Life changing albums

[SCUMM]

Not directly techno related at all but was wondering if any of you have any suggestions for albums that you really really like. Like music that you can listen to over and over again without getting sick of. Stuff that brings you Ona journey. I’m genuinely interested in hearing what you dig. For me to name a few it’s gotta be “ BOC - music has the right to children” for pure nostalgia. Skee Mask - Compro for emotion and Tetsu Inouie - World receiver for subconsciously chillin

[terryfalafel]

A few off the top of my head...

Rage against the machine's 1st album

Joris Voorn's Balance mix album (14?)

Public enemy - It takes a nation of millions...

Ltj bukem - logical progression volume 1

[speen]

My most played album of the last decade is certainly Destroyer - Kaputt

Awesome album on the verge of kitsch, but really really good and something is also very off but it's hard to point out what exactly. I can listen to it over and over again, but best in the morning when it's hot outside

[jordanneke]

For me, the one album that was really life changing was one that signified me becoming an adult.

I was in boarding school (state one, so yeah...) from 12 and I absolutely hated it, every second of it.

For me, dance music and later on, sneaking out to go to clubs, was total escape.

So when i finally got out of there after 5 years,went to live in a stinky flat at University, it was the best thing ever.

I listened to Richard D James the album and yeah...that was it. That album for me is the one.

[Críoch]

Every note of Caustic Window, Luke Slater's Wireless & 2LS Tiny Reminders albums are etched on my brain.

Probably a wild card here, but straight-up.. this double mix album FSUK3 by Bentley Rhythm Ace came at the right time for me & was probably the last time I got majorly influenced in such a way..

https://www.discogs.com/Bentley-Rhythm- ... ease/71123

Was several years after it was released, but we'd randomly met the guys a few times & became mates. A lot of us were getting sick of loopy techno etc.. & I saw this album in HMV one day & the tracklist looked interesting AF. Not what I expected to see at all. They had spent a lot of time in the studio getting the mixes right.. & its more of a collage at times than a 'mix' . Genuinely fed my imagination & reopened my mind to new things. Needed it badly.

Didn't really listen to or buy anything electronic for years after. Was on a big Blue Note, Jazz & Stax Records buzz. The lads had a seriously fucking great record collection & it was a bit of a John Peel eclectic-education hearing them play all sorts back in mine or mates houses. I'd always had a laugh anyway.. but maybe found the lost vibrancy & fun that music had not had for years. Dance music misses realness & personality most of the time still imo.

Heard Betty Boo at weddings so many times in the years that followed cos people had this album, not because it was particularly a big fav from their youth (edit: maybe it was. Maybe it helped them reconnect).

It went on countless holidays with Ryanair and travelled around Europe, Australia & Asia several times. Everyone was getting gradually more serious post millennium.. and as our group consolidated, this helped to inject some much needed fun after the intensity of 4/4. If you bought this album, you love it.

[2latuile]

Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" and Talking Heads' "Remain In Light". Both were groundbreaking albums when released, and both are still as fresh and relevant, both musically and sonically, as they were 40 years (OMG) ago. For a third one, I'd go for Wall Of Voodoo's "Call Of The West" for it's uncommon mixture of post-punk and spaghetti western and it's deep, political yet still poetical lyrics. Possibly not as influential as the other two but every bit just as good and inventive as far as I'm concerned.

I've been listening to those three albums since the very early 80s, I still play them quite often, and still enjoy each and every millisecond of them as much - if not even more.

[Críoch]

I used to listen to JD all the time but had to stop. They were making me very depressed hahah.. commuting to & from work on the train every day. I couldn't listen them any more (my fav band) & haven't listened to them in years. A cassette of Substance was my teenage go-to album.. but Unknown Pleasures was the one that tipped the balance in the end. Listening every day, in the summer, packed like sardines on a fucking train. Too much

Probably wasn't too long after that we decided to move to the country. There's a lot of time to think on a train. Remember this old white haired chap in a suit with a brown leather briefcase, who would commute into Town, 5 days a week. He lived 2 stops past me as well; an even longer journey than mine ffs. I was spending 2 full days a month in that fucking train. Seen all sorts. Didn't wanna be that guy. Waste of time.

Work to live..

[kronk]

all of these totally changed how i thought about music

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[Críoch]

I was criminally late to The Stoogs. Totally missed the boat cos I saw solo Iggy as a buffoon.

