I’m doing it again, coming at a band backwards. (For the nth time.) I’ve only ever heard Camoufleur, reputed to be Gastr del Sol’s most accessible album – a claim this one bears out.
Tag: Drone
G_d’s Pee at STATE’s END! (2021) by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
From the first moments of Lift Your Skinny Fists, I was in love. I was at the height of my prog rock phase and I had no idea post rock existed. I had no idea Canadians were making ambitious music vaguely in the prog rock tradition at the very time that I was alive and …
Metal Machine Music (1975) by Lou Reed
As many people have noted, the most notorious album in rock music history is far less insane now that we have drone [insert subgenre here] music and noise [insert other subgenre here] music. If you listened to much drone or noise music, this will not seem all that shocking. But barely any of it existed …
The Marble Index (1968) by Nico
If you only knew Nico from Chelsea Girl (i.e. you had never heard The Velvet Underground & Nico nor were you aware of her subsequent reputation), I have trouble imagining the shock of this record. It’s a little like what later happened with Scott Walker, albeit not nearly as radical, but it took Nico less …
Faust IV (1973)
Faust were always the wackiest of Krautrock bands, so it’s fitting that the first track of this album is called “Krautrock.” By listening to it, I’m not 100% sure if it’s satire of other Krautrock, a legitimate attempt to make some far out version of motorik (which wasn’t their thing anyway), or something else. But …
Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993)
What do you do with a record that invented an entire genre of music but which you don’t really want to sit through over and over? I don’t know.
The Second Annual Report (1977) by Throbbing Gristle
What do we do with this, the official debut of one of the most important industrial bands ever?
Irrlicht (1972) by Klaus Schulze
Learning that this man is the former drummer of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel sort of puts your expectations in a certain place and, at least for me, that turns out to the wrong place.