Hiatus should be over soon

Quite a few things have taken a toll on my blogging recently: preparing for a move to Northampton, Massachusetts, finishing up things at my current job, looking for a new one, pulling together a trip to Australia and New Zealand, spending some time in the liberal blogosphere, and stressing out over the current Democratic primary race. I've been meaning to get back here and post something since January.

While I've drastically limited my music spending this year to save up for the Australia/NZ trip, I haven't heard any shortage of good music. So I should be back posting about some of that very soon.

In the meantime, I'm very excited about a new music blogging community just started by my friend Richie, soon to feature a lot of AU alums. You can visit it here, and it should have some more content up later next week.

2007 Year-end thoughts

2007, now done. I cannot remember any other year in which I heard more outstanding music, either released during the year or (more likely) before. I think it was a combination of a few things for me - more free time, more disposable income, and probably most importantly, a stronger than usual motivation to check out stuff unfamiliar to me. It was about this time one year ago, right around the holidays, that I decided to try to hear a lot more music than I normally had been. I think if you dig through the surface a little bit, you see how much is really there --you see how endless the continuous stream of good music actually is. The music critic Chuck Eddy said that he probably heard about 1000 albums released in 2007, and still felt that he barely scratched the surface of music this year. I didn’t get anywhere even close to that amount, but what follows are some lists of my favorite music heard in 2007.

As usual, I didn’t get around to hearing that many actual 2007 releases, so more indicative of what I listened to the most this year are the albums in my “Favorite pre-2007 releases I first heard in 2007” list, which follows the 2007 lists. Here goes:

2007 favorite albums, top 5:

1. Om - Pilgrimage (Southern Lord)
2. Angels of Light - We Are Him (Young God)
3. Panda Bear, Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
4. Rhys Chatham - A Crimson Grail (Table of the Elements)
5. Sir Richard Bishop - While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust)

With Pilgrimage, another chapter in the band’s psychedelic raga-inflected drone metal project, Om released what I think is their best album among three incredibly consistent releases. I’ll greatly anticipate whatever these guys continue to do. In 2007, I also had the privilege of hearing almost all of Michael Gira’s released work, from early Swans’ noise chunks to the Soundtracks for the Blind-era ambient sound experimentation, to Gira’s incredible acoustic-based Angels of Light work. This stuff completely blew me away, and newest Angels of Light record We Are Him is a fine addition to Gira’s work, a blood-curdling avant folk-rock record that cuts through to you quite deeply. Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, as Panda Bear, released a wonderful record full of sonic cues from 60s psychedelia, the Beach Boys, ambient noise, tribal dance, and dubby atmospherics. Person Pitch is now my gateway to Animal Collective, whose albums are just as exciting and sonically adventurous. Rhys Chatham composed a three-part symphony for 400 guitars, the gorgeous, shimmering A Crimson Grail, somehow demonstrating that the main instrument of rock/punk/metal x400 can also sound incredibly beautiful. Last, Sir Richard Bishop released not one but two albums of solo guitar virtuosity, my favorite of the two being While My Guitar Violently Bleeds, whose three parts - one unaccompanied acoustic gem, one electric guitar drone, one 25-minute folk raga, complete with tambura drone, made me an instant fan.

Other 2007 releases I enjoyed:

Fennesz Sakamoto - Cendre (Touch)
Eric Carbonara - Exodus Bulldornadius (Locust)
Original Silence - The First Original Silence (Smalltown Superjazz)
Burial - Untrue (Hyberdub)
Radiohead - In Rainbows (Discs 1 + 2) (Self-released)
Sir Richard Bishop - Polytheistic Fragments (Drag City)
Merzbow + Carlos Giffoni - Synth Destruction (Important)
Merzbow / Giffoni / O'Rourke - Electric Dress (No Fun)
Various Artists - Pop Ambient 2007 (Kompakt)
Various Artists - Box of Dub: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz)

One album of several that I didn't like it as much as the reviews said I should:

The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)

2007 favorite re-issues:

