Essential Studio Albums

[liebzz]

Pink Floyd - Meddle

On this album, it seems Pink Floyd is really starting to find the balance between studio experimentation and the sort of catchier and digestible music that would propel them that much further in the 70s. It’s really an album that gets overshadowed by the albums that come next, but stands just as tall. The first side is highlighted by the slow building opener One of These Days, Fearless which is one of their strongest tracks on the weight of a gorgeous repeating guitar line, and the fun and easy San Tropez which is a breath of air on a weighty album. Side two is the epic Echoes, a 20 minute pure Pink Floyd expression. There are few tracks that are more Pink Floyd than this one, with wild effects and details mixing in with great guitar and bass lines to create atmosphere and texture.

The Essential Track: Echoes

Up Next: Yes - The Yes Album

[liebzz]

Yes - The Yes Album

One of the subgenres I just never got a proper education in is progressive rock. I am hoping that in this time in the 70s that might be somewhat remedied, and listening to Yes is part of that. Really, I only really thought of Yes as that band that did Owner of a Lonely Heart, but clearly there’s more to them than that song. This album is pretty good, with I’ve Seen All Good People as the instantly recognizable song, though Yours Is No Disgrace, Starship Troopers and Perpetual Change was what I was really after, and where I was having the most enjoyment listening. They are a much better band than I ever gave credit.

The Essential Track: Perpetual Change

Up Next: Genesis - Nursery Cryme

[liebzz]

Genesis - Nursery Cryme

Speaking of prog rock bands that sound nothing like their hit machine future of the 80s, Genesis complete with Phil Collin’s delivers here a highly creative and over the top album. The value of admission here is really in two epic and long tracks: The Musical Box and The Return of the Giant Hogweed. Both explore the outer reaches of what you’d ever expect from this and possibly any other prog rock band, with extensive compositions with intertwining instrumental interplay. That’s a mouthful, but then again so is this album. The rest vary highly from weird to quirky to fun, and overall I enjoyed this. Can’t wait to see what other adventures lurk around the corner with these guys.

The Essential Track: The Return of the Giant Hogweed

Up Next: Ten Years After - A Space in Time

[tragabigzanda]

[VinylGuy]

dont you dare Trag this thread Trag

[liebzz]

We’re still in the early 70s.

Trag is right though. I did intend to add some of his suggestions and then overlooked it. Partially remedied.

Edit: I added a whole couple of mini-sections of albums to explore in this starting almost next. The pressure’s on!

[liebzz]

Ten Years After - A Space in Time

This continues to be a real discovery, even though for the first time, there are two songs on here I heard before: I’d Love to Change the World and Hard Monkeys. While this one is built for easier listening than the others - less blues more rock and shorter tracks at that, it still provides plenty of goods, from the aforementioned hits to I’ve Been There Too, and the killer opening track One of These Days (not related to the Pink Floyd track). Not everything in this one is at the high point of some of their other albums, but it is still valuable listening for straight ahead rock music circa 1971.

The Essential Track: One of These Days

Up Next: Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air (aka, the start of the first Trag suite)

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air

This presents itself as a jazz record in my head, but it really defies the genre in mixing synthesizers (?) and more organic orchestral instrumentation into patterns that are manipulated in long form. It often lays down very simple patterns only to gradually complicate matters into near cacophony, but all the same it never feels or sounds like chaos - but you need those foundational simple patterns to get there. It’s certainly a form of right brained genius worth checking out, even if you don’t get the fist pumps or even much in the way of repeat listens after. That is to say it is an art form in the highest sense, but you gotta be in the mood for it for sure. I will say I enjoyed it far more than I initially expected when the tracks first started.

The Essential Track: A Rainbow in Curved Air

Up Next: Guru Guru - UFO

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

Guru Guru - UFO

Nothing like working and listening to batshit crazy avant-garde rock music simultaneously. Actually, there’s some really cool guitar work here, and a pattern to it all that makes it less than chaotic though it certainly has its moments. Stone In and Next Time See You at the Dalai Lama are the highlights here, both exploding into big frenzies but maintaining themselves as tracks. Wild stuff and not what I would expect from this place and time that we are operating in.

The Essential Track: Stone In

Up Next: Amon Duul II - Tanz der Lemminge

[liebzz]

Amon Duul II - Tanz der Lemminge

Journeys sometimes take you down into unexpected places, and I think this counts as one of them. This isn’t an instrumental album, but that’s the stuff you walk away remembering, a fading in and out of straight ahead rock riffs devolving into avant garde expositions. This is a double album, which for this format can get a bit exhausting, but some of the longer tracks are among the most rewarding, as in the opening Syntleman’s March of the Roaring Seventies. Granted, it’s just easier to pick out Chamsin: Chewinf Gum Telegram for its two minutes of rock riffage and call it a day, but the movement two tracks later, Toxicological Whispering, is admittedly much more interesting.

