Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of you guys don't know enough good music. Consider yourselves music virgins until you've heard these 11 masterpieces:
Birchville Cat Motel - Beautiful Speck Triumph [Drone/Ambient/Noise]
"If you listen loud enough, you may just float out of your seat."
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children [IDM/Ambient/Trip-Hop]
"This is pure machine soul, reminiscent of some forgotten Japanese animation soundtrack or a rusting Commodore 64 just about to give up the ghost."
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Jazz/Modal Jazz/Avant-garde]
"It is almost impossible to imagine a world without A Love Supreme having been made, and it is equally impossible to imagine any jazz collection without it."
Comus - First Utterance [Acid Folk/Freak Folk/Experimental]
"At times, this straddles the border between folk-rock and the kind of songs you'd expect to be sung at a witches' brew fest, the haunting supernatural atmosphere enhanced by bursts of what sound like a theramin-like violin, hand drums, flute, oboe, ghostly female backup vocals, and detours into almost tribal rhythms."
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue [Jazz/Modal Jazz/Most Important Album of the 20th Century]
"Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence... It may be a stretch to say that if you don't like Kind of Blue, you don't like jazz -- but it's hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection."
Miles Davis - B*tches Brew [Jazz/Fusion/Experimental]
"Thought by many to be the most revolutionary album in jazz history, having virtually created the genre known as jazz-rock fusion (for better or worse) and being the jazz album to most influence rock and funk musicians, B*tches Brew is, by its very nature, mercurial."
Kayo Dot - Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue [Avant-garde/Chamber Music/Post-Rock/Doom Metal/Jazz]
"Kayo Dot are past metal, even past being described by a genre, they seem as if they have transgressed into a simple emotional reflection of their members. Whether that be a strong sense of loneliness or a sense of pure bliss, the emotions are covered in full detail."
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady [Jazz/Avant-garde]
"The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history. Charles Mingus consciously designed the six-part ballet as his magnum opus, and -- implied in his famous inclusion of liner notes by his psychologist -- it's as much an examination of his own tortured psyche as it is a conceptual piece about love and struggle."
Mogwai - Young Team [Post-rock/Noise rock]
"When the epic 'Mogwai Fear Satan' draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that the band has expanded the horizons of post-rock, creating a record of sonic invention and emotional force that sounds unlike anything their guitar-based contemporaries have created."
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless [Shoegaze/Dream Pop]
"My Bloody Valentine rode crashing waves of white noise to unpredictable conclusions, particularly since their noise wasn't paralyzing like the typical avant-garde noise rock band: it was translucent, glimmering, and beautiful."
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation [Alternative rock/Noise rock/Punk rock/No wave]
"Daydream Nation demonstrates the extent to which noise and self-conscious avant art can be incorporated into rock, and the results are nothing short of stunning."
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat [Avant-garde/Noise rock/Proto-punk]
"The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while their debut sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety."
*most critical blurbs taken from allmusic.com
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