1. Fennesz - Endless Summer (Mego, 2001; re-issued Mego)
2. Tim Hecker - Radio Amor (Mille Plateaux, 2003; re-issued Alien8)
3. Concept 1 (Richie Hawtin + Thomas Brinkmann) - 96:CD + 96:VR (M-nus, 1998; re-issued M-nus)
4. Vladislav Delay - Multila (Chain Reaction, 2000; re-issued Huume)
5. Fennesz - Hotel Paral.lel (Mego, 1997; re-issued Mego)

A big year for Fennesz re-issues -- the two above are outstanding, with Endless Summer being Fennesz’s most perfect and accomplished album to date. Tim Hecker’s Radio Amor instantly became one of my favorite ambient albums, and plays quite well next to the murky dubspace of Vladislav Delay’s classic Chain Reaction album Multila. Richie Hawtin and his M-nus label thankfully re-issued the out-of-print and thus exorbitantly expensive Concept 1 96:CD, including Thomas Brinkmann’s innovative remixes as a second disc, both remastered by Pole’s Stefan Betke. Concept 1 showcases Hawtin’s most uncompromisingly minimal and experimental techno -- there isn’t much more than a drum machine sound and some echo in most of these songs, but it’s astonishing to see what Hawtin is capable of. I was quite happy to see this one re-issued, it’s as minimal as minimal techno gets and certainly one of the most successful attempts at stripping techno down to its most absolute, bare necessities. A big year for experimental electronic re-issues in general, and that’s clearly what I was listening to as far as re-issues go.

A few other 2007 releases (among countless others) that I didn't get around to hearing, regrettably:

Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
Pandit Pran Nath - Raga Cycle
Battles - Mirrored
Angelic Process - Weighing Souls with Sand
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Björk - Volta
Baroness - Red Album
Earth - Hibernaculum
Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound
Uusitalo - Karhunainen
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Lichens - Omns
Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36
Deerhunter - Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP
Yellow Swans - At All Ends
William Basinski - Shortwavemusic

Favorite pre-2007 releases I first heard in 2007, haphazardly categorized:

genius:
Gas - Gas
Gas - Zauberberg
Gas - Koenigsforst
Gas - Pop

ragas, folk ragas, doom ragas:
Ali Akbar Khan - Signature Series Vol. 1
Six Organs of Admittance - Dust and Chimes
Six Organs of Admittance - Dark Noontide
Om - Variations on a Theme
Om - Conference of the Birds

ambient drifts, drones:
Brian Eno - Ambient 4: on Land
Brian Eno - Discreet Music
William Basinski - Disintegration Loops II
William Basinski - Disintegration Loops III
William Basinski - Disintegration Loops IV
Pauline Oliveros - Primordial Lift
Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet

noise crunch:
Maja Ratkje - Voice
Merzbow - 1930
Merzbow - Amlux
Merzbow - Sphere
Merzbow - Minazo Vol. 1
Aphex Twin - Drukqs
Wolf Eyes - Burned Mind
Boris + Merzbow - Sun-baked Snow Cave
Hair Police - Constantly Terrified

avant jazz turmoil:
Albert Ayler - Witches and Devils
Peter Brotzmann/William Parker/Hamid Drake - Never Too Late but Always Too Early
Circle (1972 Quartet) - Paris Concert
John Zorn/Masada - Live at Tonic 2001

minimalism, two versions:
Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
Studio 1 - Studio 1

textured grooves:
Farben - Textstar
Ricardo Villalobos - Alcachofa
Ricardo Villalobos - Achso

space rock, post-rock, noise rock:
Valium Aggalein - Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond
Exhaust - Exhaust
Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth
Shellac - At Action Park

dubspace:
Pole - 2
Pole - 3
Maurizio - M-series
Plastikman - Consumed
King Tubby/Glenn Brown - Termination Dub
Noel Ellis - Noel Ellis
Burial - Burial
Basic Channel - Quadrant 1

“In Christ there is no east or west”:
John Fahey - Voice of the Turtle
Sir Richard Bishop - Improvika
Nanae Yoshimura - Art of the Koto, Vol. 1

clicks, hums, static:
Ryoji Ikeda - +/-
Stephen Mathieu - On Tape
Sogar - Basal
Oval - 94 Diskont
Snd - Makesnd Cassette

American Gothic:
Swans - Children of God/World of Skin
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind
Swans - Various Failures
Michael Gira - Drainland
Angels of Light - New Mother
Angels of Light - Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home
Angels of Light - Sing Other People
Earth - Hex: or Printing in the Infernal Method

