[Album] If you made a list of 5 albums that are REQUIRED LISTENING

...what would you pick?

I don't mean albums that are so incredibly awesome that they make your ears orgasm. I'm talking about albums that make you say "Wow, there's music that sounds like this?" I'm talking about albums that completely open your ears to new sounds and melodies.

If I were to pick 5, I would pick:

1. The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World.
Courtesy of Amara, I now know what terrible really sounds like. I thought I knew beforehand, but no, unless you listen, you have NO IDEA. It's so bad, I was alternating between hysterical chucking and a slight case of the jibblies. AND O GOD DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE ACTUAL LYRICS.


2. Yndi Halda - Enjoy Eternal Bliss (EP)
This wasn't the album that introduced me to Post Rock (that honor belongs to The Lay Lie Land by world's end girlfriend), but man I wish it was. If you've never gotten into post rock, this three track album shows you just the overload of power and emotion the genre can bring, contrasting with a sense of calm. It is ESSENTIAL you know music can have such qualities before you die.


3. Silver Apples - Contact
This, to me, is an example of what pure psychedelia is supposed to sound like. Like a shroom session from which the genre relates, this is a hard and unique album, using notes and melodies that sound more otherworldly than pieces people make that TRY to sound other worldly. This album really gets into your head after a few tracks, and it's important for people to know you don't need drugs necessarily to induce a psychedelic state. All you need is a lack of sleep and this album!


4. Lustmord - Paradise Disowned
If you haven't really been exposed to Dark Ambient, you first off need to be, and this is the perfect album to be exposed to first. This album somehow instills beauty with a screeching whale song. It has a standard 80's dance track with chainsaw vocalists. It brings you a sensation of pure screeching pain in a track and just instills a sense of creepiness and fear. You need to hear this to know that there's other genre's out there besides noise that can instill such things.


5. SORMA - Illusion
Everyone who I've shown this album to was absolutely AMAZED at how unique it is. It's world music made by some d00ds with a Asian tint to it, but yet it's so much more. Songs like Kizuna have the most amazing vocals without words, and it just BLOWS ME AWAY how they blended things seemingly so traditional with modern instruments. This is required listening because I'm certain you have never heard music like this unless you've heard SORMA before.

How ya doing, buddy?