It was only after I seen them on Glastonbury in 2007 I think that I took notice. Went out the next day & bought all the albums. I get it now. Would have really set me off in a different direction if I had of heard them earlier, even though I listened to all who they influenced.. but it would have been better to know the source & not expend so much energy ignoring it.

[kronk]

yea, iggys been a joke for yrs but those stooges lps are incredible

some more... theres soooo many...

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[Críoch]

Forgotten memories..

Old band I was in, mid 90s had a 10min-ish slow changing, kraut-y, fuzzy bass chugger called Manga JAMC.

[buffered]

So many good albums. Hard to tell if they are great or the sentiment/ memories attached. Anyway for me

RDJ album
Alva Noto - Xerrox 2
Christophe De Babalon - If you're into it, Im out of it
Byetone - Symeta
Blir - Raster Edits
Vladislav Delay - Multila
Dino Sabatini - Shaman's Paths
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

[2latuile]

I used to listen to JD all the time but had to stop. They were making me very depressed hahah.. commuting to & from work on the train every day. I couldn't listen them any more (my fav band) & haven't listened to them in years. A cassette of Substance was my teenage go-to album.. but Unknown Pleasures was the one that tipped the balance in the end. Listening every day, in the summer, packed like sardines on a fucking train. Too much

Probably wasn't too long after that we decided to move to the country. There's a lot of time to think on a train. Remember this old white haired chap in a suit with a brown leather briefcase, who would commute into Town, 5 days a week. He lived 2 stops past me as well; an even longer journey than mine ffs. I was spending 2 full days a month in that fucking train. Seen all sorts. Didn't wanna be that guy. Waste of time.

Work to live..

Been here, done that, still have the tee-shirt somewhere... And yes there are times where you'd rather listen to Remain In Lights than to Unknown Pleasures indeed

I realise I haven't mentioned the 3 records that actually had the most immediate and long-lasting impact on me: first Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", which I listened to from my very early childhood and is actually my very first memory of listening to music, then a cheap John Lee Hooker K7 a friend of my mother bought on the way back from a long road trip to Portugal and which we listened to while driving trough the mountains - I was about 8 years old -, and finally the Stooges "Fun House" album on a worn to death K7 at another of my mum's friends when I was 13 and just had my first electric guitar.

[Belka]

Justice - Cross
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Ramones - Ramones & End of the Century
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
David Hasselhoff - Looking for Freedom (first own Cassette together with a yellow plastic player with a build in speaker)

[[wesellboxes]]

The Smiths - Queen Is Dead, Meat Is Murder
Teen angst though Johnny Marr can craft a tune

Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions
Sample bricolage from The Bomb Squad, Chuck D's onslaught

Pet Shop Boys - Please, Disco
Probably first love affair with synthesiser music.

New Order - Technique
Synths, drum machines. First gig was on this tour.

The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
Indie perfection and an introduction to psychedelic studio techniques.

Spritualized - Laser Guided Melodies
Spacemen 3 were great but this raised the bar. Again loads of WTF studio techniques

The Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
Samples, synths, dub and music presented as a tapestry

Orbital - Brown Album.
Was very late to this and slagged Orbital off as student techno. Then one night on acid...

Plus

B12 - Time Tourist, Kruder & Dorfmeister - The K&D Sessions, Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children and no doubt many more.

[SigEnt]

Movement - New Order
It Takes A Nation Of Millions - Public Enemy
Jack Trax 5 (loved most of the Jack trax albums - but 5 sticks out in particular).
Bytes - Black Dog
Incunabula - Autechre
Texturology - Beaumont Hannant
SAW 1- Aphex Twin
Artificial Intelligence II - Warp records Comp

[Amøbe]

I don't think any albums really has been life changing for me - going to an actual club the first time (which randomly ended up being Berghain - I had no idea about the significance of the club, my friends and I had just heard about this techno stuff going on in Berlin, and decided to go there over Easter 10 years ago, and then we just googled 'top 10 clubs Berlin' and tried the top one) was life changing. It flipped my idea of going out completely on its head - instead of going to a rock show, and then have a laugh over waaaaay too many beers afterwards at a bar, we all of a sudden realized that music and going out could be intertwined for the entire evening, and you didn't have to get super hammered to enjoy it.