10,000 lb riffs:
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Sleep - Dopesmoker
Boris - Amplifier Worship
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone

ancient synthesizer epics:
Tangerine Dream - Ricochet
Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear

vocal house genius:
Luomo, Vocalcity
Herbert, Around the House

avant pop genius:
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Left-handed Dream
Laurie Anderson - Big Science
Prince - Dirty Mind
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel (“Melt”)

prog, progcore:
Magma - Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh
Ruins - Tzomborgha

black metal torture:
Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide
Darkthrone - Transylvanian Hunger
Darkthrone - Panzerfaust
Leviathan - Tenth Sublevel of Suicide
Velvet Cacoon - Genevieve
Velvet Cacoon - Northsuite
Blut Aus Nord - Mort
Spektr - Near-Death Experience

electric Miles:
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
Miles Davis - Tribute to Jack Johnson
Miles Davis - Get Up With It

krautrock, krautdrone, and & children:
Can - Tago Mago
Tony Conrad - Outside the Dream Syndicate
Boredoms - Super Ae
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Stereolab - First of the Microbe Hunters
Stereolab - Sound-Dust

2007 re-discoveries, pulled off the shelf and listened to frequently in ’07:
Autechre - Tri Repetae ++
Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Sonic Youth - Ciccone Youth/The Whitey Album
John Fahey - America
Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
Duster - Stratosphere
Olivia Tremor Control vs. Black Swan Network, Tour EP
Philip Jeck - 7
Fugazi - 13 Songs
Stereolab - Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night
Stereolab - Dots and Loops

2008’s looking good, so far (as usual, not all from 2008):
Animal Collective, Feels (Fat Cat, 2005)
Circle, Sunrise (Ektro, 2002; No Quarter, 2007)
Various Artists, Pop Ambient 2008 (Kompakt, 2008)
Lichens, The Psychic Nature of Being (Kranky, 2005)
Minor Threat, Complete Discography (Dischord, 1988)
+ a whole stack of data cds sent from my friend Jon that I'm about to upload, endless amounts of good music…

My Generation Records

I've learned at least one thing so far from doing this database: from the time I bought my first few cds until about 2002, nearly ever album I acquired I purchased at the now-extinct My Generation Records in Westlake, Ohio. It was located about two miles or so from my house, making frequent stops there remarkably easy. It was truly an incredible record store -- one of the best generalist stores I've ever been to -- great for any eclectic music fan, I'm sure, but for a teenager with a growing interest in music, it was a paradise.

I have a lot of memories shopping there: asking the staff for "techno recommendations" in seventh grade (it was pretty embarrassing for them, I'm sure); riding my bike there after school in eighth grade to pick up the Beatles' White Album; hearing one of the more conservative employees tell me that Sonic Youth's Ciccone Youth album "isn't very good" (but it is); and grabbing a couple Boards of Canada albums during what were to become my last few stops there during college. Westlake, Ohio, too, as an affluent, conservative suburb that's arguably benefitting more than any other from Cleveland's ongoing sprawl and white flight, was/is a very odd place to host such an amazing record store, it's remarkable that it was even there in the first place. The shop had such an large impact on me as I grew into a music fan, and I wonder if I could have learned as much about music as I was able to during my teens if My Generation wasn't around.

I also remember most of the staff as remaining fairly consistent throughout the nine or ten years I shopped there, and when I think about it, they pretty much saw me grow up. Whenever I think about the place, the staff always come to mind, and I often wonder where they went following the store's demise.

When I was away at college, I remember hearing the news that the store was closin, from my mom, in fact, who sent me a newspaper clipping about the owners' decision to close. They even tried to sell the business (the amazing stock of cds included) but found no parties willing to take it on. Apparently, they were tired of the competition coming from several different fronts, and this is a sadly familiar and unsurprising story, these days, of course -- the Borders and the then-in-construction Barnes & Noble about a mile away, other big box retailers (though even those aren't doing so well now), the increase in downloaded music, or else just the drop in record purchasing, and online vendors like Amazon. It makes me more than a little sad to see a place that was so important to me fade away. I know that I'd still visit the place every time I was in Cleveland, if it was still around. There were depths and depths to it that I never really got to explore.

