Your absolute favorite albums

[deepak]

I think I could get along very nicely with you, deepak

THE essential boris recording for me though is flood. It just, well, washes over you.

Some more essentials...

XTC - Drums And Wires

Il Balletto di Bronzo - Ys

Flood is a great album too

[humanflyz]

Jenny Lewis = TEH WIN

What's not to like: a good singing voice, long red hair, nice rack, cute face

[Duggeh]

Ah how many to pick? What ones to pick?

I think that the simplest thing to do is pick 5 and not think about it too hard. Its hardly as though this is somehow definitive after all. Best not to take the fun out of it.

1st then:

Mike Oldfield - Amarok.

It?s an album that I just can't seem to sell to people despite the fact that it's arguably the single greatest recording in the history of mankind.

Mike Oldfields big goodbye to Virgin Records (Heavens Open is perhaps best forgotten) is in many ways the sequel to Ommadawn, his third album. That at least is how the album started off. But it evolved far beyond such a *simple* starting point. The records producer, convincing Oldfield that he should stay away from computers, that none of the album should be developed based on samples, and that Oldfield should use his musicianship and imagination to the fullest, playing all of the instruments manually.

The end result is a resplendent journey through a nine-dimensional, multi-faceted universe of sound, on a rollercoaster built out of layer upon layer of music, and at first notice, some much more random noise.

Sounds of Oldfield stamping around the studio, making a cup of tea, using a Hoover, a Margaret Thatcher impersonator to act almost like a master of ceremonies during the peaks of the African passages, ridiculous bursts of rapid guitar and sudden explosions of noise just when you think there?s going to be a quiet passage, the entire album was constructed so that it would be impossible to pull a single from it, indeed, the Whole CD is one, single sixty minute track.

As part of the publicity drive when the album was released Oldfield offered a prize to whoever could find the *Secret Message* hidden in the album (fuck RB [RB=Richard Branson])

This album is such glorious, mad, progressive fart of an album. Its pace, its themes, its tone and its dynamic range jumps all over the place. Unlike albums which are so nose high in this regard (like Captain Beefhearts Trout Mask Replica) though, its not actually cocophonic. Its a myriad of swirling interconnected little worlds and I love it to pieces. Arguably Oldfields REAL magnum opus.

Jean-Michel Jarre - Chronologie

For me, it is not Oxygene or Equinoxe which represents the "true" Jarre sound. Those albums, while the two that all of his other works tend to be judged by, much like Oldfield with Tubular Bells are in my opinion fabulous, but Chronologie is better it runs that cold soaring electronic sound through the mangle into something slightly more intricate and slightly less sterile. He would lose it again with Oxygene 7-13 though.

Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star

If Amarok is a myriad hybrid of world music themes then A Wizard, A True Star is the rock equivalent. Less frenetic, but just as crazy its a real woven album of the DSOTM kind, songs blur into one another with little destination in transition despite their change in tone. Hugely energetic and fabulously fun and Rundgren did the entire thing himself including the album art.

R. Cajun & the Zydeco Brothers - No Known Cure

A finger snapping, banjo strumming, castanet clicking, accordion squeezing, fiddle fiddling, harmonica wheezing, cymbal rapping, see-you-later-alligatoring journey to a mud shack on stilts in the middle of some Floridian swamp.

That's how No Known Cure hit me, I'd never heard anything quite, like it, in a very loose sense, it was kind of like acoustic Creedence, yet that's a really bad analogy so just ignore it. This is swamp rock I guess and its quite fabulous in its energy.

Good luck finding a copy though.

Hank Shizzoe - Low Budget

This is THE steel guitar album. The sound quality is just astonishing and the music itself could not fail to be loved by anyone with any taste. The closest parallel I can think of is Brothers In Arms. In fact, I've bloody typed enough and I'm going to go listen to this right now.

[Dusty Chalk]

Nice -- Amarok is one of my favourites of Oldfield's as well (inasmuch as I can choose a favourite, although usually it's whichever of his releases I am listening to at the mo')

[Knuckledragger]

[Dusty Chalk]

Preface -- there's no way on earth that I can list every single one of my favourite albums, I love music just way too much. I'm one of those people that listens to an album and thinks, "this is my favourite album ever" for hundreds of albums. Perhaps thousands.

So I'm going to do them piecemeal. I'm not going to do them in any particular order -- the ones I do first are neither my favourite nor my least favourite of the bunch, they're just the ones I decided to do first. And there are going to be some I'm never going to do. The reasons for leaving albums out vary from "I just plain forgot about them" to "I listed this other album, and that album was close enough to it that I didn't feel like listing them both" to "I'm lazy" to "I got tired of typing".