I will say that listening to loveless by my bloody valentine and dirty by sonic youth, flipped my idea of how you can express yourself musically.

[Ben Kohonays]

This is in vaguely chronoligical order. For me, not when they were released.

Gary Numan - Telekon
Probably the first time I decided I was buying an artists next album sight unseen. One of the better examples of blending traditional instruments and synthesisers.

New Order - Low Life
First time I bought an album having not heard a note of it. Really pleased I did. There was an intelligence in the music that seemed sadly lacking in many other places. Also, the Voyetra 8 is (imo) probably the most beautiful sounding synthesiser ever made.

The House Sound Of Chicago
The Techno Sound Of Detroit
I'm often slow on the uptake with new musical movements, but not this one. It felt like music I had been waiting for. These were compilations of the new shit coming out of Chicago and Detroit at the time. It's funny looking at the track listings now because on probably every album in the series there are tracks that should be on the other, and vice versa.

Courtney Pine - Destiny's Song + The Image of Pursuance
The start of my own journey into jazz proper. His later album Closer To Home is also excellent, blending jazz with reggae and calypso. Works better than you might think it would.

Depeche Mode - Violator
Best thing they ever made, great sounding and really well produced. Bought it on cassette and listened to it in the car driving up to and around Scotland to get married/honeymoon, seemed to fit so well with the scenery sometimes. I still love the album.

Public Enemy - Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black
I'd been into PE for a few years and happened to be walking past one of those bargain bins, all cassettes with no inlay card - saw this and bought it having no clue what any of the tracks were called or anything for a number of years.
I still think it's their best album. The opening salvo of Lost At Birth really sets the tone and you know they mean business. PE at their most powerful musically, and Chuck kicks ass with some of his lyrics.

Bjork - Debut
An oustanding Debut and a nice injection of quirk into the mainstream.

Leftfield - Leftism
BT - Ima
In 1994/95 progressive house was the thing. These two albums are probably the best of what was going around then, and they mostly still hold up well today. Later Leftfield would make enother album then 'retire', and BT would disappear up his own arse.

Pixies - Sufer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim
This came as a double CD so I don't really think of it as two seperate albums. A band that completely passed me by. I discovered them through Fight Club - that scene at the end when the buildings are falling and they play Where Is My Mind - I thought, WTF is this, it's great! Went straight out and bought this album, one of the most interesting bands ever.

Nirvana - Nevermind
Another band that I ignored until about a decade after their demise. Obviously you couldn't escape Teen Spirit when it was out, which just put me off. Plus I mostly just listened to dance and rap at that time, no guitar stuff. Then sometime in the early 00's I happened to hear Teen Spirit on the radio and with the distance from the hype and not having heard it for a few years I finally recognised that actually, it's a pretty good rock tune, so I bought Nevermind, which led me to Bleach, which led to Incesticide etc.


I think that's enough for now. No doubt later I'll be like, "damn, I forgot xxxxxxx".

[timc3]

Some good albums listed here. For me, these at different stages:

Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express & Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygen
I am listing these together as in my memory I "discovered" them at the same time, but it would have been under eleven as I can remember it being before secondary school and I really liked the aesthetic, how different it was to the stuff in the mainstream and how much more futuristic and very different to the usual tastes of my parents - though it was in their record collection!

Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F - 'Pastoral'
This particular recording was by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and living in the countryside it was one of the first pieces that I could see how music could really paint a picture of a scene and I could imagine what Beethoven was trying to get across. My parents had other classical from Debussy, Ravel, Schubert, Bach, Grieg etc that is also amazing, and later on I would get into Wagner, Holst etc.. But it's this 12" recording that got me started and I still have it today.

Dave Brubeck - Take Five
Need to listen to this again, but I remember loving this.

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
Found out about Tangerine Dream because of the soundtracks they did (Street Hawk!) and Phaedra stuck out. Still think it was way ahead of it's time.

Carl Craig ‎– More Songs About Food And Revolutionary Art
In particular "At Les" - though I think I heard it first on some live stream and not - totally blew me away, and not just a live stream in 1997 (I worked in live streaming video in 1997).

Theres others, such as The Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works, BoC - but those above really stand out in memory.

[Críoch]

That TD phaedra album is proto AFX for sure. So mamy sounds & ideas from that in the DNA of AFX, whether intentional, via osmosis or simply following similar predictable paths with hardware.