Cataloging it all: creating a music database

Sure it's kind of dorky, but I just started a database to catalog my music collection. I've been meaning to do this for a while, and for a few reasons, I thought it would be a fun project to undertake. So far it's just an Excel file, no official database software as of yet, and I imagine it'll be just that for a while. I revived a thread recently on ILM on this topic, so some of what's below is taken from my posts there.

Basically, I'm working with these fields, though I might add more if anything comes to mind:

Artist - under which the database is arranged alphabetically.
Title
Label - for this I've been putting the label of the issue I own, but have usually been including the original label, as well.
Release Date - re-issue dates included if my copy is a re-issued one
Format - cd, lp, mp3, cd-r, etc., as well as number of discs if it's more than one
Genre - extremely general categories, e.g. jazz, pop, electronic, etc.
Subgenre - this is where I go nuts with tags, it's a lot of fun. Mostly, I'm going by what subgenres/ideas I tend to hear in a particular album, though I'll sometimes check out AMG or Discogs just to see how those folks tagged it.
Catalog # - the most tedious of the fields, as it can be hard to find on the physical copy itself, and the Web might not always come up with the correct number.
Date of Acquisition - approximate, if I can't exactly remember.
Source of Acquisition - Also a lot of fun. For these last two fields, I'm surprising myself at how well I'm remembering when and where I got stuff, and as I'll explain a little more below, these two are great because they help me remember what was happening in my life at a particular time, because that's always been so tied up with what music I was listening to.

I wouldn't dare include price/cost as a field, lest I become completely horrified by the amount of money I've spent on music over the years. I was also thinking about including condition, though that might get a little tedious for what's already a pretty tedious project. Though I might end up doing this, because it would help me, at least, in seeing if I need to replace anything. Until I was twenty or so, I really treated my cds like garbage. Some of them aren't even listenable.

I've been going to Discogs a lot for certain information and I noticed, that as you look something up, you have the option of adding the item to a list of your collection. You can then export the list to an Excel file. At first, I actually started the database by doing this basically because it was so convenient, but after entering a few albums, I decided there were a few other fields that I wanted to include, as well as some tweaks of the fields Discogs already included, to the extent that I figured I'd just create the database myself.

There are a few reasons that I'm doing this database. First, as I kind of mentioned, I've found it's a pretty good way of refreshing albums in my head. As I've been entering all this data, looking up the albums on Discogs or AMG, I've already been more motivated to listen to albums that I've had for years but have only played a few times. It's a great way to re-familiarize myself with these albums, and has really refreshed my perspective of them. This has really given me a better sense of my collection, and enables me to get more out of it rather than just immediately put on whatever new cd or record I just bought. It's also a great activity to do while listening to music -- typing in album data is a good, mindless job that's interesting enough not to get boring, but not distracting enough that I can't pay attention to whatever music is playing. It might be farfetched, but this whole process may even slow down a rampant aquisition process, which would obviously be easier on my wallet.

Secondly, this is basically an introspective project. Especially since I created the fields for "date of acquisition" and "source of acquisition", I really have to reflect back and think about where I was in my life when I bought the album. Recalling these details, when and where I bought, what motivated me to do so, triggers all kinds of memories about what kind of stuff was going on in my life at that time. Relationships, states of mind, moods, and general periods of my life have all so closely been tied up with what music I was listening to at the time, and I have to resurrect all these details to think, "oh, that's when I bought that album." This kind of navel-gazing is a lot of fun for me, since I don't always reflect very much on the past and tend to just keep plugging away, and this seems even more so as I get older. In short, it's a good way to refresh a lot of memories.

But I have to admit, there's also a kind of obsessive-compulsive satisfaction to the organizational process -- there's nothing terribly useful about creating a database apart from the fun and sentimentality attached to it. I guess it might come in handy, too, if I ever try to insure my collection, so there's something practical to it, at least.

So far, I've been working quite slowly and haven't been in much a rush to complete it, as it's not much of a hobby if it's completed so quickly. The As and Bs are just about done, and I'm about 120 albums deep. Most letters aren't as populated as these first two, though, so the pace should pick up a little more as I go on.

