS, will check that out

let it not be said that this poll is all the usual shit

25 Unrest - Perfect Teeth (1993)
76 points
1 vote
1 first-place vote
Contributor: Shakey Mo Collier

http://dcist.com/attachments/DCGent/perfect%20teeth.jpg

Okay so I was thinking about this over lunch and I offer the following defense of Perfect Teeth. (Okay okay commence indie-boy eye-rolling:)

I get the feeling it needs to be thought of somewhat in context to be appreciated. American indie rock coming through into the nineties was pretty much deplorably rock: the 80s models were bands like the Replacements or Fugazi, big shouty crunchy-chord American rock bands, and just before 93 -- when Perfect Teeth was released -- a great grungy shot of even rawkier influence had been injected and toppled the whole thing over toward the mainstream. Meanwhile the UK was seeing stirrings of a less traditionalist indie approach -- Too Pure, roots of post-rock or what-have-you -- but while plenty of American bands were following this, they weren't really impacting the overall course of American indie, and even the American bands flogging that stuff in the UK, like Th Faith Healers, still had heavy doses of very American grit.

Perfect Teeth was not only an antidote to that but an advancement on it. It was entirely clean-lined: Robinson's big guitar blasts pretty much lacked distortion -- in America! in 1993! -- and instead gave us that frantic sped-up jangle that's distinctively his contribution to the lexicon. The record was also spacious, and spacey. At the point Stereolab was still working its wall-of-sound drone, but a lot of the tiny blip-tone melodies Unrest were constructing pointed ahead to the stuff Stereolab would be doing during a much later phase of their career -- the backing vocals at the end of "Angel I Will Walk You Home," for instance, this sort of concrete tone-placement approach that's all over the record. They managed to turn the foreground of their music into something like a Mondrian painting, the clean-lined blocks of particular tones, in a way that seemed to turn away from most of the other things going on at the time, and the sort of techy spaciness of those tones combined with Robinson's vague leaning toward some image of a 50s-style pop combo to create and probably surpass what would, four or five years later, become a major theme in indie internationally, even though no one connected that with anything Unrest had been doing.

It seemed cleaner and spacier and more friendly and cerebral than the highly-emotive rock idiom of the moment, and more bedroomy, and more personal: "Back when I was twenty / I didn't think anyone liked me." And it managed to set all of its most fascinating impulses in context: it functioned terrifically as a rock album, as a pop album, and as an "experimental" album. Which is, I think, a lot of why it gets praised so often, but also a lot of why it gets slated as a run-of-mill record: it certainly seems continuous with most of what else was going on at the time, but really it's quite difficult to come up with anyone else who sounded quite like them, or even anyone else who's particularly followed the techniques that were actually uniquely theirs.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 27 August 2002 17:03 (7 years ago)

*great* album-cover IMO

this band had an absolutely amazing design sense

am really loving the experience of trawling through the archives and discovering all these bitchin' (usually nabisco) posts that make everything just so much clearer

never seen that nabisco post before but he hits on a lot of things I love about this record - it is very refined, everything carefully sculpted and in its proper place, tying all kinds of disparate strands of art and music together. there's a certain New England art school coyness to the latter half of their career but it works so well to evoke this sci-fi springtime of teenage dreams - part Factory Records, part Krautrock, part punk, part Velvets/Byrdsian jangle. I never tire of this album.

Well, I'll be sure to check it out! It sounds thoroughly intriguing.

I wasn't about when it was announced but can I say that Noyd's verse on Give Up The Goods (Just Step) is possibly the most exhilirating moment in the music the whole decade had? And this is on a record with Shook Ones ffs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9TiuooWA5M

^^^marvel at the rhythm guitar playing here

Unrest could also be pretty funny, in must be said

What's the story behind the lady on this album cover that isn't in the band?

that is Cath Carroll, they wrote a song about her

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath_Carroll

photo is by Robert Mapplethorpe btw

Were they friendly, or did they call her up out of the blue? I feel like there's a story here.

she looks kinda androgynous in the best possible way. also faintly oriental.

