Sorry, completely lost track of this.
I did give To Whom It May Concern a couple of listens however. I'm not the biggest fan of hip-hop in general but I decided to approach this with an open mind and with added curiosity. I certainly wasn't disappointed and on the second listen I found myself getting into it a little bit more. What really gets my attention are the backing tracks they use which add a slightly strange and unhinged base for their socially-aware rapping. I've already heard Absense by Dalek which is an album I enjoy occasionally and although these albums have very different moods and sounds, it's the fact that they experiment a bit and think outside the box that makes them stand apart from regular hip-hop.
What scores negative points however is that there are to many short interlude pieces, some of which seem to have no real purpose. But when they do get down to business on tracks such as '7th Seal', 'Physical Form' and 'Jupiter's Journey' you can't really fault them much. Although I admire this album I still find it hard to relate to on a personal level, which is probably a cultural thing more so. But this album is definitely a keeper and will get more spins in the future.
Out of the other albums the only one I've heard is Loveless. Shoegaze was very much in full swing when Loveless was released so I'm not sure you could really say that it pioneered the genre. It's difficult to determine what album or release really kick-started it. In fact you could even argue that Loveless was the beginning of the end of the original shoegazing movement as it set the bar so high that nobody could match it. Never-the-less it is one of the most influential albums of the last 25 years.
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