Frownland

113. The Peter Brotzmann Octet - The Complete Machine Gun Sessions (1968)

Screeching saxophones, clarinets, clattering and somewhat senseless drums, bassists making their bows pay for what they did, and fumbling piano. It's a ****ing mess...but it's the best mess you've ever heard. This is the loudest jazz out there, and it's probably heavier than most of the metal bands you listen to. Led by the great saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, the group has other great reed aficionados Evan Parker and William Breuker. We also have Fred Van Hove on the piano with Peter Kovald and Buschi Niebegall on basses. What really steals the show, for me at least, are the drums which are provided by Sven-Ake Johansson and Han Bennink. Bennink is a ****ing madman. This is free jazz at its best and most abrasive, well worth the time to listen to if you're a free jazz or cacophony fan in any way. It's basically Albert Ayler on crack-cocaine.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Anteater

114. The Diogenes Club - The Diogenes Club (2011)

Easily the best full length synth-pop LP of last ten years or more, and I don't levy that sort of praise easily. You can hear echoes of all sorts of bands and artists in their approach (that includes Roxy Music, Smashing Pumpkins, even soft-rock groups like Firefall and Ambrosia) but the songwriting is at such an uniform level of excellence that I think it would be a shame not to give it a place on this list.

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

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Josef K

Love this album, was thinking of putting it in myself.

Surell

I had to drop a couple in and fuck shit up



115. Neil Young - On the Beach (1974)

There are probably ten Neil Young records I could easily (to a degree) pick in place of this album, that match it in great quality but for various reasons. I pick On the Beach because it represents so many facets of Neil in a very eccentric way with top notch songs throughout, all the while still being a pure, urgent document of a man in turmoil that draws the listener to his pain and how he expresses it.

Let me sketch it out just to show how odd this album truly is: The opening pair, "Walk On" and "See the Sky About to Rain", are the most upbeat songs on the album, truly sounding like a day on the beach (the latter gorgeously played, with the addition of Levon Helm's masterful drumming), yet "Walk On" starts with "I hear some people that are talkin me down/Bring up my name, pass it round/They don't mention the happy times/They do their thing, I do mine"; and "See the Sky"'s chorus mentions a locomotive's "whistle blowin through my brain", a somewhat violent impression.

Immediately after these is "Revolution Blues", where Levon's drumming turns into a military march and Neil channels Charles Manson and croons "I see bloody fountains/and ten million dune buggies comin down the mountain/Well I hear the Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars/But I hate em worse than Lepers, and I'll kill em in their cars." This fades into the front porch banjo strum of "For the Turnstiles," an eerie little ditty with Neil croaking, in a voice probably dried out from whiskey and weed, such obscurities as "All the sailors with their seasick mamas/Hear the sirens on the shore/Singin songs for pimp swift tailors/Who charge ten dollars at the door." The side ends with what is essentially a joke, "Vampire Blues," a groove driven blues number that ends up in a sense as one of the most straightforward songs on the album if it weren't for that lumberjack smirk Neil wears throughout.

Side two for vinyl users (which the album was originally intended for) is a more consistent affair, moving into a more low key folk wherein Neil divulges his innermost paranoia and depression. The title track is a cumbersome blues track that rolls along like watching nocturnal waves, with their massive power, smash the shore, the stars on the horizon staring at you. Here Neil uses the blues in a very sincere way, in contrast to the equally bluesy "Vampire Blues," revealing to the listener: "I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them day to day," and "I went to the radio interview, but I ended up alone at the microphone," before a voice seems to tell him "get out of town" and he obliges.

"Motion Pictures" is a song for his then wife, one of many songs on the marriage that you can seem to trace from Harvest through American Stars and Bars, and it is a marriage which only seems to devolve as the songs go on. However, it's the brightest song on this short side. It's an incredibly quiet tune, and sounds delicate and intimate; it's probably the only song on the album where you only hear Neil playing, and so represents a very personal moment. It's really more like a letter, a retelling of his time away from her and how he feels alienated from others as well as himself, and by the end promises "I'm deep inside myself, but I'll get out somehow, And I'll stand before you, and I'll bring a smile to your eyes."