Om - Pilgrimage

New album came out a week ago from these guys, on Southern Lord, produced by Steve Albini. It's excellent. I mentioned in another forum that it's not nearly as heavy as their first album, much less so than Sleep, and I think that's really working for them. They do seem to be getting a little quieter with each album, with the "At Giza" tune on Conference of the Birds and of course the "Pilgrimage" tunes on this one, but even the heavier tracks here seem a bit more subdued. Much has been said of Albini's production work, and he really did a great job on it: the bass and drums sound really solid together, making the rhythms slam down really well. The vocals are lower in the mix, too.

Someone on ILM described Om's work as "doom ragas," which I think is pretty accurate, even if they're moving further and further away from doom with each release, and can clarify why a lot of their songs sound similar. Al Cisneros, the bassist and vocalist, had this to say a while back in Om's Invisible Jukebox feature in the Wire (Issue 273, November 2006):

"With Sleep, people would often come up and say, 'Don't you know any other riff?' and I'd say, 'Look, this is what we do and this is what feels right, and if you can't hear the difference between this riff and this other riff that's not our fault, it's your fault.' If you were to put all of our albums together - from when we first met to when we're old and unable to move - you could make one song out of it. It's one theme. It's one continuous line running through the whole thing. I really wish we could record it all at once."

New Radiohead album - In Rainbows

I found out about this last night. You can buy the $80 discbox, which includes 2 cds, 2 heavyweight vinyl records, a digital download, artwork, nice packaging, lyric sheets, etc., or you pay as little (or nothing) as you want for just the digital download, which will be available in 10 days. The standard CD/LP release will come sometime in early 2008. Sounds pretty awesome, and has all the critics, music press, and industry analysts already going on about how this is going to change the future distribution of music forever. It's hyperbole, to be sure, and any kind of revolution in music distribution has certainly been underway for a while. But it is a very cool move -- some say the album would've been leaked three months before the proper release date anyways, but Radiohead is deciding to do just that themselves, on their own terms. No major labels involved, no six-month marketing strategy, no bloated promotional enterprise designed to amp up a big release date -- basically no compliance with a business model that has failed pretty badly recently and will continue to do so even more miserably. It's very cool.

Tim Hecker, Stephan Mathieu, other new and old stuff

I've been running out of ideas for posts -- I first started this blog thinking that I’d be updating it once a week. That I’ve turned out to post once a month, though, isn’t too bad, I guess. I think I originally wanted each post (or at least the majority of posts) to have some kind of overall theme or at least a substantive thought or two, not wanting to give in to the one-sentence-with-a-link posts that have become all too common on the web -- that these types of posts are the norm rather than the exception on most blogs is kind of shame. I also didn’t originally want to just post lists of a bunch of albums or songs without any comment or context. But the regular upkeep of the blog, I think, might have to take precedence over the 1000-word post once a month.

So, here is a brief rundown of a fairly small selection of the music I’ve been enjoying recently (whether or not it’s come out recently -- certainly this post will illustrate how delayed I can be in keeping up with new stuff).

Tim Hecker, Radio Amor (Mille Plateaux, 2003; re-issued Alien8, 2007)

This has been my go-to ambient album for past couple months or so, as I find myself reaching for it over all the Eno, William Basinski, and Steve Roach albums I’ve heard recently. Thinking about its characteristic sound, reminds me of a public art exhibit in downtown DC that Tara and I recently stumbled upon, showcasing local artists exploring the concept of “drift” in various ways, however the artist might undersand it, though all in visual art. This album sonically explores the vague idea of “drift” better than any album that immediately comes to mind (though one might also think of the more ambient parts of Godspeed You Black Emperor!’s F #A #∞,which really have that going on, too, I think). Soft electronic drones, fragmented, ringing keyboards, and static hums phase in and out of the mix, making for a very haunting and beautiful album. This makes me very excited to hear Tim Hecker’s other work.