The Essential Track: Syntleman’s March of the Roaring Seventies

Up Next: Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation

[liebzz]

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation

Whether it is the more reasonable album length, or the actual interplay between instruments and its less time consuming devolutions into the abyss, this album feels a bit more focused and maybe closer to an instrumental Pink Floyd, or even the Terry Riley album but rock music. I found it a bit less challenging and finding more of a balance. Journey Through a Burning Brain might be the best thing here anyway, given that it has the longest run time of any of the tracks. Even when this album spirals, there’s order in the chaos.

The Essential Track: Journey Through a Burning Brain

Up Next: Cluster - Cluster ‘71

[liebzz]

Cluster - Cluster ‘71

The closet correlation I could make when listening to this album is going to a modern art museum and looking at a blank canvas, or maybe one with a rotting banana duct taped to an otherwise blank canvas. This music is formless, though not shapeless, and incredibly sparse (hence the analogy). Its beauty and value come most from the uncluttered nature of it. It does get weird in spots (granted, the concept of listening to largely white noise for 45 minutes on a commute isn’t weird in itself), like the closing moments where 20+ minutes of a stretched single guitar note and whirring generators turns into what I can best describe as my morning alarm clock waking me from the daze. And there’s some precedent for listening to this sort of music, as in live Grateful Dead’s formless Space, an indescribable sonic space where little interruptions have the impact of boulders. 15:43 has a back third to it that really starts to almost form into a full concept. All that said, this was a valuable listen and among the more enjoyable albums amongst these more avant garde excursions and really because of the uncluttered nature of it all. Its the sort of art that if you don’t take a moment to ask yourself “what the f@ck am I even listening to!?” You might miss the point.

The Essential Track: 15:43

Up Next: Can - Tago Mago

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

Can - Tago Mago

This double album is really a tale of two halves. The first half is quite close to fully accessible rock music, but with a bunch of interesting things happening I did not expect. For one, the beat structure at least seems way ahead of its time, and you could almost draw a through line to get to early hip hop and The Roots as flourishing in this sort of pattern. That’s coupled with some great grooves, which I think hit their apex on Oh Yeah and the 18 minute Halleluhwah. Mushroom is also a big first half highlight displaying a lot of unexpected details in its structure.

The second half is largely structure free. It is really just completely nuts, almost stream of conscious jamming where in moments the band seems in synch followed by moments where everyone is kind of doing their own thing akin to toddlers all playing in the same room at the same time, but operating without regard to the others - yet it’s not completely out of touch as a whole. It is profoundly ludicrous though. The album closes with Bring Me Coffee or Tea, which combines a lot of elements on the record but never gets as absurd as the rest of the second half.

The Essential Track: Halleluhwah

Up Next: Ash Ra Tempel

[liebzz]

Ash Ra Tempel

Another sort of pattern music instrumental album, but this one is more rock focused. On the first of two tracks, Amboss, this is very much a guitar shredfest, with the music almost playing background to a wailing guitar - like the crest in a My Morning Jacket song, but the crest lasts 20 minutes. Traummaschine is much more deliberate and in the same span works up to the final catharsis into the last moments. Both tracks have their value, but this guitar based stuff is pretty cool.

The Essential Track: Amboss

Up Next: Popol Vuh - In the Gardens of Pharao

[liebzz]

Popol Vuh - In the Gardens of Pharao

This is the last in the first of the Trag album suites. For the most part, this is a mild album that very gently produces the equivalent of white noise with little moments, none as intense as the other albums on this list, and so it sort of floats along…until the lat movement that is, which is just a bridge too far for my brain. It is a pulsing key akin to an electronic alarm clock going off, but it never stops. It just keeps alarming. It makes Lloyd Christmas’s most annoying sound in the world seem quaint. It is the most irritating thing I have ever heard.

The Essential Track: In Den Garten Pharaos

Up Next: ZZ Top

[tragabigzanda]

[Ello Sailor]

It is a pulsing key akin to an electronic alarm clock going off, but it never stops. It just keeps alarming. It makes Lloyd Christmas’s most annoying sound in the world seem quaint. It is the most irritating thing I have ever heard.

God damn it, Trag.