I'm not sure... Unrest was REALLY into the whole Factory Records thing, I think that's the connection.

They had also previously dedicated an EP to Depression-era social realist/feminist artist Isobel Bishop (and used several paintings of hers for sleeve designs).

ART STUDENTS!

24 Burzum - Filosofem (1996)
76 points
2 votes
1 first-place vote
Greatest contributor: Captain Ahab

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_b3oNt1Ou6cM/SKrplhHOOjI/AAAAAAAAAPc/wRVkk347qTU/s320/filosofem.png

Burzum "Filosofem" - first 30 minutes are monumental, second 30 are boring sub-Tangerine Dream noodling.

― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 29 January 2006 17:08 (4 years ago)

While I don't agree that Varg is an idiot, he has certainly done a ton of extremely retarded shit. Does this take one ounce of shine off Filosofem for me? Absolutely not.

― roxymuzak, Monday, 8 October 2007 05:07 (2 years ago)

I fucking sold Filosofem to a friend during an unload-everything-I-own flurry before I moved. Some of the biggest seller's regret I've had, though the rec is in deserving hands.

― producto do Brazil (╓abies), Monday, 3 August 2009 16:03 (9 months ago)

i'd go with filosofem, philip, and then maybe hvis lyset tar oss - but real black metal people seem to prefer the 1st two. filosofem is difficult due to the long ambient keyboard passages, but the good stuff is amazing. contains, "jesus tod", one of my favorite rock songs of any kind, ever. sounds like the munsters attempting to negotiate a mountain road, in the darkness, at 90 mph.

― contenderizer, Friday, 20 November 2009 04:27 (5 months ago)

Vikernes managed to turn every weakness into a strength:
- crap drummer: play only simple patterns without any fancy fills or variation
- crap guitarist: drown everything in fuzz and reverb, and record layers and layers of guitar lines until it all becomes a thick blur (esp. Filosofem)
- crap singer: only sing a one or two verses per song, write loooong songs and lots of instrumentals
- and finally: go MIDI and dump guitars, drums and vocals altogether

― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 22 June 2003 19:47 (6 years ago)

Gonna post one more quickly; am going into town for a bit now. The last two later.

The reason I'm posting another one quickly is that Shakey Mo is HERE AND ON HEAT.

(lol spoiler)

23 Unrest - Imperial F.F.R.R. (1992)
79 points
2 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: Shakey Mo Collier

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/8362-imperial-ffrr.jpg

Unrest are genius, mostly. I don't particularly like much of what they did pre-Imperial (there's some occasionally great moments) but Imperial is a godlike record, one of the few records I can still listen to and adore ten years after I first heard it. "Suki", "Isabel", "Skinhead Girl" are dead-set classics round my way. Perfect Teeth is great too, but not quite as jaw- dropping. "Cath Carroll" gets major points for featuring a Factory catalogue number in the lyrics, too.

― electric sound of jim, Tuesday, 19 February 2002 01:00 (8 years ago)

Listening to Imperial F.F.R.R. for the first time in forever (nice remastered LP reissue). Might like it better now than I did then, and that's saying a lot. A lot a lot a lot a lot. Especially digging the more abstract tracks that seemed so much less immediately appealing when I first heard it. Best semi-unheralded U.S. indie rock LP of the early 90s? I dunno. How much competition is there? More than anything, I like how of its time and genre it sounds without sounding like anything else out there. It presents itself superficially as this casually scruffy, almost tossed-off object, very much in the style of the moment, but the arrangement and sequencing are incredibly well integrated. is It doesn't "break barriers" or invent a whole new pop aesthetic, but it hums along with this oddly propulsive slackness and hits it out of the park song after song after song. I can see why some might be annoyed by the sentimental directness of "Isabel", but it's short and sweet enough for me to accept without qualms. In fact, Isabel's only deficiency is its tendency to be held up as the album's avatar (when Imperial & Loyola obviously deserve that honor). Only thing I really miss is "Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl", and maybe the 7" version of "Cherry Cherry". "Wednesday and Proud"?

Now I wanna dig out Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation and Perfect Teeth.

