what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

also Nick Drake - Bryter Later - but I already knew most of the songs on that, so it wasn't quite such a revelation.

:-) :-) I'm most happy to hear that!

pre-1990: Poison, Open Up And Say Ahh....

Also that Joe Cuba Sextette Diggin' the Most I just got is pretty great, except for the English language tunes. But the tracks that Cheo Feliciano sings on are uniformly very good.

i more or less have all of his records and i have the feeling otb is his best studio album. it's the most intense of his folky/soft songwriter albums. there are no real standouts except the first song which i knew from decade. it's all pretty much made of one stone. by the way neil did many shit and average albums. most of his 90s (except ragged glory, dead man was ok) and a lot of his 80s releases (trans, reactor, landing on water etc., hawks + doves was ace) should be mentioned here.

I was listening to Step In The Arena last week, and that might be a flawless album.

Chocolate and Cheese, had no idea man. Had only heard Ween on the radio and on mixtapes made by stoners.

gabba gabba one of us

Oh shit, next thing you're gonna be downloading the Bilboa Tapes, sorting out the lore of Papa Gener's love life in song, and gettin' down with the brown on the Poopship!

They really are one of the most rewarding bands.

Nomeansno - Wrong

holy shit

I have a memory of Peel playing a whole side of Wrong when it was released, and it made such a deep impression on me. I hope it actually happened and it's not just a brain malfunction.

some of this is Led Zep level punch, Rags And Bones currently kicking my ass

i am checking this out too and wow yeah, these are very compelling jams.

was fun discovering Ween's albums for the first time and realizing I knew four songs by them already. never in a million years would've put together that they were from the same band.

war ina babylon

Wrong is a 5 star classic all the way thru, not a weak track on there!
there's no classic album just compilations but I'm currently getting knocked out by Charley Patton, holy shit that guy was versatile.
the compilations themselves are an absolute minefield though, each one takes a different approach to surface noise as ancient 78s are the only source remaining. some just play the 78s without any noise reduction which makes them difficult to listen to depending on the 78, while others overdo the noise reduction until the guitar has a gross spindly digital sheen.

Always liked the sound of my Yazoo 2xLP, not sure what would be available now digitally

yeh this is just going thru comps on slsk, will be on the lookout for LP version tho

I bought Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirrors recently. On compact disc, no less. Because it was £5.75. I have about one-quarter of the album already, scattered across Virgin's Brief History of Ambient compilations, and I was worried that it was going to be monotonous - the same basic idea repeated with variations for forty minutes. Sometimes Brian Eno turns up the reverb. Sometimes he turns it down. I was worried that Virgin's compilation people had picked the best tracks.

I had that problem with Mustt Mustt. "Sea of Vapours" and the Massive Attack remix of the title track are both on the Brief History compilation, and they're by far the best tracks on the album. Ditto Trisan. Nonetheless I can truthfully say that I have bought four compact discs in 2026. Four!

It has been over a decade since Apple last sold a computer with an optical drive, but Itunes/Apple Music can still rip compact discs. But, anyway, I was pleasantly surprised. Not exactly knocked out, but pleasantly surprised. Mirrors is diverse, consistently interesting, mostly timeless, and it has a cold unsentimentality that has aged well. It feels weird that it came out in 1980 and thus coincided with Sham 69 and the Ford Cortina. It must have felt like a portal into a different world back then.

I also bought Time Out by Dave Brubeck. I didn't knock me out, but I enjoyed it. It struck me that the basic experiment - jazz music in unusual time signatures, done in a way that sounds normal - was too successful, in that I largely didn't notice the unusual time signatures, at which point it's just a pleasant jazz album.

I was struck by the cover of his previous album, which oozes modernist 1950s rulers-of-the-world energy:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/sWAAAOSw83dmtdjw/s-l1200.jpg

I had never heard Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell before this morning. I few nights ago, I sat down to watch Black and Blue, a live video from Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult's 1980 co-headlining tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTQ9BY-yVKw

Dio's flailing on War Pigs made me so uncomfortable that I decided to fast-forward through all of Sabbath's parts. But I was nonetheless curious, so I checked it out this morning. I get why earlier Black Sabbath fans (and even members of the band) wouldn't like it, but in retrospect, it's an ideal early 80s metal record.

I can imagine video footage ruining a lot of good old rock & roll, but yesss, Heaven & Hell is a scorching record -- Mob Rules perhaps even better.

If you can divorce the later records from the band's history, there isn't a single unsatisfying Sabbath record until (mayyybe) Forbidden.

if you like the two Sabbaths with Dio (WHICH YOU SHOULD AS THEY RULE), you'll probably also really like the first 3 Rainbow records

(and the two later Sabs with Dio too!)

If you're looking for a good mix of 80's post-disco/boogie and slow jams, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Syreeta's Set My Love In Motion

Chico Buarque - Construcao

Will be familiar to most anyone from Brazil or into Brazilian 70s sounds, but this has absolutely destroyed me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBfVsucRe1w

yeh Chico is a brilliant songwriter, still with us too!
recently been knocked out by the Ike Yard LP on Factory, a missing link for me on the early industrial/electronic timeline

Little Feat's self-titled debut.