Here's my current working list of albums from which I'm going to have to work:

Aerosmith, Rocks

Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen

Alan Parsons Project, I, Robot

Altered State, Dos

Amorphis, Tuonela, Am Universum

Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes

And One, Bodypop

Laurie Anderson, Big Science, Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Live at Town Hall/New York City/September 19-20, 2001

Android Lust, Devour, Rise and Take Flight, The Dividing

Apex Theory, Topsy-Turvy/Random Bursts

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works II

Apoptygma Berzerk Welcome to Earth, Apopcalyptic Manifesto, 7

Fiona Apple, Tidal, When the Pawn...

The Art of Noise, 'daft', Who's Afraid Of? (The Art of Noise!), In Visible Silence, In No Sense? Nonsense!, The Best of... (blue cover)

Ayreon, Human Equation

Bauhaus, In the Flat Field, Mask, The Sky's Gone Out, Burning from the Inside

Jeff Beck, Wired, Blow by Blow, There & Back

Black Sabbath, Paranoid, We Sold Our Souls for Rock'n'Roll, Technical Ecstasy, Heaven & Hell

Blue Oyster Cult, Agents of Fortune, Spectres, Some Enchanted Evening, Cultosaurus Erectus, Fires of Unknown Origin

Blur, Park Life, Modern Life is Rubbish, Blur,

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues

Clan of Xymox

Clay People, Waking the Dead

Conscious Structure, Non-Human Figure

Crack the Sky, Safety in Numbers, White Music

Cure, Disintegration, Blood Flowers

Curve, Pubic Fruit, Cuckoo, and Come Clean

Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool, Circle in the Round

Deep Purple, The Book of Taliesyn, Machine Head

Depeche Mode, A Broken Frame, Construction Time Again, Violator, Black Celebration, Some Great Reward

Al Di Meola, Casino, Elegant Gypsy, Splendido Hotel, Electric Rendezvous

Thomas Dolby, Blinded by Science (EP), Golden Age of Wireless, Flat Earth

Doubting Thomas, The Infidel

Rob Dougan, Furious Angels

Duran Duran (both the first one and the wedding album), Rio

Einsturzende Neubauten, Silence is Sexy, Perpetuum Mobile

Danny Elfman, So-Lo

Matt Elliott, The Mess We Made

Evil's Toy, Angels Only

The Faint, Danse Macabre

Bryan Ferry, Boys & Girls, Bete Noire

The Fixx, Shuttered Room, Reach the Beach, Phantoms

Edgar Froese, Ages, Stuntman

Garbage & Version 2.0

Front 242, Pulse

Peter Gabriel (aka 3 aka melt), Security

Genesis, Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme

Philip Glass, Koyaanisqatsi, Glassworks, and Einstein on the Beach

Golden Earring, Moontan, Cut

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, Days of Mars

Steve Hackett, Voyage of the Acolyte, Please Don't Touch, Spectral Mornings, Defector, Till We Have Faces

Halou, Wiser

Haujobb, Polarity, Vertical Theory

Heart, Dreamboat Annie, Little Queen, Dog & Butterfly

Human League, Dare, Reproduction, Travelogue

In the Nursery, Hindle Wakes

Chris Isaak, Silvertone, Heart Shaped World

Japan, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, Tin Drum, Oil on Canvas

Jean-Michel Jarre, Equinoxe, Magnetic Fields, The Concerts in China, Zoolook

Keith Jarrett, Sun Bear, Vienna Concert, Paris Concert

Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick, Passion Play, Aqualung, Minstrel in the Gallery, Songs from the Wood, Heavy Horses, Stormwatch, Broadsword and the Beast, A

Katatonia, Last Fair Deal Gone Down

Kidneythieves, Trickster, Zerospace

King Crimson, Discipline, Red, Islands

Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine, Trans-Europe Express, Computer World, Radioactivity

Labradford, fixed::context

Lamb, What Sound, Fear of Fours, Between Darkness & Wonder

Lassigue Bendthaus, Render

Led Zeppelin, I, II, IV, Houses of the Holy

Legendary Pink Dots, The Golden Age, Four Days, Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, Maria Dimension, Shadow Weaver, Malachai

Lhasa, La Llorona, The Living Road

Lords of Acid, Our Little Secret

Manfred Mann's Earth Band, The Roaring Silence and Nightingales & Bombers

Marillion, Fugazi, Script of a Jester's Tear, Misplaced Childhood

Chris Meloche, Recurring Dreams of the Urban Myth

Mentallo and the Fixer, Vengeance is Mine

Metallica, Kill 'em All, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, ...And Justice For All

Ministry, With Sympathy, Twitch, Land of Rape & Honey, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless

Neurosis, The Eye of Every Storm

New Model Army, Thunder and Consolation

New Order, Power, Corruption & Lies, Low-Life, Republic, Substance

Nine Horses, Snow Borne Sorrow

Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, The Fragile

Notwist, 12, Shrink, Neon Golden

Gary Numan, Replicas, Pleasure Principle, Telekon, Dance, I, Assassin, Warriors, Metal Rhythm/New Anger, Exile

Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder

Oingo Boingo, Only a Lad, Nothing to Fear, Good for Your Soul and Dead Man's Party, Boingo Alive

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Incantations, Exposed, Platinum, QE2, Five Miles Out, Crises, Killing Fields, Amarok

Orbital, In Sides

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Organisation, Dazzle Ships, Architecture & Morality, Junk Culture

Pitchshifter, www.pitchshifter.com

Planet P Project, Pink World

Pop Will Eat Itself, This is the Day...This is the Hour...This is This!

Porcupine Tree, Stupid Dream, The Sky Moves Sideways

Propaganda, A Secret Wish

Queen, A Night at the Opera

Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior

Ride, Nowhere

Rorschach Test, Unclean

Roxy Music, Avalon, Flesh + Blood

Rush, 2112, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, All The World's A Stage, Counterparts

Klaus Schulze, Mirage, X

Shape of Despair, Angels of Distress & Shades of...

Shotgun Messiah, Violent New Breed

Sigur Ros, ()

Skinny Puppy, 12" Anthology, Too Dark Park, Last Rights, Singles Collect, B-Sides Collect, VIVIsectVI

Slowdive, Just for a Day

Jenifer Smith, Code Mesa

Snakefarm, Songs from My Funeral

SoulWhirlingSomewhere, Hope Was

Supersystem, Always Never Again

Stabbing Westward, Darkest Days

David Sylvian, Gone to Earth, Brilliant Trees, Secrets of the Beehive

Talk Talk, Colour of Spring -- actually, I love their entire catalog, from the synth-pop masterpiece of The Party's Over to their genre-defining endcap (together with Spirit of Eden), Laughing Stock.

Talking Heads, Remain in Light

Tangerine Dream, Force Majeure, Tangram, Logos, Encore, Ricochet, Exit

Tear Garden, Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, Last Man to Fly

Timeout Drawer, Nowonmai, Alone

The The, Soul Mining, Infected

U2, Achtung Baby, War

Ultravox, Vienna, Rage in Eden, Quartet, Lament

Underworld, dubnobasswithmyheadman, Second Toughest of the Infants

Vangelis, Albedo 0.39, Spiral, Heaven & Hell, Direct, Soil Festivities, Blade Runner, 1492, China, Chariots of Fire

Vast, Turquoise & Crimson

Voivod, Nothingface, Angel Rat

Jeff Wayne, The War of the Worlds

Xymox, Twist of Shadows

Yello, Stella, One Second, Flag

Yes, Fragile, The Yes Album, Relayer, Tales from Topographic Oceans, Going for the One and Drama

Various artists compilations:

Advanced Electronics Vol. 2

Cyberflesh Conspiracy

Dry Lungs V

Risky Business

Songs of the Witchblade

This Is Electronic Body Music

This is the New Beat

...and of course, my two favourite albums of all time:

Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here and Animals

I made this image as some iconic images from some of my favourite albums from some of my favourite artists. Not necessarily my 15 favourite albums of all time, but 15 of them from which I could rip iconic images and eliminate the text (for no reason other than I wanted to do it that way).

[ojnihs]

that is some list Dusty

[Dusty Chalk]

And I already found some I forgot:

Stuff from the ELO catalog

Genesis list is way too short

Camille, Le Fil

Oh, well, I'm not going to bother keeping it updated on the board, but I'll keep it updated locally, so once I start going through them, the updates will magically appear.

[JBLoudG20]

It's simple.

Daft Punk- discovery

[Fungi]

that is some list Dusty

^^^^^^^^^^What he said.

Even though I don't agree with some of the picks, stuff like Android Lust is like, woah yeah Shikhee needs more love yes please.

[jinp6301]

It's simple.

Daft Punk- discovery

no love for homework

or the live album ALIVE?

[JBLoudG20]

It's a fucking favorites thread. And no. They do not touch Discovery.

[jinp6301]

It's a fucking favorites thread. And no. They do not touch Discovery.

ok?

[philodox]

Dusty - We need to hang out and swap music sometime.

[aardvark baguette]

[catscratch]

Thought I'd append a very special album that I left out:

Amethystium is Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, and Enigma all rolled into one. It may be 100% ear candy 100% of the time, but it's very good ear candy that has real depth, feeling, and thought behind every track. It's also one of the few albums that manages to incorporate the sound of old-school electronica while managing to sound thoroughly contemporary.

It's also extremely well produced. One of the quietest albums I have, pretty no compression used at all. The clarity and dynamic range are terrific.