list some albums that will blow my mind

are all albums that have torpedoed my brains and sent me spinning into new paradigms of delight (minus the pretentious description)...

Like the JC reference btw. Fried is a greatly underrated album... :)

These albums have influenced me considerably. I can put anyone of them on at any time and listen to every track. They might not be your typical hipster choices but they are all bands that broke the boundaries of punk and hardcore.

Bearing in mind that I'm not overtly disposed towards punk-rock (that's a euphemistic way of putting it btw) and slightly overwhelmed by most hardcore (I kinda like the Blood Brothers but they're I appreciate at the soft extreme of hardcore, and one might say not even on the scale), what kind of music do these bands produce and what makes them so alluring? Just curious...

I'd say:

Tangerine Dream- Poland
Ossian- Ksiega Chmur
Isolee- Western Store (if you haven't heard yet)
Baby Huey- The Living Legend

I could probably think of tons more but it is hot and my brain is sore.

Rites of Spring were, along with Embrace, the first emo bands. Back when emo was hardcore music with more emotional and complex underpinnings.

Sex Positions was an odd choice to add, but they are a newer hardcore band that came from the ashes of the more traditional band, The Dedication. SP uses a lot of electronic and spazz oriented stylings to shape their hardcore.

Inside Out was an absolutely revolutionary hardcore band that came out of California in the early 90s. They were fronted by Zach De La Rocha, of RATM fame. But to me they are so much more raw and apocalyptic than RATM. Plus way more visceral and pounding.

American Nightmare (or Give Up The Ghost after the name change) was the band in the late 90s that basically broke the trad hardcore mold. Hardcore was in a big rut in the late 90s (save for some of the second wave youth crew stuff) but American Nightmare just demolished everything and many of today's hardcore bands rip them off pretty hard.

hope that clears things up.
ryan

Thanks for the help, although I sincerely hope that by 'Embrace' you don't refer to the soft-rock tripe-peddlers our blessed island has regrettably produced (although I am aware that a respected regular contributor here rather likes 'em)...

And, OTM, I shall know from now on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace_%28U.S._band%29

OTM, one might say.

Experimental Audio Research - Mesmerised (1994) is amazing considering actually nothing happens on the record. And I bought it solely on the recommendation of a Mr. Raggett, who I believe posts here occasionally. Oh, misguided youth, what is it that I have done...

Oh wait, I remember.

Mercury Rev - Boces.

Will change the way you look at 'noise-rock'. Plus, it has the bonus of the indisputable COOLEST OPENING TRACK OF ALL TIME, from the title to the flute solo to the immense chorus to the demented chanting to the noise at the end which makes Mogwai's Ex-Cowboy sound like a Paul Simon ballad.

Oh, and The The - NakedSelf for something a bit more low-key.

The KLF - Chill Out, the first album to convinced me that
electronic music could be deeply moving (and I was blown
away to learn that this multi-layered soundscape was
recorded LIVE in the studio)

I second Double Nickels on the Dime.

Rory Gallagher - Live in Europe or Irish Tour '74
Extraordinary playing, sweaty live blues, great records, put the hair on the back of my neck up when I heard after my sister brought it home (a novate Priest who taught at our school had to give away his rock and metal lps and sell his motorbike by order of the Parish Priest. We got Live in Europe, Lynott's Solo in Soho and two Horslips albums for free, apparently he had Judas Priest and Iron Maidean and loads more... nutty)

Jimmy Reed Live at Carnegie Hall is another great document of live electric blues

John Fahey - Voice of the Turtle. I didn't know guitars could DO that til i heard this, blew my mind completely, still love it to bits

Giant Sand - Chore of Enchantment. It completely sucked me right in, very few records ever made me feel like I was in the record like this.

Television - Marquee Moon. I love every note. I was spellbound when I heard this the first time, those guitars are heroic, the breakdown in Marquee Moon always reminds me of The Sea from Quadrophenia and I can't explain why.

Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. Amazing recording, don't know how they caught all that. It gives me a real visual reaction, the ambience of summer, green light, birch trees. It's as if a classically trained pianist was sort of anticipating boards of canada or something, except the melodies are more generous, kind of trickling.

The last thing to blow my mind was Shoukichi Kina -Peppermint Tea House. Okinawan folk-pop, it's a bit strange but completely enchanting. Only got it because Ry Cooder plays on it.