Finally we have "Ambulance Blues," a ramble of a song if there ever was one. Some say it's Neil's "Desolation Row," and I wouldn't disagree: It's meandering, scatterbrained, and full of sometimes obscure meaning (though some of the messages are all too clear). I actually find this album most informed by Bob Dylan to a degree, mainly in Neil's voice, which takes on Bob's wry whine a la Blonde on Blone or any Trinity era Bob, though I think Neil's artistic voice and ethos shines through entirely. Oddly enough, though, this song is actually somewhat lifted from a Bert Jansch tune, I believe "Needle of Death" - listen to the two back to back. And while some might see this as a weakness, I think it represents the album most truly: Neil was in a bad way, fucked up most of the time, death constantly in mind; but he finds a way to express himself. He picks up his guitar and plays through it. I think this line sums up the song, and the album, perfectly: "I guess I'll call it sickness gone/It's hard to say the meaning of this song/An ambulance can only go so fast/It's easy to get buried in the past/When you try to make a good thing last." Keep in mind the blank space he leaves at the end there.

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The Sane Psycho

I don't know if anyone noticed, but I put the album index in the OP. Also, I'll be posting more in this thread soon.

Soulflower

115. Erykah Badu- Baduizm (1997)


Ms. Badu is one of my favorite artists so I have to review one of her albums. This is a very important album for the Neo Soul movement which was a rising genre during the mid- to late 90's. Before the D Angelo's, Badu's and Maxwell's, Neo Soul was a common underground/non commercial genre. This album along with others helped commercialized the genre and is commonly recognized as one of the major important album's for the genre.

This album mostly fuses neo soul, soul, funk, hip hop and jazz. Ms. Badu channeled Billie Holiday's raw emotions through her singing and covered a wide range of subjects such as love, deception, social issues, substance abuse, self esteem, friendship, poverty, maternal issues and family.

If you love old school traditional soul R&B then you will enjoy this album. Ms. Badu wants to enlighten you with her personal struggles with love and her opinions on social issues with sincerity and with class. This is a classic album and a must listen.

Cuthbert

116. Maniac - New Age Grime

Grime is a genre that's been influenced - positively and negatively - by many styles of Hip-Hop, but this is a genuine Grime album. This is an album I would give to someone who thinks 'Grime' is an umbrella term for all British rapping.

It's rare to hear an album that came from this scene that is fully Grime because the MC's are so influenced by the US, and the very few you do hear are poor because studio albums are not really what the genre is about.

So I decided to forget the MC's and picked a studio album by the undisputed best producer to have came from the scene. Maniac. A teenage prodigy of the genre.

Tracks like 'Captain' and 'Gunslap' are beautifully produced, and his back catalogue of productions for the likes of Wiley (Race Against Time), Chipmunk (I Am Chipmunk), P-Money (Money Over Everyone) and Tinchy Stryder (Stryder vs Maniac) prove he is the real deal. He even produced a track for the film 'Adulthood' for Bashy.

This is a brilliantly produced album that doesn't drag on and bore.

Grime is licking it's lips and waiting with anticipation for the day Brandon Jolie is released from prison.

Advert for the CD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNtAjVmTLl4

Neapolitan

118. Überzone ‎– Ideology (2007)

Tracklist:

1. Okay 3:38
2. 4 Bit 4:49
3. Vibrate 5:06
4. Satisfaction 4:37
5. Ideology 4:00
6. FUBAR 4:22
7. Alphawave 6:01
8. Germs 4:04
9. Geisha 2:06
10. Funny Noise 4:37
11. Inner Space 0:50
12. M87 4:29
13. Black Hole 2:06
14. Yes 0:10

This is a recent find for me. I haven't gone through a lot of edm albums to know where this stands and how it rates among others. Though I am unsure if it is a must listen, it is definitely fun to listen and maybe this could be a good place to start if you to explore something in edm's recent past or just want to hear something other than highly compressed dub-step :/ and it's ad nauseum bass warbles :/

Überzone is Timothy Wiles, also known as "Q" - a James Bond character. They called him Q cause he use to collect gadgets and stuff. And he has a decent amount of Roland gear the kind of stuff that dj's used extensively in 80's & 90's edm. He toured with The Crystal Method and worked with Afrika Bambaataa. Before I choose to give this album a listen, I probably crossed paths with his music and didn't realize it. His stuff on appears in the movies Fight Club (1999), Magnolia (1999) and 50 First Dates (2004) and makes an appearance too in the rave doc. (B3773R) Better Living Through Circuitry (dir. by Jon Reiss). I saw the 1st and 3rd movie and the documentary.

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Isbjørn

Guys, we've screwed up the numbers. Baduizm is #116, New Age Grime is #117 and Ideology is #118. Can you please fix them?

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Anteater

119. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - The Pearl (1984)

A pinnacle in minimalist ambient music, led by Budd's superb piano and the production inflections of Eno with guitarist Daniel Lanois. While there's a lot of great purely instrumental tuneage out there across the electronic and ambient spectrum (and I own a big chunk of it), most of it doesn't hold a candle to this baby as a complete listening experience. Put it on sometime when your trying to wind down before bed and see what I mean...

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