Stephan Mathieu, On Tape (Häpna, 2004)

I’m not even sure how I came upon hearing about sound artist Stephan Mathieu, but I vaguely recall him being mentioned alongside German dub/techno artist Pole for his similar appreciation for static hiss, clicks, and pops in making music. That stuff isn’t really the focus of On Tape and the music is quite different from the dub-space of Pole. But that kind of soft analog hiss, coming from what seems to be the source tape, gently adds something to the overall subtlety of this recording. To be honest, not much really happens here -- there are some quiet acoustic drums, very soft saxophones, subtle electronic noises and manipulations and some field recordings, but what makes this recording so special is that very calmness. It's a very spacious, quiet record altogether. There is also something about it that seems so present, for which I’m sure the live context in which it was recorded is responsible. I'm not sure how to explain it precisely but I’m always drawn completely into this recording when I hear it, as if the musicians are right there, recording next to me.

Glen Brown & King Tubby, Termination Dub (1973-1979) (Blood and Fire, 1996)

I recently picked up a book by Michael Veal, an ethnomusicologist at Yale, titled Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, which I’ve just read the first chapter or so. I’m still working on digesting this album, too, but from end to end, it seems, this is a killer dub record: heavy, heavy rhythms, that hazy sense of space, ghostly reverbed vocals, it’s all here. I don’t know much about Glen Brown and I’ve only got a couple of Tubby albums, but I’m excited to learn more about this incredible sub-genre of music, and this is a good record to add to a beginning dub collection.

Others (and I really do hate to just list them, but it’ll have to do):

A few things new to me that I’ve been loving this summer:

Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun (Birdman, 2001)

Plastikman, Consumed (Nova Mute, 1998)

Masada, Live at Tonic 2001 (Tzadik, 2001)

Merzbow, Sphere (Tzadik, 2004)


Laurie Anderson, Big Science (Warner Bros, 1982) -- I happened to pick this up on vinyl a few months back before I read anything about its recent 2007 re-issuing. What a cool album, really. The quirky, spoken word bits put me off a little at first, I have to admit -- they seemed a little too self-consciously weird. But by the end of my first listen I realized how precise and intentioned every vocal phrase, inflection, and pronunciation really is, and how important these spoken word bits are. There are also some beautifully affective synthesizer work, bizzare yet very accessible instrumentation, and some quite cool electronic vocal manipulations.

Boris, Amplifier Worship (Mangrove, 1998) re-issued Southern Lord, 2003); Electric Wizard, Dopethrone (Music Cartel, 2000; re-issued Rise Above, 2004) ; Sleep, Dopesmoker (Tee Pee, 2003. Big heavy riffs.

Ruins / Koenjihyakkei -- various.

Original Silence, First Original Silence (Smalltown Superjazz, 2007) -- experimental rock/free jazz/improv from Mats Gustafsson, Terrie Ex, Paal Nilssen-Love, Massimo Pupillo, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Jim O’Rourke.

Minor Threat, Salad Days Single (Dischord, 1985)

John Zorn/Naked City, Naked City (Nonesuch, 1989)

Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind (Sub Pop, 2004) -- After hearing a lot about these guys I finally jumped on the noise bandwagon by picking up this album. There's some very good stuff on it -- Merzbow-inspired noise, to be sure, but it hits the kind of dark, ugly drum-machine stuff a la Throbbing Gristle and other early industrial noise, too. I'd call it noise obviously but it's equal parts metal/rock/industrial, and not a small amount of dub influence.


Some somewhat older stuff I recently pulled off the shelf, with much enjoyment:

Lightning Bolt, Wonderful Rainbow (Load, 2003)

Jonny Greenwood, Bodysong (Capitol, 2004) -- this is pretty cool, and at least makes for a much more interesting solo effort than Thom Yorke's Eraser. I'd like to see Radiohead incorporate more of these types of sounds into their work.

Trojan Dub Box Set (Trojan 1998) -- Trojan compilations have some great stuff on them and cover a huge range of classic reggae sub-genres, but I wasn't overly impressed with this when I bought it a few years back. But there are in fact some really, really good dubs on here. I was pleasantly surprised upon re-playing it recently.

Fugazi, Thirteen Songs (Dischord, 1989); Dinosaur Jr, You’re Living All Over Me (SST, 1987); Sonic Youth, Ciccone Youth/The Whitey Album (Geffen, 1988)-- another book I’ve been reading (on and off over the course of a few years, but much more heavily now) is Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. It’s a hell of a fun book to read, especially if you’ve got a few of these bands’ albums on your shelf to pull out when reading.