Oh and regionally not too far away and another great american slide guitarist's project:
Papua New Guinea String Bands with Bob Brozman, songs of the volcano. This is really beautiful, it's similar to the Melanesian Choirs on the Thin Red Line soundtrack. It sounded so foreign because it's choral so it has that dynamic and yet it is also has the whole Hawaiian slide and ukelele thing going on. Sort of took my breath away.

Thats some more stuff that blew my mind.

At least one of those has to shake something loose!

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

The sheer atonality of the music

Throwing Muses - House Tornado

An emotional state I'd never found in any other music

Steve Reich - Music for 18 musicians

Classical music I like!

A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology

The melodies of early d&b/jungle are v. interesting - a queasy euphoria

Kraftwerk - Man Machine

The archness of their electronic pop

Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die

The opposite of lo-fi. Engagement with electronics and rhythm without aping the current dance climate.

Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted

Indie rock taken apart and stuck back together in a different order.

Keith Fulllerton Whitman - Playthroughs

The first original ambient music I'd heard in ages

De La Soul - Three Feet High and Rising

Some of the most innovative sample sources in hip hop ever - peerless Prince Paul production

Wu Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers

The RZA's genius. It sounds so sparse, yet that fits the bleakness of the lyrics perfectly

Can - Future Days

Can's most listenable album. Showed me there was more to mid-70s rock than hippie bloat

Autechre - Chiastic Slide

The old cliche - the secret life of machines. A series of mistakes beautifully realised - Cichli in particular.

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Such a sense of fun and menace in gloriously incoherent warped music

OK having looked it up on wikipedia I'll agree. It is one of the harshest noises I've ever heard though.

susuma yokota - sakura

dmx - and then there was x...

low - a lifetime of temporary relief (box set)

david banner - mississippi

ginuwine - 100% ginuwine

underworld - beaucoup fish

pulp - his 'n' hers

bone thugs n harmony - e1999 eternal

black box recorder - the facts of life

geto boys - geto boys

aphex twin - selected ambient works vol. 2

biosphere - substrata

paul wall - the people's champ

pet shop boys - discography

Not as much, but good:
Kayo Dot, Choirs of the Eye

"the music veered from gentle American country folk to unabashed electronic noise to gathering and erupting crescendos, to extended skronk improvisations that then suddenly cut to an LSD version of a backwoods barbershop quartet or a Louvin Brothers spiritual – sometimes all within the course of one ridiculously long “song”"

Earth - 2. "The definitive pioneering drone-doom-power-ambient record. "

Fennesz - Venice "Thanks in part to that emotional heft, I have a feeling that long after many of the experimental electronic records from the past ten years disappear, we'll continue to reach for the works of Fennesz."

Phlius - Tetra "Ultra clean, high frequency content only, the cutting edge of minimalism"

JACOB KIRKEGAARD - 4 Rooms "acob Kirkegaard explores the legacy of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl. Kirkegaard recorded four rooms in the abandoned military bunkers, rooms that were active meeting points for people and have been left totally abandoned since the disaster. He recorded the silence of the room for a set time and then played it back to the empty room, recording the results. These recordings became layered over and over the sound, building up into dense and haunting drones".

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock.

Zappa "Hot Rats"
Built to Spill "Live"
Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation"
Outkast "Stankonia"
Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane O'er The Sea"
Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" (as oppoosed to "Tusk," which sneaks up on you and awes you with repeated listens)
James Brown "Sex Machine"
Andrew WK, "I Get Wet"
Radiohead "Kid A"
Television "Marquee Moon"
Nirvana "In Utero"
Beck "Mutations" (great mention upthread; first time I head, I thought it was one of the best records I'd ever heard. It wore off, though)
Ozzy Osbourne "Blizzard of Oz" (yes, I'm serious)
Congos, "Heart of the Congos"
Afrika Bambaataa singles collection from Tommy Boy. Wow.
Any number of Neil Young records

Pixies - Surfer Rosa (already mentioned, but I want to say it again to emphasize that I think it's better than Doolittle)
Pere Ubu - Modern Dance & Dub Housing
The Birthday Party - pretty much everything.
Deerhoof - Reveille (make sure it's Reveille, I don't think their other stuff balances the cute/chaos thing so well)
Tom Waits - Bone Machine (I had tooled around with a lot of his other stuff, but for some reason this album struck a deep, deep chord with me. It's so profoundly sad.)