― a bleak, sometimes frightening portrait of ceiling cat (contenderizer), Sunday, 11 October 2009 03:28 (6 months ago)

one of my favorite bands ever, so creative

― Remove This Vile Tweet (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 14 October 2009 22:16 (6 months ago)

Am looking forward to coming here later and finding SMC trying to explain Unrest to a load of highly-strung Black Metal lurkers

and vice versa

a load of highly-strung Black Metal lurkers trying to explain SMC to Unrest?

XD oops

lol hey at least I wasn't the sole voter on this one

little-known lurker 'drench' chucked it 5

Imperial f.f.r.r. is maybe a little more "difficult" than "Perfect Teeth" - more minimalist, and with abrupt detours that reflect the schizoid relationship the band maintained between pop sweetness and avant-garde science experiment. I mean, this is a band that put test tones on their records. Imperial, the title track and centerpiece, builds a simple descending guitar-picked melody into a classicist pop refrain that then devolves into a shimmering haze of what sounds like someone playing champagne glasses/musical bells/windchimes. This band loved space.

am I the only person who prefers side 1 of ritual? granted, 'three days' is absolutely amazing and untouchable, but it tapers off severely after that. the A-side cartoon rock shapes are pleasing though.

(do people know disco volante has appeared twice? should I mention that?)

another conceit/in-joke I loved about this band was their way with credits - the liner notes read like they were written by engineers in white coats who felt compelled to specify the bpm and location of recording of every track. and every track was credited to BPM (i.e, Bridget, Paul, and Mark).

xp

So... guys, the only Unrest songs I know are "Cherry Cherry" and "Suki" and both songs kind of annoy me, so I've never bothered checking them out any further... but I guess I'm missing something.

i always get unrest and unwound confused.

i also made a hilarious mistake once where i bought an unrest (or unwound) record thinking i was buying an unsane record. figured that one out pretty quickly.

three days is easily the greatest thing on that album, but then it would dwarf most albums (including nothing's shocking which i'd rate more highly, a little less ambitious but more successful overall)

like with spiderland i'm surprised this wasn't in the original poll, maybe people assumed they were and went off in search of lesser-known albums

but I guess I'm missing something.

eh I dunno, it's possible this band is not for you... both those songs are emblematic of their fast-forward jangle-pop angle, which is one of the cornerstones of their style.

Yeah I have some kind of temperamental disinclination for super fast strummy/jangly stuff. Feelies, Wedding Present. My inner tempo for jangle and strum tops out around something like the Fall's 'Fantastic Life'.

this poll is weird. i've never even heard of unrest before... but listening to Perfect teeth now and liking it. they also kinda sound like unwound, which is extra confusing

the feelies at their best have a clarity of sound and purpose that recalls (if not matches) television, their first album is one of my favourite recent discoveries

in general i agree with u tho (xp)

definitely some Feelies action in Unrest

the feelies at their best have a clarity of sound and purpose that recalls (if not matches) television

Dammit you are making me have to listen to Feelies again, I am like bloody mary whenever someone makes a Television comparison.

just as long as you remember my caveat....

it should have been a caveat, anyway

Ha TWO Unrest albums while I was away! oh gosh Mark Robinson's guitar sound. I think I meant to vote for Imperial ffrr. Though I am some kind of nutbag cz I put the Air Miami album on more often these days. And then take it off again halfway through, but the good bits are good.

I've probably listened to Air Miami more than Unrest recently as well, mainly because my wife really likes the Air Miami album and puts it on a lot.

i always get unrest and unwound confused.

lol I also do this, frequently (for example, while reading these poll results)

i included imperial in my ballot, but with 0 points, just to indicate that i was in a hurry and too much great stuff was slipping through the cracks. some days i'd call it my favorite album of the 90s, some days not, but i figured it'd have enough support w/out me anyway. and it did. glad to see it here and above the likes of janes, who irritate me to no end. and as a fan of both burzum and unrest, i'd be happy to explain either to the part of myself that digs the other.

Looks like my number two isn't going to make it now. [censored] fans I know you're out there?