Oh gosh, also Unwound's swansong, 'Leaves Turn Inside You', which I believe is considered a 'Classic Album' on some sectors of ILM anyhow --- I heard it for the first time last week, and yesterday found a used copy of the vinyl final volume (only, but very cheap and it includes 'Challenge ...' as well) of The Numero Group's Unwound Edition. 'Leaves ...' is so Classic that I can imagine never being able to exhaust its riches. As a personal 'irst-time for me discovery', hearing Unwound is right up there with finally catching up with U.S. Maple and Prolapse (two more bands I'd heard much ABOUT but had never actually heard until 2026.

As a Charlie Parker casual, I had the Complete Savoy and Dial Sessions but somehow didn't know of the Complete Verve. Stayed up until 1am in Bird Heaven.

hell yeah dog latin, I also just heard Construcao for the first time this summer and was similarly blown away. I've had a copy of Chico Buarque's Sino Fechado for years and always liked it fine, but Construcao just knocked me on my ass, absolutely incredible record.

the Heaven and Hell album (Sabbath / Dio reunion that didn't get to have the Sabbath name) is also very good

^ So good.

I also just heard Construcao for the first time this summer

I've gotten stuck just replaying the fantastic first song... feel no need to move on quite yet...

Far East Family Band - Parallel World

Holy hell this is killer.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, June 20, 2022 7:47 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Otmfm! And Nipponjin is just as killer, Tenkuujin is not far behind and nor is Nihonjin by Far Out (a precursor band). Maybe my favourite discovery of the last few years (though that's not a high bar to clear). Transcendental guitar/synth space rock. Arguably it rarely achieves true escape velocity but I'd say it comfortably reaches the stratosphere.

van der graaf generator - the least we can do is wave to each other

jorge ben - africa brasil. not sure why i waited so long with this one, maybe some unconscious anxiety about it being the “obvious” one? anyway i adore jb and this album is a masterpiece

I was doing yardwork a couple summers ago and the guy working on the neighbors roof was cranking that - had never heard it before and had to ID it with my phone cause it was great

also a latecomer to that, within the last decade, it's fabulous

re: thread topic, I can't believe I never even heard of this until like yesterday

https://bookertjones.bandcamp.com/album/mclemore-avenue

My dad gave me a copy of that when I was a kid, but I definitely didn't fully appreciate it at the time.

hell yes to The Least We Can Do, still nothing better than cranking the end of White Hammer all the way up and letting the waves of dread wash over you. also gotta give props to After the Flood despite it sounding so ridiculous. always loved those shorter songs on Side 2 as well. pity there ain't really a good sounding version of this record out there though.

Thriller

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP IS IS. Is it early material that didn't get recorded for Date with the Night or just a detour back into their early style? Quite bludgeoning!

That's an awesome EP! Revisited that one a year or two ago and was happy that it still held up.

Wow that EP is amazing— thank you for posting about it.

I was only into the YYYs for a minute when they first came out and it was songs like “Art Star”— I loved that 2001 EP. Got off the bus before “Maps” came out and “Maps” wasn’t why I liked that band. IS IS reminds me of why I loved them to begin with

"down boy" is one of my very fav yyy songs

Duke Ellington/Ray Brown - This One's For Blanton
A collection of piano-bass duos recorded in 1972; includes a four-part, 18-minute "Fragmented Suite for Piano and Bass" on the B-side. There's some surprisingly free playing from Ellington here; RIYL Money Jungle or Piano In The Foreground (my personal favorite Ellington-the-pianist album).

The poll a couple of months back got me listening to Grace Jones - Nightclubbing Never heard anything from the album beyond Pull Up To The Bumper. Walking in the Rain & especially I've Done It Again are just brilliant tracks. The recording and her voice are perfect

Warm Letherette and Nightclubbing are the apotheosis of what I think of as Runway Rock. Not necessarily made by models, but it could be, and certainly should be made by pretty people and ready for the catwalk. Pop-catchy but dissolute. Indie Sleaze certainly came ready-made to slot in, but goes back as far as another of my made up genres, Goat 'n' Girl (Gainsbourg duets, Nancy & Lee, Nick Cave duets, The Kills etc)

I like Jones' versions of all those songs better than the originals, including "Love is the Drug".

john prine s/t

wow i can't believe i'm hearing this for the first time and how urgent and necessary it sounds.

Those last two songs on Nightclubbing are Grace at her finest imho

xp yesss love it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ04tVU4cqk

This is one of my very favorite Prine songs and a perfect performance of it. I heard this version first and later tried out the album version which blows in comparison.

There's not a bad Prine album. Bruised Orange is terrific.

Nightclubbing is unbelievably good, that along with the accompanying A One Man Show was a great experience this year.

New Order -- Brotherhood ("As It Is When It Was" hit me hard last week)

> Duke Ellington/Ray Brown - This One's For Blanton

Getting knocked out by this one! Thanks unperson! I'd love to have more context for how the session was intended, as it seems like posthumous release. Was it a very awesome jam warming up for something else? So raw, and such dialog between the playing.