Also, I've been listening to a Screamin' Jay Hawkins comp a lot recently and I think that guy is just the shit. If the music isn't mind-blowing, his voice at least is.

Actually, re: Mutations, try swapping the words of the tracks around for instant, amusing satisfaction. You'll find for a start that almost everything goes brilliantly with 'Bollocks':

Cold Bollocks
Nobody's Bollocks But My Own
Lazy Bollocks

etc. 'Bottle of Bollocks' being the best. And that's just the start...

Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children

Peter Gabriel - Passion: The Last Temptation Of Christ OST (simultaneously one of the most earthen & otherworldly recordings ever, and so so passionate, the title is no lie)

Gza/Genius - Liquid Swords (probably the only album equally as appropriate as accompaniment to murder, chess games, getting high)

Mr. Bungle - California (one of the most lush, amazing SOUNDING recordings ever, thanks to creative use of reel-to-reel tapes + digital editing)

The first track draws you in, the second track warns you off, and from there on in it's a sonic, musical marvel of, at turns joyous, at turns deeply melancholy psychedlia (that rocks a lot).

It appears to be real.

Probably a bit of an obvious list, but an honest one nonetheless.

THE LIST on rateyourmusic.com: THE LIST

Quick summary: THE LIST 400 albums are listed.

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/riffraff/archives/images/Comic%20Book%20guy-thumb.jpg

evidently, i have to go away again

Amon Duul II - 'Yeti' - unhinged hippies and the best album cover ever

Aphex Twin - 'Selected Ambient works vol II'

Second: 'Tilt', 'Locust abortion Technician', 'Playthroughs'

For Squirrels - Example
Dada - Puzzle
Freedom Williams - Voice of Freedom
Wheatus - Too Soon Monsoon
Michael Buble - Caught in the Act
Fort Minor - The Rising Tied
Various Artists - Hellcat Records Presents Give 'Em the Boot III
Hitman Sammy Sam - The Step Daddy
Neil Schon - Beyond the Thunder
Craig Chaquico - Midnight Noon

xpost

I did that once with a friend. i took 20 quid and chose out of a rack, got a beefheart album (it was in the b/c section, and I tried to cheat and get some beach boys, i was off)

You wonderful horrible man.

That is so appropriate in so many ways.
I wish that was what I had meant to say.

what springs to mind is coming home from seventh grade and sitting underneath the big table in the dining room and listening to my mom's old "blonde on blonde" record over and over and over and over again. that is some mind blowing shit.

Can - Future Days
LFO - Frequencies
Prince - Dirty Mind
Nas - Illmatic
Arthur Russell - World of Echo
Villalobos - Alcachofa/Achso (take yr pick)
The Button Down Mind of Dan Bell
Sunroof! - Bliss (CD2)
Basic Channel - Basic Channel / Maurizio - M Series / Rhythm and Sound - Rhythm and Sound / Monolake - Hong Kong
Gas - Konigsforst
Broadcast - The Noise Made By Other People
Horsepower Productions - In Fine Style
Royal Trux - Cats and Dogs
Larry Levan's Classic West End Remixes
Moodymann - A Silent Introduction / Theo Parrish - Parallel Dimensions
Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis
Keith Hudson - Playing it Cool and Playing it Right
Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom
Kraftwerk - Computerworld
A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology
Neu! 75

This is the only record I've ever bought on spec. I was in a used records store one day, and I really want to buy something, but I had never heard of any of the bands in the store, LOL! (I was 14 at the time). White Light has a really hard, relentless kind of drippy sound; I’d never heard anything like it.
Social D really opened me up to the whole 80s American punk/hardcore scene which for someone born in Australia in 1985 is something you really have to seek out, and it began my obsession with Social Distortion which is probably my all time favorite band.

If you really want to change your life, maybe try Henry Rollins. The man’s a veritable cultural religion, not just his own work but also all the books and music he recommends. Check it out, you can’t go wrong!

And maybe some Glenn Branca?

Sand - Golem

http://www.carparkrecords.com/acute_US.html

in the us

here:

http://www.carparkrecords.com/acute_canada_mex.html

for canada and mexico,

and here:

http://www.carparkrecords.com/acute_anywhereelse.html

for anywhere else.

Now go buy it.